Book Review: The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography

sugar plantations forced to abuse their bodies for profit earlier during Europe’s capitalist history. The basic structure is the same (employer/employee; owner/labourer; master/ slave, etc.): one group gets resources from another’s labour; one group has extraordinary powers of organized coercion while the other does not; and one small group is considered superior, the other larger group inferior. Austerity is just one mechanism (of many others) that reinforce these power dynamics. While the book leaves questions open about situations of genuine debt crisis in non-capitalist economies, sound finance, proper monetary policy, and otherwise, it certainly proves its thesis and forcefully demonstrates the exploitative, class dimension of austerity.