The Capital Order How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism [Audiobook]

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.