Austerity as a rationale emerged specifically to answer revolutionary workers’ councils

Evidence

Alberto Beneduce, an Italian professor of economic statistics and CEO of the National Institution of Insurance (INA)— who would go on to have a lasting career as parliamentarian, senator, and economic adviser of Mussolini’s regime— had no doubt: it was necessary to “act upon public opinion, on the psychological state of the masses, so that they would no more impede but help to reestablish the budget of the State” (Verbatim Record, Brussels 1920, 75, my italics). Beneduce gave voice to these preoccupations during the plenary discussion of September 20, 1920. Th e date is signifi cant: on that day in his own country an unprecedented class struggle was at its peak. Th e factory occupation had been going on for almost a month. Th e “psychological state of the masses” seemed rather projected toward a postcapitalist society where private ownership and wage relations were to be abolished. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 743 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Austerity as we know it today emerged aft er World War I as a method for preventing capitalism’s collapse: economists in political positions used policy levers to make all classes of society more invested in private, capitalist production, even when these changes amounted to profound (if also involuntary) personal sacrifi ces. In the early 1920s, austerity functioned as a powerful counteroff ensive to strikes and other forms of social unrest that exploded on an unprecedented scale aft er the war— a period traditionally, and oddly, overlooked by political and economic scholars who study austerity. Th e timing of austerity’s invention refl ects its animating motivations. Of greater importance than austerity’s purported economic effi cacy was its ability to guard capitalist relations of production during a time of unprecedented social organizing and public agitation from working classes. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 28 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Austerity as it is known today was an off spring of crisis— not merely economic crisis, but crisis of capitalism as a socioeconomic system. Th e preceding chapters have shown that aft er the war, for the fi rst time, the challenge to the pillars of capitalist accumulation became a mass phenomenon. Th e working classes acquired a sense of entitlement and participated as protagonists in the political scene. In the minds of the people, private ownership in the means of production and wage relations were no longer natural, indisputable givens. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 798 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 585; Austerity originated after World War I as a counteroffensive against working-class unrest — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 28; Austerity operates as capitalism’s counteroffensive against democratically empowered labor. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1547 (+6 more)

Related

• Austerity doctrine emerged as a direct response to working-class radicalism. (similarity 0.95)
• Austerity originated after World War I as a counteroffensive against working-class unrest (similarity 0.91)
• Austerity arose in response to mass political challenge to capitalism itself (similarity 0.90)
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives (similarity 0.88)
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges (similarity 0.88)
• Austerity operates as capitalism’s counteroffensive against democratically empowered labor. (similarity 0.88)
• Capitalism’s 1918-20 crisis triggered austerity as a counterrevolutionary reaction. (similarity 0.87)
• International economists forged austerity as a deliberate antiworker project (similarity 0.87)
• Austerity was designed to reverse workers’ revolutionary wartime and postwar gains (similarity 0.87)
• Austere economies structurally disempower those who would protest austerity (similarity 0.85)
• Workers’ council movements pushed capitalism to crisis, prompting austerity. (similarity 0.85)
• Austerity policies function to silence working class economic demands (similarity 0.85)
• Fascism reimposed the economic-political divide that workers had breached (similarity 0.85)
• Austerity is a counteroffensive that shifts resources from workers to investors. (similarity 0.84)
• In the 1920s tiny owner classes imposed austerity on overwhelming majorities (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Austerity doctrine emerged as a direct response to working-class radicalism. #corroborates (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 743
• Austerity originated after World War I as a counteroffensive against working-class unrest #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 28
• Austerity arose in response to mass political challenge to capitalism itself #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 798
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 585
• Austerity operates as capitalism’s counteroffensive against democratically empowered labor. #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1547
• International economists forged austerity as a deliberate antiworker project #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 194