The Capital Order | Clara E. Mattei

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. While these policies have been successful in appeasing creditors, they’ve had devastating effects on social and economic welfare in countries all over the world. Today, as austerity remains a favored policy among troubled states, an important question remains: What if solvency was never really 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 that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across their societies. Where these policies “succeeded,” relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties, including employers and foreign trade interests, 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 from Britain and Italy, much of it translated for the first time, The Capital Order offers a damning and essential new account of the rise of austerity—and of modern economics—at the levers of contemporary political power.

About the Author

Clara E. Mattei is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at The New School for Social Research in New York City. Her research focuses on the history of capitalism, particularly the relationship between economic ideas and technocratic policymaking. She holds a PhD in Economics from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, and the Université de Strasbourg, as well as a BA and MA in Philosophy from the University of Pavia.

Her current research critically examines the Golden Age of Capitalism (1945–1975) through the lens of austerity capitalism. Mattei has published extensively in academic journals and contributes to outlets such as The Guardian, Jacobin, The Nation, and Il Fatto Quotidiano.