Join us for the launch and reception of Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution (Zone Books, 2024), in an interdisciplinary conversation with Aditya Balasubramanian, Will Bateman, and Ben Spies-Butcher.

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. 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 unrealised 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?

After a brief introduction to the book and comments from panelists, we will engage in a discussion with the audience.

Professor Melinda Cooper is Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at ANU. She is a social and political theorist whose work focuses on the recent history of capitalism and its intersections with the politics of class, gender and race. She is the author of three monographs—Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Zone Books/Princeton University Press, 2024), Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (Zone Books, 2017), and Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (University of Washington Press 2008).
She is cofounder, with Professor Will Bateman, Dr. Aditya Balasubramanian, and Assoc Prof Ntina Tzouvala, of the ANU Capitalism Studies Network.

She is an editorial advisor to Phenomenal World Books (Chicago University Press), a series that builds on current political economy discourses by focusing on the scholar-practitioner interface, and on historical analysis alongside contemporary practice.

Panelists

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History at the College of Arts and Sciences, ANU

Will Bateman is Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at the College of Law, ANU

Ben Spies-Butcher is an Associate Professor of Economy and Society at Macquarie University.

The event will be followed by a small reception in the Foyer from 7.45-8.30pm.

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