Politics of Public Debt

In The Politics of Public Debt Daniel Bin analyzes how fiscal and monetary policies and the administration of public debt related to class, labor, and democracy during the period of neoliberal financialization in Brazil. Sustained by state action, the politico-economic context allowed the establishment of a macroeconomic framework that favored finance capital. It was characterized by the expropriation of workers’ incomes through a system involving public debt and taxation, capable of deepening labor exploitation. Decisions about public debt and related policies are analyzed in terms of their implications for economic democracy. The book raises the hypothesis that the 2016 coup within the Brazilian capitalist state sought to overthrow the political forces that were no longer able to administer this model.

Daniel Bin is an associate professor at the University of Brasilia. He was a visiting scholar at Yale University and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Bin has published on economic policies and their implications for labor and class relations, and more recently on dispossessions of means of subsistence and production.