Clara Mattei

Clara E. Mattei (born 1988) is an Italian economist and academic, specializing in the history of capitalism and the interplay between economic theories and technocratic policymaking. Quotes The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (2022) 978-0226818399 Austerity is not new, nor is it a product of the so-called Neoliberal Era that began in the 1970s. Outside, perhaps, of the less than three booming decades that followed World War II, austerity has been the mainstay of capitalism. It has been true throughout history that where capitalism exists, crisis follows. Where austerity has proven wildly effective is in insulating capitalist hierarchies from harm during these moments of would-be social change. Austerity is capitalism's protector, popular among states for its effectiveness and billed as a means of "fixing" economies by increasing their "efficiency"—short-term readjustments for long-term gains. p. 3 Soaring public deficits that have mounted due to COVID will call for harsher austerity measures in the near future. In February 2021, the Harvard economist Summers, speaking at Princeton University about the inflationary risks of the Biden Administration's proposal to issue a cash stimulus to the American public, told the audience "there is no compelling economic case for a stimulus." If governments were to provide households with "more than what they need," those households' spending would throw off the delicate stasis of the economy: "the spending propensity out of [middle class households] would be far greater than the spending propensity economists usually estimate from wealth which is driven by fluctuations in the stock market." Spending by people who shouldn't spend, Summers warns, would cause inflationary harm to the economy of the wealthy. p. 304 Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention (2026) 978-1668085141 Despite claims of job creation, and the dominant message that business success helps all of us, the reality is that ultimately market gains, or profit, are contrary to the wellbeing of citizens — as one rises, the other decreases. Our current economic system is coercive, and this is the crucial political reality that mainstream economics hides. Even if we feel something is wrong when we get up in the morning to go to a job that means nothing to us, or when we struggle to find time to rest, such an instinctive realization is suffocated by the societal messages that this is the way it should be. The dissonance between our lived experience of daily economic life — that of alienation and struggle — and our acceptance of it, as if there were no alternative, is something constructed, predominantly by economic models that reinforce our surrender to an economic system that I call the "capital order". This term refers to, first, the concentration of decision making power in the hands of private investors; the second, the invisible subjugation of the majority, who are forced to work for someone else's profit. pp. 9-10 Most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone of our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap and understand the functioning of our economic system and the policies implemented to govern it. p. 13 If people no longer accept their condition as low-paid wage laborers without secure employment, our economic system collapses. p. 13 For decades, "experts" have been spreading this numbing story with academic theories spun from the elite circles of the most prestigious universities in the world. By hiding the true nature of the economic system, they atrophy our minds, blocking any possibility of transformative action. But it is possible to escape from capitalism. p. 10 Most people have no alternative but to sell their ability to work for a wage and inevitably be paid less than the value they produce. This is the capital order, the backbone of our society that we do not criticize or even discuss. It is only through the lens of class that we can escape this trap and understand the functioning of our economic system and the policies implemented to govern it. p. 13 If people no longer accept their condition as low-paid wage laborers without secure employment, our economic system collapses. p. 13 Even before the Gaza Genocide genocide in Gaza and the annihilation of almost all the territory's infrastructure, the situation there was much worse. According to the World Bank, the water supply in Gaza has been at "crisis levels" since 2005. UNICEF reported that in 2020 only 10 percent of the population in Gaza had direct access to clean and safe drinking water. Palestinians in Gaza were prevented from drilling wells and importing materials such as cement and iron needed to repair water infrastructure. At the same time, the chronic electricity deficit also heavily impaired functional water management. These past years have shown that economic dependency can easily be transformed into a genocidal instrument. After October 2023, Israel cut off electricity to Gaza, making the desalination of water dependent on fuel, which was also subjected to repeated blockades of one hundred days for longer. This catastrophic man-made drought has meant that thousands of children have died of thirst and suffered from diarrhea, scabies and polio. p. 128 The relationship of Israel with the Palestinian territories vividly illustrates how the capitalist wealth of developed nations is built on the subjugation of weaker economies. Some mechanisms of this subjugation appear impersonal, like the imposition of free market policies or fiscal austerity; others are overtly personal, like the colonial confiscation of land. Historically, the two have gone hand in hand. In the case of Israel, the inherent violence of capital accumulation has morphed into something extreme. p. 133 As hospitals and schools burn with children inside, international shareholders toast, and the economy grows. From October 2023 to July 2025, the stock price of the two aerospace and defense giants RTX Corporation and Leonardo (company) Leonardo soared by 77 percent and 234 percent, respectively. In 2023, the revenue of the world's top one hundred arms companies sat at over $600 billion. The whole economy is implicated. In her extraordinary 2025 UN report, Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese exposes a network of enablers that sustain the arms industry's windfall, including law firms, auditing and consulting firms, arms dealers, universities, and brokers. She unveils the vast web of corporations and intermediaries for whom the destruction of Palestinian life has translated into record profits – for tech giants like Alphabet Inc. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon (company) Amazon, financial powerhouses such as The Vanguard Group Vanguard and BlackRock, and the world's largest extractive and energy conglomerates. p. 153 It is a stark truth: capitalism and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. While democratic governments, with elections and separation of powers, are a feature of capitalist societies, our understanding of democracy as one based on electoral processes is incomplete. Real democracy requires a modicum of economic agency, which the majority of people don't have. p. 144 We must reclaim the word "freedom." Our new class lens helps us call out and contradict the guardians of the capital order, who use "freedom" to disguise their defense of the market economy. Economic freedom is really about emancipation from exploitation and impersonal domination. It is freedom from the obsessive and paralyzing centrality of an inhumane economic system. It is freedom to put human value before economic self-interest, to do work that is meaningful for oneself and others. It is freedom to fully realize our capacities as flourishing, compassionate beings. It is freedom to reconstitute social bonds and solidarities. Economic freedom is true freedom. p. 163 External links