Fascist Italy gave economists the rare chance to enforce their models on society

Evidence

Th is chapter has set out to explore the birth of austerity in Italy under the “impartial” guide of four renowned professors of economics. Despite their ideological divergence, the four shared a deeper set of beliefs and a precise mission: they worked in concert as guardians of a universal economic science— a science that, despite its purported purity, had the intrinsic practical aim of “taming” citizens to consume less and produce more. Th e emerging Fascist regime endowed the professors with the opportunity of a lifetime: to actually mold society to correspond to the ideal of their models. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1303

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The inversion here is striking: the regime gave professors the freedom to make reality conform to their equations — the opposite of the usual claim that theory only describes reality.
• XREF: connects to: Liberal economists endorsed Mussolini to enforce austerity on Italy’s workers — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 656; Italian economists equated strong government with authoritarian repression to protect markets. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1181; Fascist-era economists saw their models as Platonic truths to impose on reality — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1116 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Fascist-era economists saw their models as Platonic truths to impose on reality #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1116
• Fascist Italy’s wage cuts were justified using manipulated statistics #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1716
• Economists served fascism by reestablishing the economics-politics divide #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 193
• Liberal economists supported fascist austerity despite opposing dictatorship #corroborates (0.78) — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 107
• Fascist and liberal economists both endorsed rule by apolitical experts #corroborates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1171
• IMF austerity economists reused the fascist playbook of labor discipline #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 231
• Capitalism and formal humanism lead logically to fascism #complicates (0.72) — Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism, 24
• Fascism emerges organically from liberalism within a single capitalist social order #complicates (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 403