Postwar social reforms repoliticized private property and wages that war had decoupled from markets

Evidence

Th e “reconstructionist” forces within government posed a frontal assault on capital accumulation in two main ways. Th e fi rst, which will be explored in chapter 3, is how the reconstructionist motivation for social appeasement oft en, perhaps unavoidably, fueled the workers’ revolutionary spirits. Th e second, and the focus of this chapter, is how the reconstructionists themselves actually challenged the purity of laissezfaire capitalism— and with it, the established identity of capitalist states. Th e unparalleled bluster of social reforms between 1918 and 1920— those called for and those enacted— refl ect the existential nature of this threat for capitalism. Th ese social policies were the outcomes of the postwar repoliticization of private property and wage relations— the two pillars that during the war had been decoupled from market forces. Th e glass had already been broken; the previously untouchable economic institutions could now be molded toward unimaginable political ends. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 224

Categorization

• XREF: The key phrase — the war decoupled private property and wage relations from market forces then repoliticized them — connects directly to Mattei’s core thesis that austerity in the 1920s was about re-fastening these to market discipline. — connects to: World War I dissolved the public-private boundary that protected capitalist property — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 112; Wartime state intervention forced private property to bow to national-interest priorities — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 149; War had broken laissez-faire’s grip, allowing postwar reconstructionists to repoliticize property and wages (+5 more)
• SEED: “The glass had already been broken” — the idea that war temporarily suspended capitalist norms and showed them to be contingent, not natural, is a strong framing device for an essay on how crises reveal the constructedness of economic institutions.

Broader Connections

• War had broken laissez-faire’s grip, allowing postwar reconstructionists to repoliticize property and wages #corroborates (0.95)
• World War I dissolved the public-private boundary that protected capitalist property #expands (0.88) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 112
• Wartime state intervention forced private property to bow to national-interest priorities #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 149
• World War I’s socialist-leaning wartime economy was deliberately reversed by capital afterward #complicates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 92