Debt, a Tool for Crushing Democracy
The European Union has reimposed tight limits on states’ budget deficits — but with exemptions for military spending. After years of claims that austerity was over, we’re now seeing it used selectively to put limits on democratic choice.
A man walks past the flags representing the EU member states at the headquarters of the European Commission on May 16, 2023, in Brussels, Belgium. (Omar Havana / Getty Images)
The “debt order” is back, warns French sociologist Benjamin Lemoine. In 2024, the European Commission formally reimposed fiscal deficit guidelines on European Union member states, although important carve-outs are being negotiated in order to finance a substantial increase in military spending.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the political momentum behind an increasingly libertarian far right points toward draconian spending cuts and tax breaks — threatening major turmoil for state finances and social welfare systems. Lemoine argues that what is being revived is the use of debt as a political “technology” to discipline society, burying the “silent revolution” in debt and monetary policy that occurred just a few years ago to allow pandemic-era deficit spending.
A sociologist at the École Normale Supérieure, Lemoine is the author of L’ordre de la dette and La démocratie discipliné par la dette. A translation of his most recent book, Chasseurs d’États, is forthcoming from Zone Books.
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