In sum, the degree of state intervention during the war and the heightening of class antagonism that it engendered constituted a great revolutionary rupture from 1918 to 1920. It was the largest crisis in the history of capitalism, embodied in the unprecedented popular mobilization of strikes, alternative policy proposals, and alternative organizations of production. Th e logic of austerity can only be understood as a dramatic reaction to this landscape.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 115