War had broken laissez-faire’s grip, allowing postwar reconstructionists to repoliticize property and wages

Evidence

Reconstructionists aimed to concretize the social progress made during the war eff ort, which in their view represented a great stride toward a better society based on notions of social justice and redistribution. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 240 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In sum, in all the ways discussed above— from industrial production to land cultivation and pricefi xing— the British and Italian states barged into the realm of the economic. For the fi rst time, capitalism witnessed a threat to the inviolability of private property. Private property had to subordinate its prerogatives to a political and national interest and even to people’s basic needs. In this way the state shook one of the supposedly unshakeable pillars of capital accumulation. Th e tremors in laissezfaire capitalism did not stop here, however, reverberating to another fundamental pillar: wage relations. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 149 (#expands, via linked claim)

No matter how much the capitalist class tried to deny it, there would have been no military victory without the workers who were exploited in the factories and massacred on the front lines. The most creative political thinkers of the period immediately following World War I were able to build workers’ awareness and then propose ideas of profound social transformation. Powerful economic systems could be invented, revised, and transformed by people. There was nothing natural or immutable about the economic system they had grown up in. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Wartime disruption generated a postwar window of optimism for liberal reconstruction — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 219; Postwar reconstructionists reversed the priority of fiscal economy over political aims — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 181; Postwar reconstructionists saw the war’s social gains as a foundation for permanent social justice — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 240 (+8 more)

Related

• Postwar social reforms repoliticized private property and wages that war had decoupled from markets (similarity 0.91)
• Postwar reconstructionists saw the war’s social gains as a foundation for permanent social justice (similarity 0.86)
• Wartime state intervention forced private property to bow to national-interest priorities (similarity 0.85)
• Postwar reconstructionists reversed the priority of fiscal economy over political aims (similarity 0.85)
• Wartime state intervention first breached private property’s formerly absolute claims (similarity 0.85)
• Wartime disruption generated a postwar window of optimism for liberal reconstruction (similarity 0.84)
• World War I’s socialist-leaning wartime economy was deliberately reversed by capital afterward (similarity 0.84)
• Social redistribution after World War I emboldened rather than appeased worker radicalism (similarity 0.83)
• Postwar British reconstructionists gave political goals priority over economic cost (similarity 0.83)
• World War I’s state interventions emboldened workers to reject a return to capitalism (similarity 0.83)
• Workers’ wartime indispensability empowered postwar demands to transform the economic system (similarity 0.82)
• War socialism destroyed capitalism’s taken-for-granted inevitability and exposed profit as contestable (similarity 0.82)
• World War I proved large redistributive state reforms were fiscally viable (similarity 0.82)
• World War I shattered working-class belief that capitalism was immovable. (similarity 0.82)
• WWI mobilization taught British workers society could change, prompting austerity’s backlash. (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Postwar reconstructionists saw the war’s social gains as a foundation for permanent social justice #corroborates (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 240
• Wartime state intervention forced private property to bow to national-interest priorities #expands (0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 149
• War forced comprehensive state economic control that outperformed laissez-faire. #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 168
• World War I dissolved the public-private boundary that protected capitalist property #corroborates (0.85) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 112
• Workers’ wartime indispensability empowered postwar demands to transform the economic system #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174
• World War I’s state interventions emboldened workers to reject a return to capitalism #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 455
• Postwar British reconstructionists gave political goals priority over economic cost #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 181
• The meaning of ‘civilisation’ was politically retooled after the war toward social welfare. #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 143