Fascism reimposed the economic-political divide that workers had breached

Evidence

Mussolini’s Fascist regime represented more than stick and castor oil— it was an “austere” fascism. Th e Duce surrounded himself with economic experts who fi rmly reimposed— both through theory and policy making— the divide between the economic and the political that the workers had breached. As we will see in the second part of this book, austerity’s birth as the new champion of capitalism operated to foreclose any alternative to it. Indeed, in a crisis of this proportion, either the organizations of people can move beyond capitalist relations, or the ruling class will reimpose its rule. Austerity served the latter end. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 583

Categorization

• XREF: Directly reinforces reader’s purpose: austerity as class weapon, and the binary either/or of working-class advance vs. ruling-class reimposition of rule. — connects to: Fascist ideology reframes duty as heroic suffering stripped of economic content — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 570; Fascism completed a three-stage merger of private power with public organization — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 973; State wartime intervention fused economic and political labor struggles. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 374 (+9 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The compressed claim that austerity forecloses alternatives to capitalism — resurrecting the political-economic divide the councils breached — is the book’s central thesis, dense and weighty.

Broader Connections

• Economists served fascism by reestablishing the economics-politics divide #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193
• Fascist austerity dismantled postwar gains and re-separated economics from politics #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193