For n+1, Malcom Harris interviews Melinda Cooper about her new book Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full piece. An excerpt appears below:

“Rather than understanding right-wing attacks on the government’s ability to tax and spend as univocally austere, Cooper shows how an unlikely alliance of financiers and anti-debt moralists came to synthesize a new approach, one that could countenance extraordinary public spending as long as it came in the form of subsidies for asset holders or missiles. Alongside Family Values, Counterrevolution provides a fresh account of neoliberalism, one that’s both unexpected and necessary.”