By telling the story of post– World War I reconstruction through the lens of austerity, this book has demonstrated how austerity was, and remains, an elaborate exercise in class domination. It is unquestionably more pernicious than the traditional telling of this story, one in which an international coalition worked to reestablish the gold standard after the war with the operating intention of securing and stabilizing global international exchanges. (Barry Eichengreen’s wellknown 1992 book Golden Fetters tells this story most notably.) As this book shows through archival and newly translated material, this “gold eff ort” was a surface manifestation of something deeper: a technocratic collaboration that successfully foreclosed alternatives to capitalism.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1617