One crucial and oft en neglected element is the magnitude of the existential threat to capitalism immediately aft er the Great War— reconstructed in the fi rst half of this book. Slobodian emphasizes the eff ort to guarantee international economic integration and “global governance” via a legal institutional framework in the face of a crumbling Habsburg empire. Unlike Globalists, this book studies how, outside of Eastern and Central Europe, it was class confl ict rather than new nationstates that challenged the existing order to its core. Under the guidance of economic experts, austere states actively intervened through economic policies that were key to secure the material disciplining of the majority through an expropriation of resources and wage curtailment.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1616