Escape from Capitalism

Note that the following is a 2023 sample from the book proposal for Escape from Capitalism, formerly called Anti-Capitalism. Simon & Schuster and Allen Lane are currently publishing it.

Apparently, the economy is doing well. We have avoided the recession economists worried about for years. Wages are up, and inflation is under control (though not as much as we would like). And yet, for us ordinary people, something is off. The positive outlook offered by economists and politicians does not resonate with our lived experiences. Pundits dismissively label this a “vibe-cession”: the economy may feel bad, but that’s only because we don’t understand how it works.

This is what we have been told: today’s economy is a sprawling complex system over which people have little control, yet it is also somehow natural, having evolved over centuries to reflect optimal human behavior. Markets are spontaneous forces that serve our interests as consumers. The problems of capitalism are the problems of people.

Anti-Capitalism turns this conventional wisdom on its head, demonstrating that these ideas are false and that they serve a specific purpose. I argue that capitalism is a sickly economics. It relies on active state intervention, often in the form of austerity measures, to control the labor market and prevent people from mobilizing against the status quo. Far from being spontaneous, capitalism requires constant life support from both governments and independent financial institutions to weaken the possibility that any alternative economic system emerges.

The economic institutions in charge, from the Federal Reserve to the Treasury to the International Monetary Fund, serve the primary purpose of “stabilizing” our economy. However, a closer reading of history reveals that the fundamental prerequisite for “stabilizing” the economy is the shaping of labor relations against workers so that they have no alternative but to accept a subordinate role in the production process. The toolbox of macroeconomic management—interest rate hikes, social expenditure cuts,regressive taxation, privatizations—is based on the targeted sacrifice of working people in the form of job losses, social precarity, and market dependence.

Technocrats know this. In 2022, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did not mince words when he said that the goal of raising interest rates was to “have less upwardpressure on wages.” Similarly, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opined that “interest rates can be low only if workers are weak,” otherwise it will be necessary to resort to unemployment, which “serves as a worker-discipline device.” When these experts relentlessly raise interest rates knowing full well that the practice may cause an economic recession, they are also aware of the alternative: if people no longer accept their condition as low-wage laborers, the very foundation of our economic system collapses.

My goal is to show readers how to reclaim the choices that regulate the foundation of their lives. The first step is to radically change their perspective. As a scholar of classical political economy, I reside in a field long-condemned by mainstream economists for its potentially subversive nature. I am at the forefront of this cultural struggle and have found original ways to develop the most revolutionary of intuitions stemming from this critical classical tradition. The New School for Social Research, where I currently teach, is one of the few places in the world that fully embraces this tradition for its unique ability to explain the contradictions of contemporary society. Next year, I will open a center for heterodox economics at the University of Tulsa, where I will be able to spread this work beyond its traditional borders.

Already, I have dedicated a decade of research to decoding what I call “the capital order”: the idea that capital and economic growth only exist because most of the global population has no alternative but to sell its capacity to work for a low wage. My first book provided a sturdy history of the pivotal moment at which austerity emerged as a protector of this socioeconomic system. While promoting that project and talking with readers, I discovered a much more powerful message inside the research. Anti-Capitalism develops the broader conceptual insights that have emerged from my archival work to explore how governments work hand-in-hand with economic experts to keep capitalism intact.

Once you understand the political history of capitalism, it becomes clear that what critics point to as “problems” of the system—for example, poverty, inequality, and unemployment—are actually precise “solutions.” The rise of neoclassical economics at the beginning of the twentieth century posited that economic theory is objective. “Pure economics” emerged as the new label for what until then had been known as “political economy.” This astute rebranding reimagined an economy that was somehow beyond class relations. Economists became the gatekeepers of infallible models on par with the hard sciences, too sophisticated for most citizens to understand. This coincided with the rise of allegedly politically independent economic institutions, which began removing key policy decisions from democratic scrutiny.

The tidying of the economic discourse cleansed any suggestion of a political project aimed at preserving class dominance and foreclosing any alternatives. Even well-meaning progressives limit themselves to pointing the finger at exceptional corporate greed or exceptional financialization. These critiques are not helpful because they ignore the basic structures that maintain the capital order. But, just as this status quo was established through collective action, it can also be undone through collective resistance. I intend to challenge the fatalist notion that nothing can change and the individualist notion that it is all our fault, or the fault of those even weaker than us, if we are not well. Instead, I want to clarify that classist economic decisions are the basis of the major problems afflicting our time. The rise of ultra-nationalist parties, perpetual wars, hatred for migrants, the environmental emergency, and the mental health crisis cannot be understood without focusing on the current economic system that oppresses the majority both nationally and globally.

I write these explicitly impassioned pages in opposition to the typical detached manner of economists. In its own way, this book is my contribution to a family tradition. My grandfather Camillo's siblings undertook a resolute battle against fascist oppression. Teresa Mattei, with the battle name Chicci, was the youngest woman to sit in the 1945 Italian Constituent Assembly after the fall of Mussolini’s regime. A free spirit, Teresa did not hesitate to distance herself from the Communist Party when it betrayed her ideals and faced the violence of the SS when, during the Resistance, they took advantage of her body as she carried messages to her partigiani comrades. Her brother, Gianfranco Mattei, a young chemistry professor and member of the Resistance, was captured on February 1, 1944, while building bombs to use against Nazi-Fascist occupation. After two days of continuous torture, Gianfranco hanged himself with his belt rather than betray his comrades. The last words of my great uncle, written on the back of a check secretly handed to his cellmate, were for his parents: “Be strong, knowing that I have been strong too.” To be strong, we need strong ideas. To deliver them is my purpose.