Home / Economics / The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

AUTHOR
Price
€28.30
€31.40 -10%
Upon request
Dispatched within 15 - 25 days.

Add to wishlist

“A must-read, with key lessons for the future.”—Thomas Piketty

A groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. 


For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity—cuts to wages, fiscal spending, and public benefits—as a path to solvency. While these policies have been successful in appeasing creditors, they’ve had devastating effects on social and economic welfare in countries all over the world. Today, as austerity remains a favored policy among troubled states, an important question remains: What if solvency was never really the goal? 

In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below. 

Mattei traces modern austerity to its origins in interwar Britain and Italy, revealing how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated a set of top-down economic policies that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across their societies. Where these policies “succeeded,” relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties, including employers and foreign-trade interests, who accumulated power and capital at the expense of labor. Here, Mattei argues, is where the true value of austerity can be observed: its insulation of entrenched privilege and its elimination of all alternatives to capitalism. 

Drawing on newly uncovered archival material from Britain and Italy, much of it translated for the first time, The Capital Order offers a damning and essential new account of the rise of austerity—and of modern economics—at the levers of contemporary political power.

Author: Mattei Clara
Publisher: CHICAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Pages: 480
ISBN: 9780226818399
Cover: Hardback
Edition Number: 1
Release Year: 2022

Introduction

Part I: War and Crisis
1 The Great War and the Economy
2 “A Wholly New School of Thought”
3 The Struggle for Economic Democracy
4 The New Order

Part II: The Meaning of Austerity
5 International Technocrats and the Making of Austerity
6 Austerity, a British Story
7 Austerity, an Italian Story
8 Italian Austerity and Fascism through British Eyes
9 Austerity and Its “Successes”
10 Austerity Forever
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Clara E. Mattei is assistant professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City. 

You may also like

Newsletter

Subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to receive our new releases and offers
Your account Your wishlist

This website uses cookies

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.