Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention

For fans of Bernie Sanders and Thomas Piketty, an urgent intervention against capitalism revealing how economic models serve the extremely wealthy and powerful at the expense of ordinary people--and how we can reclaim our power to make choices about our economic lives. Capitalism isn't inevitable, scientific, or natural--it's a relatively young system that can be replaced. In this radical rethinking of economics, Clara Mattei argues that enduring problems such as poverty, unemployment, and inflation are not bugs in the economy but core features. They are justified with pseudoscientific models, fabrications built to support a capitalist economy that unfairly rewards people with the most resources. The tools of economic experts--budget cuts, interest rate hikes, and regressive taxes--are sold as apolitical but disguise a bleak reality: they maintain our capitalist system, reinforcing inequality. Central bankers raise interest rates knowing this will cause a recession and pain to working families. Governments slash tax collection jobs in the name of balanced budgets, which actually shields the wealthy from tax enforcement and creates budget shortfalls used to justify cuts in social services. Textbooks teach that unemployment must rise to fix inflation. But this model creates conditions that force people to accept crummy jobs and low pay. In the wake of World War I, when the world's economy was in turmoil, economics was elevated to a scientific discipline, legitimized through mathematical formulas and new economic institutions considered too sophisticated for the average person to understand. Today's economic institutions, from the Fed to the IMF, wield immense power over monetary policy yet are shielded from democratic scrutiny. Why should we accept a system that delegates crucial decisions that impact our lives to institutions in which we have no say? All the major problems today--from a healthcare system that prioritizes profits over well-being to the rise of ultranationalism--are rooted in an economic system that fails to serve the common good. In this revelatory manifesto, Mattei sets out a revolutionary vision that may one day allow us to achieve true economic freedom and finally escape from capitalism.

About the Author :
Clara E. Mattei is a professor of economics at The University of Tulsa. She is the Founding President of FREE--the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation--and the author of The Capital Order (University of Chicago Press), which was praised by The Financial Times as one of the ten best economics books of 2022 and has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Review :
"A brilliant and lucid exposé of how capitalism actually works, and the myths that economists have spun to hide that reality." --William Davies, author of The Happiness Industry "One of the brightest voices of a coming generation, Clara Mattei here offers an impassioned plea for new and wider economic and political horizons." --James K. Galbraith, Professor of Government, The University of Texas at Austin "Mattei concisely and elegantly runs through common claims in capitalism's favor... Readers will come away ready for change." --Publishers Weekly "The increasingly dysfunctional capital order we live in is neither inevitable nor permanent. Clara Mattei brilliantly shows this order was built by design and provocatively challenges us to imagine new, genuinely democratic ones in its place." --Daniela Gabor, Professor of Economics, SOAS University of London "A book for the times. Mattei takes aim at the notion that the forces which regulate market and social outcomes are socially neutral." --Anwar Shaikh, author of Capitalism "A brilliantly illuminating book that reveals how political power is encoded within the very structure of economic theory." -- Adam Tooze, author of Crashed and Shutdown "A compelling and insightful book on austerity that, through meticulous research and historical documentation, unveils the deep political forces behind economic decisions and offers essential tools for understanding today's world." --Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century "Clara Mattei has written a powerful plaidoyer for the return of economics to what it was, and should be: an art and science for the improvement of lives of ordinary people not a seemingly non-political and technocratic instrument for the enrichment of the few." --Branko Milanovic, author of Capitalism, Alone