Thinking the Twentieth Century: Intellectuals and Politics in the Twentieth Century

by Tony Judt

The First World War greatly increased government expenditure, and also the model of government control of the economy, the government direction of labor, the government direction of raw materials, control of incoming and outgoing goods and so on. Moreover, the French tried to stabilize their rapidly tumbling currency and reduce public expenditure; the British went back on the gold standard in the mid-twenties and tried to deflate to overcome the postwar economic crisis. Elsewhere, even those countries which had moved quite far along in a direction of a social welfare state were constrained to keep benefits and payments under strict control. The levels attained shortly after the armistice were not to be exceeded, with only a few local exceptions, for two decades.