Peter Hennessy claims "The Audit of War" "acquired an instant vogue when published in 1986". Paul Addison called "The Audit of War" as "the most thorough and sustained assault so far" on wartime orthodoxy. Addison recognised that Barnett "is a withering critic of nineteenth-century "laissez-faire" capitalism and its legacy for twentieth-century Britain. To this extent he shares some common ground with Marxist historians and quotes E. P. Thompson with approval. But he is no Marxist himself, and his ideal model of the relationship between state and society is Bismarckian. The development of modern Germany, through the creation of a state dedicated to the pursuit of national efficiency in a ruthlessly Darwinian world, is held up by Barnett as the example which Britain could, and should, have followed. Britain's tradition of collectivism he interprets as a decadent, "romanticizing humanism, anti-industrial, riddled with illusions, and perpetuated by the public-school system"". Addison criticised Barnett's thesis in "The Audit of War" as resting "on a number of simplifications. First, he divorced the history of Britain from its European context and thereby distorts the perspective. Secondly, he fails to acknowledge the political imperatives behind the reconstruction programme. Thirdly, he neglects the politics of industrial conservatism. Fourthly, his analysis is remarkably selective, singling out one factor – the welfare state – and one government, as uniquely responsible for difficulties that no other government, before or since, has surmounted".