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.

Clara E. Mattei is professor of economics and director of the Center for Heterodox Economics at The University of Tulsa. She was previously associate professor at The New School for Social Research and was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton. She is the author of The Capital Order, praised by the Financial Times as one of the ten best economics books of 2022. Mattei’s work has been featured in The Guardian, The Nation, Jacobin, and Dissent. She has also been featured on podcasts, TV shows, and radio interviews on NPR, BBC, The Hill, and more.