The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

by Clara E. Mattei Narrated by Susan Ericksen

Overview

For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity-cuts to wages, fiscal spending, and public benefits-as a path to solvency. Today, an important question remains: What if solvency was never the goal?



In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital-and indeed capitalism-in times of social upheaval from below.



Mattei traces modern austerity to its origins in interwar Britain and Italy, revealing how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated a set of top-down economic policies. Where these policies "succeeded," relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties who accumulated power and capital at the expense of labor. Here, Mattei argues, is where the true value of austerity can be observed: its insulation of entrenched privilege and its elimination of all alternatives to capitalism.



Drawing on newly uncovered archival material, The Capital Order offers a damning account of the rise of austerity-and of modern economics-at the levers of contemporary political power.

Editorial Reviews

Brazzil Magazine

[A] message for our time.

Politics Today

"Through meticulously compiled archival material, Mattei explores austerity by studying economists in the 1920s from the birthplace of liberalism (Britain) and the birthplace of fascism (Italy) to draw a provocative conclusion about its nature: 'an anti-democratic reaction to threats from bottom-up social change.'

H/Soz/Kult - translated from German

A very readable and historically profound work.

Mark Blyth

A decade after austerity tore British society apart, the UK government stands ready to do so again. Given that it didn’t work the first time around, one wonders why they want to try it again. This is where Mattei’s explanation illuminates brightly: if we think of austerity not as an economic policy, but as a form of capitalist crisis management for moments when the lower orders start to question the governing classes’ preferences, then its repeated dosage—despite its damages—makes much more sense.

Sean Guynes

Fall 2022 Book Recommendation (General Interest)

Chartbook - Adam Tooze

Brilliantly provocative . . . powerfully argued. . . . With her history of the relationship between liberal economists and fascism, Mattei puts the skids under complacent champions of liberal democracy who today summon the fascist figure as a reassuring boogyman. . . . A round house critique of the role of liberal economics in general.

Mariana Mazzucato

Clara Mattei’s work is an important contribution to building a new economic narrative. At a time when inflation is up and governments feel inclined to once again ‘tighten their belts,’ this book is as relevant as ever.

The National

It’s often been pointed out that austerity just doesn’t achieve its stated aims of balancing the books and paying down public debt. [In Mattei’s] analysis the actual aim is not the stated one, it is to discipline the working population. Over the last century it would seem to have achieved that quite successfully.

Irish Examiner

She argues that forcing a recession or cutting social welfare is not really about budgets and debt. This so-called “economic pain” is inflicted deliberately to make the labour force feel insecure and to stop demanding better conditions.

Dissent Magazine

"In our current moment, as policymakers are once again entertaining monetary tightening as a means to impose necessary hardship & discipline on working people, The Capital Order is a potent reminder of the cruel rationality of austerity."

Financial Times

A 2022 Best Book in Economics

Phenomenal World

"Meticulously researched. . . Mattei’s analysis is an exemplary work of historical political economy that seeks to steer the conversation on capitalist crisis from Keynesianism back toward Marx."

The New Statesman

Illuminating . . . Any reader of The Capital Order will be struck by the contemporary resonances.

History Today

"Mattei shows how austerity emerged as the response of international capital to the risks to its power and wealth. Its aim was to rescue capitalism from ‘its enemies’ by taming an increasingly politicized and restive class and restoring the prewar order."

Catalyst - Gary Mongiovi

"She [Mattei] has done an impressive amount of archival research and has skillfully mined the published literature of the interwar period. The fruit of these labors is a rich and insightful account of a pivotal moment in capitalism’s history."

Choice

"The capital order asserts the primacy of capital over labor in the hierarchy of social relations within the capitalist production process. That primacy was threatened after World War I in what Mattei claims was the greatest crisis in the history of capitalism. . . . To counter these trends, Mattei argues, unelected technocratic elites 'invented' austerity as a means of re-naturalizing the capital order. . . . What Britain’s technocrats accomplished through the market, Italy’s fascists accomplished through Mussolini’s edicts. . . Recommended."

Marginal Revolution - Tyler Cowen

A serious economic history of the 1920s and its fiscal and credit policies, and you should not dismiss it.

Yanis Varoufakis

Austerity is not an innocent policy error, but a fallacy functional to dark interests. Mattei’s admirable new book exposes austerity’s hidden agenda.

APM's Marketplace Morning Report

"The Capital Order uses the historical record in Europe to argue that austerity—tightening the belt, cutting government programs—is less about budgets and debt and more about deliberately making the labor force feel insecure."

Asiana Times

A powerful critique.

Truth Out

There is a long history of efforts to separate the political from the economic domain. . . . One very impressive recent study, by Clara Mattei, argues persuasively that this dichotomy, typically taking the form of austerity programs, has been a major instrument of class war for a century, paving the way to fascism, which was indeed welcomed by Western elite opinion.”—Noam Chomsky 

European Review of Books

"Austerity’s defenders claim that any adverse impact on employment will quickly end and will be justified by eventual success. Such is the theory. Clara Mattei will have none of it. Her vigorously written and well-researched new study, The Capital Order, insists that austerity is a class strategy, not just a policy to restore economic equilibrium."

Rethinking Economics

"A wonderful book [and a] compelling story."

Thomas Piketty

A fascinating history of the rise of austerity policies in post-World War I Europe and how it paved the way for fascism—along with many of the economic policies of today. A must-read, with key lessons for the future. Historical political economy at its best.

The Guardian - Aditya Chakrabortty

"Mattei reminds us that . . . austerity is a one-sided class war, conducted in numbers and defended by economists’ jargon.

Nature

Shocking disparities underlie economist Clara Mattei’s topical study of austerity measures promoted over the past century. Focusing on 1920s liberal-democracy Britain and fascist Italy, she argues that the profitable application of austerity to these dissimilar nations licensed its use as a capitalist ‘tool of class control.

Business Recorder

[With The Capital Order], we can begin to see method in the madness: austerity is a vital bulwark in defense of the capitalist system.

James K. Galbraith

A work with remarkable resonance for the moment we are living through. I found it impossible to put down.

Alternatives Economiques

"In her book The Capital Order, economist Clara Mattei shows that austerity was thought of as a counter-offensive against experiments in economic democracy."

Counterpunch

"Austerity is premeditated policy. It’s a blunt instrument that preempts resistance by weakening and dividing the working class while unifying different wings of the ruling class. . . . Mattei documents austerity’s essential role in the rise of fascism."

The Journal of European Economic History

"There are few books that once read manage to leave a clear idea and a full-fledged thesis imprinted on the reader’s mind: Chiara E. Mattei’s book is one of them."

Robert Skidelsky

Clara Mattei shows how the supposedly apolitical science of economics has served, and continues to serve, as an ideology of class oppression. The chapters exploring the birth, in Britain and Italy in the 1920s, of what the author calls ‘the technocratic project’ of austerity, and its political and economic consequences, are particularly illuminating.

Nature Lib

Shocking disparities underlie economist Clara Mattei’s topical study of austerity measures promoted over the past century. Focusing on 1920s liberal-democracy Britain and fascist Italy, she argues that the profitable application of austerity to these dissimilar nations licensed its use as a capitalist ‘tool of class control.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159883889
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/29/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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