Even before the principles of austerity were codifi ed in Brussels and Genoa beginning in 1920, its component policies were already spreading. Th is was particularly the case in Britain, which at the time was the most advanced capitalist country in Europe. Faced with rising labor mobilization and rising prices, the country adopted two public axioms— produce more, consume less— that served to smother any rays of hope for a reconstructionist program, to say nothing of a noncapitalist future.

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 823