Austerity’s architects aimed to convert wartime sacrifice into a permanent universal norm

Evidence

Th is prescription was not to be interpreted as grim and exceptional, he clarifi ed, but rather as a condition for economic progress to be developed into a universal norm. Blackett admonished the crowd, “[w]ere we not all tired of the ostentatious extravagances of the prewar period? Has not the war taught us that our sense of values had gone wrong?” (ibid., 20). Learning the custom of thrift , he told the New York teachers, had to begin at a very early age: “By not buying candy, or by not going to the movies, they [children] could increase the amount standing to their credit in the school War Savings Association” (ibid., 73– 74). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 898

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the class conditioning of mandatory thrift as moral education — how child-saving campaigns were used to normalize worker self-denial.
• XREF: Parallels to the moral-panic literature on shaping working-class behavior through appeals to virtue; and to Gramsci’s cultural hegemony. — connects to: Moralistic narratives are flexibly deployed to justify diverse austerity outcomes. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 695; Austerity was designed to force working-class abstinence after wartime sacrifice faded — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 909; Austerity began as patriotic wartime sacrifice framed as self-denial — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 897 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity began as patriotic wartime sacrifice framed as self-denial #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 897
• Austerity frames national crisis as requiring patriotic individual sacrifice in frugality and labor #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 803
• Austerity originated after World War I as a counteroffensive against working-class unrest #qualifies (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 28
• Austerity needed economic theory to justify unpopular cutbacks after World War I #qualifies (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 874
• Expert austerity framing blocked post-war moves toward economic democracy #expands (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 161