Twentieth-century inflation signaled labor’s collective political power, which neoliberalism reversed.

Evidence

Most episodes of inflation in the twentieth century, however, resulted at least in part from collective wage demands. Inflation was therefore not merely a technical datum but an index of history: the moment that a factor of production, labor, became a political actor with a claim to its share of the collectively generated surplus. It was precisely this metamorphosis that neoliberalism set out to reverse. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 242

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier periodization of postpolitical stability — inflation decline is the economic correlate of labor’s de-organization, which readers applying the framework should be able to quote.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the thesis that hollowed-out institutions underpin stagnation-saturated politics. Could back up the essay on sacrifice as institutions that ‘convert feeling into force’ being dismantled.