Clara E. Mattei – författare

'Capitalism seems invincible and inevitable. It is neither. Clara Mattei illustrates brilliantly its fragility and restores hope that everything could be different' Yanis VaroufakisEconomics is sold as pure and apolitical: scientific, neutral, exact. This urgent book exposes its true role: to convince us there’s no alternative to capitalism. We live in a world dominated by the dogma that austerity is necessary, unemployment natural, endless wars inevitable and central banks all-powerful. It doesn’t have to be this way.In her bold, ground-breaking manifesto, economist Clara E. Mattei tears the mask off our economic system. She unpacks key concepts like growth, inflation, unemployment and balanced budgets to show how they’re weaponized to enforce market dependence, not freedom, stripping us of the power to shape the democratic decisions that govern our daily lives. Enduring problems such as poverty and inequality are not accidents or bugs in the economy, but core features – justified with pseudoscientific models to support a system that unfairly rewards people with the most resources.Why should we accept this? Capitalism, Mattei argues, isn’t inevitable, scientific, or natural – it's a relatively young system that can be replaced. Inspired by a lineage of political resistance, Escape from Capitalism calls for us to challenge the broken economics of our times, and pave the way towards liberation.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year"A must-read, with key lessons for the future."—Thomas PikettyA groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity—cuts to wages, fiscal spending, and public benefits—as a path to solvency. While these policies have been successful in appeasing creditors, they’ve had devastating effects on social and economic welfare in countries all over the world. Today, as austerity remains a favored policy among troubled states, an important question remains: What if solvency was never really the goal? In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below. Mattei traces modern austerity to its origins in interwar Britain and Italy, revealing how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated a set of top-down economic policies that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across their societies. Where these policies “succeeded,” relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties, including employers and foreign trade interests, who accumulated power and capital at the expense of labor. Here, Mattei argues, is where the true value of austerity can be observed: its insulation of entrenched privilege and its elimination of all alternatives to capitalism. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material from Britain and Italy, much of it translated for the first time, The Capital Order offers a damning and essential new account of the rise of austerity—and of modern economics—at the levers of contemporary political power.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year"A must-read, with key lessons for the future."—Thomas PikettyA groundbreaking examination of austerity’s dark intellectual origins. For more than a century, governments facing financial crisis have resorted to the economic policies of austerity—cuts to wages, fiscal spending, and public benefits—as a path to solvency. While these policies have been successful in appeasing creditors, they’ve had devastating effects on social and economic welfare in countries all over the world. Today, as austerity remains a favored policy among troubled states, an important question remains: What if solvency was never really the goal? In The Capital Order, political economist Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital—and indeed capitalism—in times of social upheaval from below. Mattei traces modern austerity to its origins in interwar Britain and Italy, revealing how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated a set of top-down economic policies that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across their societies. Where these policies “succeeded,” relatively speaking, was in their enrichment of certain parties, including employers and foreign trade interests, who accumulated power and capital at the expense of labor. Here, Mattei argues, is where the true value of austerity can be observed: its insulation of entrenched privilege and its elimination of all alternatives to capitalism. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material from Britain and Italy, much of it translated for the first time, The Capital Order offers a damning and essential new account of the rise of austerity—and of modern economics—at the levers of contemporary political power.