But if this book highlights one thing, it's that the perpetuation of austerity to this day should not be reduced to a matter of irrationality or bad economic theory from the experts who run economies. Austerity is a tool to maintain capitalist social relations of production— to maintain class. In an austere capital order, popular protests may arise, but the protesters face a political landscape that structurally disempowers them: it's hard to protest capitalist austerity when you have to depend on capitalism to survive.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1541