To give a sense of who was part of “labor” and who was part of “capital,” it is useful to recall that in 1921 the British working classes encompassed more than 60 percent of the population, while the “owner class” was roughly 7 percent (Gómez León and de Jong 2018). In Italy, the propertied upper class (bourgeoisie) constituted only 1.7 percent of the entire population, against a working class (in both agriculture and industry) that was almost half of the population (Sylos Labini 1975, Table 1.2). Given these tiny fractions of society that benefi ted from austerity, the movement’s losers extended well beyond wage workers: these groups comprised most of the middle classes that made up the populations’ middle grounds— public employees, independent farmers, soldiers, shopkeepers, and other professionals.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 1472