Americans have struggled to reconcile capitalism and war. Over three centuries of history, they have grappled with fundamental tensions between capitalism and security. The combination of war and capitalism often created disruptions and deep inequities that ordinary Americans and their leaders decided must be moderated for the sake of a more successful and politically sustainable war effort. For much of the nation’s history, capitalism was understood to be an insufficient provider of security; the U.S. military economy was semi-socialized, in both peacetime and wartime. But as the record of recent decades has highlighted, Americans have not experienced an ever-higher ratcheting of regulation and socialism, with each new war, over the long run. Rather, the historical record suggests that many postwar demobilizations served to reinforce capitalism. For the nation’s entire history, struggles over the economics of war and national security have been important parts of U.S. political development. This will continue to be the case in the current century, as Americans battle over economic policy and fight new wars, domestically and abroad.

This chapter considers the role of elite women in the auctions of confiscated property during the Late Republic, particularly Sulla’s proscriptions of 81 BCE, and argues that elite women could benefit economically from civil war. While participating in these confiscations harmed the reputations of men close to the dictator, association with the proscriptions was even more damning for the women involved. Several of Sulla’s female relatives were said to have participated in the proscription auctions, with his Caecilia Metella branded as a sectrix proscriptionum or ‘auctioness of the proscriptions’. This label transformed elite women into distasteful, lower-class brokers of proscribed property, showing how the issues of inheritance and wealth raised by the proscriptions could influence female reputations. A comparison with the Servilia and Fulvia, later alleged female profiteers, reveals a continued discourse about the economic and political power of women who profited from confiscated property.

This chapter analyses the auction milieu’s cultural responses to war-induced developments. Within societies deeply entrenched in the mentality of mobilisation and sacrifice, the commercialisation of art stirred moral apprehensions, feelings of possession, and envy, both among the general public and within the art industry. Debates on nouveaux riches and profiteers underscored the construction of antagonist figures during the war, highlighting threats to the market from both external and internal forces. The widespread destruction of heritage also catalysed nationalist feelings, deepening the cultural fragmentation of a formerly integrated trade sphere. By scrutinising the biographies of dealers, examining art’s vulnerability in wartime upheaval, and exploring the interplay between art and finance, this chapter also outlines how the war acted on the tensions characteristic of each market and brought them to a conflagration.

The chapter examines political corruption, i.e. embezzlement and extortion, and explores material aspects of forgery with regard to the close connection of the scribae with public documentation. It discusses accountability and the oath of due diligence and, as a result, public perception of the scribae in light of accusations of corruption and abuse. It highlights the profiteering character of the post and discusses examples of scribal enrichment and its consequences for the individuals' social mobility.