Frances' post linking the rise of Nazism to fiscal austerity poses a question: why are Conservatives so supportive of such austerity?

I ask because from one perspective it is they that should oppose it more than the rest of us. This is because, in depressing incomes, austerity calls both free markets and capitalism into question as some people blame the weak economy not upon bad policy but upon more fundamental features of capitalism. We Marxists are happy for capitalism to come into doubt. But conservatives shouldn't be.

What's more, austerity also generates political instability as people look to both left and right for ways out of the crisis. German austerity in the 1930s contributed to a rise of Communism as well as Nazism, and austerity in the UK has contributed to both Brexit and the rise of Corbyn.

Conservatives who want political stability and free(ish) market capitalism should therefore be in the forefront of opposition to austerity. Austerity, they should complain, jeopardizes things they prize highly.

Why, then, do they support it? Why will they do anything to oppose Corbyn except remove the economic conditions that create his popularity?

I suspect an answer lies in something Corey Robin has written. Forget all that Oakeshottian stuff about Conservatives being cool-headed sceptics about change, he says. What Conservatives really want is private sector hierarchy:

No conservative opposes change as such or defends order as such. The conservative defends particular orders - hierarchical, often private regimes of rule - on the assumption, in part, that hierarchy is order. (The Reactionary Mind, p24)

Expansionary fiscal policy, however, undermines "natural" hierarchies.

One way in which it does so was pointed out by Michal Kalecki:

Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence. If this deteriorates, private investment declines, which results in a fall of output and employment (both directly and through the secondary effect of the fall in incomes upon consumption and investment). This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness. Hence budget deficits necessary to carry out government intervention must be regarded as perilous. The social function of the doctrine of 'sound finance' is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence.

There's a second way. Once we acknowledge that people's incomes depend upon fiscal policy it follows that poverty is a failure of government rather than of individuals. Conservatives can then no longer regard it as a moral failing.

Fiscal austerity, therefore, is needed in order to maintain the "natural" hierarchy in which the rich are entitled to power because they are virtuous heroes whilst the poor must be stigmatized as lazy and feckless.

That's the hypothesis. There are two separate pieces of evidence for it. One is a tweet from Andrew "Tory boy" Pierce:

Rail engineers being paid £775-a-day for working over Christmas and bill will be picked up by long-suffering commuters

What Pierce is expressing here is a desire for workers to stay in their place - which is well down the income ladder. Tories aren't so keen on free markets when they raise workers' wages. This is consistent with the fact that right-wingers in the US have been relaxed about a rise in monopoly power that has squeezed wages.

Secondly, American rightists have no problem with the prospect of rising government debt if it means tax cuts for the rich. They value inequality and hierarchy over fiscal prudence.

Yes, support for austerity is an intellectual error. But it might be one founded in a peculiarity of the Conservative psyche. Keynesians, I fear, under-rate this point.