Escape from Capitalism

Capitalism isn’t inevitable, scientific, or natural—it’s a relatively young system that can be replaced. We live in a world where cuts to social programs are deemed necessary, unemployment is considered natural, and rising living costs are accepted as normal. We’re told that change isn’t possible—the markets know best and there’s no alternative to capitalism. But what if mainstream economics itself is the problem? In this groundbreaking manifesto, economist Clara E. Mattei shows us how the dogma that rules our economies is not only delusional but also detrimental to our societies and livelihoods and fundamentally hostile to working people. Pseudoscientific models are used to justify enduring problems such as poverty and inequality in order to support a system that unfairly rewards people who already have the most resources. Today’s economic institutions, from the Federal Reserve to the International Monetary Fund, wield immense power over monetary policy yet are shielded from democratic scrutiny. All the major problems we face—from a health care 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. Why should we accept this? In this urgent intervention against capitalism, Mattei shows how escaping this system begins with understanding the economy from a fundamentally different perspective. The time has come to challenge the broken economics of our modern age—to achieve true economic freedom and finally escape from capitalism.

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, 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.