Productivist fiscal deservingness: Entangled understandings of reciprocity and redistribution among German business owners

Abstract

This article analyzes business owners' complaints about fiscal relations in a specific conjuncture. After decades of radicalizing productivism in Germany, the entrepreneurs' narratives are infused with ideas of an endangered fiscal community. Threats are perceived as coming from the undeserving poor and wealthy people who presumably both trick the system. The pivot of fairness and justice centers on imaginaries of productivist deservingness. The business owners' reactions to those they portray as unproductive or undeserving range from cynical resignation to fantasies of coercion. Critical to understanding why the complaints play out in specific ways is, as we argue, the entanglement of imaginaries of reciprocity in processes of redistribution that accompanied neoliberal welfare retrenchment. We analyze two forms of entangled understandings: solidary redistribution as owing others and fair reciprocity as willingness to perform. Productivist deservingness becomes the central element of bargaining about the legitimacy of tax avoidance, the necessity to enforce the productivity of the poor, and the police as the last barrier against class warfare.