Austerity as we know it today emerged aft er World War I as a method for preventing capitalism’s collapse: economists in political positions used policy levers to make all classes of society more invested in private, capitalist production, even when these changes amounted to profound (if also involuntary) personal sacrifi ces. In the early 1920s, austerity functioned as a powerful counteroff ensive to strikes and other forms of social unrest that exploded on an unprecedented scale aft er the war— a period traditionally, and oddly, overlooked by political and economic scholars who study austerity. Th e timing of austerity’s invention refl ects its animating motivations. Of greater importance than austerity’s purported economic effi cacy was its ability to guard capitalist relations of production during a time of unprecedented social organizing and public agitation from working classes.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 28