Austerity as it is known today was an off spring of crisis— not merely economic crisis, but crisis of capitalism as a socioeconomic system. Th e preceding chapters have shown that aft er the war, for the fi rst time, the challenge to the pillars of capitalist accumulation became a mass phenomenon. Th e working classes acquired a sense of entitlement and participated as protagonists in the political scene. In the minds of the people, private ownership in the means of production and wage relations were no longer natural, indisputable givens.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 798