State intervention during wartime made capitalist exploitation overtly political and vulnerable to resistance

Evidence

The state’s role as disciplinarian altered the specific characteristics of capitalism as a socioeconomic system. Instead of bosses, it was now governments implementing the harshest techniques to increase the rate of exploitation. They prevented workers from accepting better-paid jobs, kept wages low, and extended the working day by making overtime mandatory. The Italian government froze wages at prewar levels and even suspended the prohibition on night work for women and children in most cases. All these processes made capitalist exploitation—once impersonal—overtly political, exposing it to public scrutiny and resistance. The state thus triggered an unexpected and potentially fatal crisis for the economic system it was paradoxically trying to protect. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 173

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Mattei’s later core thesis that austerity is deliberate state intervention to protect capital — here the war shows state action can expose, not just conceal, capitalist exploitation. — connects to: Capitalist exploitation is distinct because it is implicit — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 99; State intervention made capitalist exploitation political and thereby threatened capitalism itself — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 173; State wartime intervention exposed the natural order of capitalism as a political choice — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 169 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• State intervention made capitalist exploitation political and thereby threatened capitalism itself #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 173
• State control of labor made capitalist surplus extraction explicitly political during the war #exemplifies (0.92) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 186
• State wartime intervention exposed the natural order of capitalism as a political choice #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 169
• State wartime economic control exposed production relations as politically contestable. #corroborates (0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 216
• State intervention to save capitalism exposed its supposedly natural order as political #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 169
• Wartime state intervention exposed market arrangements as political choices, not natural facts #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 34
• State wartime intervention fused economic and political labor struggles. #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 374
• World War I’s state interventions emboldened workers to reject a return to capitalism #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 455