Th e "reconstructionist" forces within government posed a frontal assault on capital accumulation in two main ways. Th e fi rst, which will be explored in chapter 3, is how the reconstructionist motivation for social appeasement oft en, perhaps unavoidably, fueled the workers' revolutionary spirits. Th e second, and the focus of this chapter, is how the reconstructionists themselves actually challenged the purity of laissezfaire capitalism— and with it, the established identity of capitalist states. Th e unparalleled bluster of social reforms between 1918 and 1920— those called for and those enacted— refl ect the existential nature of this threat for capitalism. Th ese social policies were the outcomes of the postwar repoliticization of private property and wage relations— the two pillars that during the war had been decoupled from market forces. Th e glass had already been broken; the previously untouchable economic institutions could now be molded toward unimaginable political ends.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 224