Counterrevolution

Name: Counterrevolution
Price: 42.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781945861154

Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance

Melinda Cooper

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Paperback

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English

Zone Books
29 April 2026

Social & political philosophy; Politics & government; Political science & theory; Economic theory & philosophy; Economic systems & structures

Series: Near Futures

A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy.

At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance.

Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi.

Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth.

Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible?

By: Melinda Cooper
Imprint: Zone Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781945861154
ISBN 10: 1945861150
Series: Near Futures
Pages: 568
Publication Date: 29 April 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Melinda Cooper is Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She is the author of Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism.

Reviews for Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance

""With the new organization of economic life that Counterrevolution charts . . . and in opposition to end-times narratives of decline, Cooper asks us to consider the untapped potential within what has undoubtedly grown immeasurably—namely, the state’s capacity to tolerate and even orchestrate deficit spending when it is deemed necessary.""---Sarah Brouillette, Los Angeles Review of Books ""“Undoubtedly, the publication of Cooper’s book has the potential to remake– possibly even reset the terms of – many of the central debates in political economy today.” — Samuel A. Chambers, Finance and Society"" ""Counterrevolution provides an exemplary history of ideas and elites, but in foregrounding the asset form with which we are most intimately connected, it also offers a crucial history of our unhappy present that makes complete sense.""---William Davies, New Statesman ""Cooper. . . demonstrates that capitalism’s transformations are never merely a matter of economics, narrowly conceived, and that fiscal politics are always also moral politics.""---Katrina Forrester, London Review of Books ""Melina Cooper’s book is an engaging work, providing elements of analysis and reflection at various new methodological and interpretative levels.""---Giampaolo Conte, The Journal of European Economic History