As Sheri Berman brilliantly illuminates, the German Social Democrats of this period (the SPD) were intellectually Marxist but programmatically Ricardian: classical liberals in socialist clothing. Marx's economics were, apart from his view of the rate of profit and the possibility of a general failure of demand, as much Ricardo's as they were his own, especially as they were interpreted by the leading "theologians" of the German Social Democrats. Upon such a view, when the economy was in a slump, there was literally nothing to be done except let the system melt down until socialism magically appeared.

Mark Blyth, Austerity, loc. 529