Economists renaturalized capital as a social relation by walling off its alternatives. While L'Ordine nuovo theorized labor as the source of value for employers and criticized exploitation as a structural trap for workers, economists portrayed these relationships as equal exchanges among equal individuals— a road to prosperity for all those who demonstrated a rational capacity to optimize. Economists modeled the market society as one in which all people, if suffi ciently rational and virtuous, could potentially thrive. Th is seemingly emancipatory insight was actually among the most classist: social hierarchies were refl ections of individual merit, meaning that those who weren't at the top didn't deserve to be. Th e saverentrepreneurs' profi ts were the products of their virtuous behavior, the same behaviors that signed workers' paychecks and propelled the economy.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1571