Mussolini’s Fascist regime represented more than stick and castor oil— it was an “austere” fascism. Th e Duce surrounded himself with economic experts who fi rmly reimposed— both through theory and policy making— the divide between the economic and the political that the workers had breached. As we will see in the second part of this book, austerity’s birth as the new champion of capitalism operated to foreclose any alternative to it. Indeed, in a crisis of this proportion, either the organizations of people can move beyond capitalist relations, or the ruling class will reimpose its rule. Austerity served the latter end.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 583