Austerity presented as neutral science actually disciplines workers for owners’ benefit.

Evidence

Austerity policies in the spirit of “pure economics” were a disaster for most people living in Britain and Italy in the 1920s. Th us, the book delves into the paradox of a doctrine that pre sents itself as apolitical but has as its central purpose the “taming of men,” as the Italian academic and economist Umberto Ricci crudely put it in 1908. Under a veneer of apolitical science, technocrat economists were undertaking the most political action of all— bending the working classes to the wills and needs of the capital-owning classes for the enrichment of a small minority. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 60

Categorization

• DEFINE: Ricci’s 1908 ‘taming of men’ phrase crisply captures the class-weapon definition of austerity central to this whole project.
• XREF: Frames austerity as class weapon — connects directly to Mattei’s stated thesis and to the interwar Britain/Italy exemplars the reader is gathering. — connects to: Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will; Interwar experts sold austerity as objective science concealing true economic facts from the people — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 744; Economics legitimizes austerity claims by pretending to value-free objectivity. (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will #corroborates (1.00)
• Economists depoliticized austerity by presenting class-based coercion as neutral expertise. #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1569
• Interwar experts sold austerity as objective science concealing true economic facts from the people #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 744
• International economists forged austerity as a deliberate antiworker project #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 194
• Expert authority manufacturing consensus made austerity appear objectively rational #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 666
• Economics legitimizes austerity claims by pretending to value-free objectivity. #corroborates (0.80)
• Austerity’s core purpose is to deepen workers’ dependence on wage labor #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 585
• Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers. #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154
• Monetary technocrats framed austerity as requiring both worker discipline and reduced consumption #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 716
• Monetary austerity was designed to moralize and discipline economic behavior toward thrift #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 759
• Austerity is a counteroffensive that shifts resources from workers to investors. #complicates (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1467
• Austerity operates as speculation that converts fiction into fact #complicates (0.70) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400
• Austerity disciplines workers within both colonizer and colonized nations alike #expands (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 339