Wartime rationing and controls raised popular expectations of state-guaranteed living standards

Evidence

States’ interventions in the economy promoted a public sense that basic necessities were now an inalienable right— and that the government was obliged to secure them. Th e priorities of the economy had radically shift ed, from profi t for a few to securing the needs of the many. In Italy, “rationing was practiced for many commodities, at times also for nongeneral consumptiongoods, bringing about the perhaps unwanted result of acquainting to certain consumption habits certain social classes to whom they were previously almost unknown” (Bachi 1926, 165). Th ese measures escalated aspirations for a better standard of life aft er the war (ibid., 166– 67). — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 147

Categorization

• QUESTION: This raised-expectations mechanism is central to the book’s frame — worth watching how the austerity backlash exploits precisely these wartime-raised aspirations.
• DEEPTHINKING: The counterintuitive point that rationing (a restriction) actually expanded ordinary citizens’ consumption horizons and sense of entitlement is dense and paradigm-shifting for understanding how wartime mobilization set up the postwar political battlefield.
• XREF: connects to: World War II nations secured sacrificial war service through promises of lifetime social security — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1124

Broader Connections

• World War II nations secured sacrificial war service through promises of lifetime social security #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1124