Clara Mattei Escape From Capitalism: Economics is Political, and Other Liberatin
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Looks like you could review the original:
“In November 2023, Mattei released her first book written in Italian, L’economia è politica: Tutto quello che non vediamo dell’economia e che nessuno racconta, published by Fuori Scena. The book was released in English under the title Escape from Capitalism in 2026.”
Clara E. Mattei has discussed Escape from Capitalism extensively in lectures, interviews, and public forums, repeatedly emphasizing that economics is never neutral but deeply political. Across these discussions, she argues that austerity policies are not simply technical responses to crises but deliberate mechanisms used to discipline labour, weaken collective power, and stabilize capitalist social relations. Her historical analysis shows how states actively intervene in markets, not to restrain capitalism, but to preserve profitability and social order. In this sense, her work effectively challenges the popular myth of a “free market” operating independently of political power.
Where tensions emerge, however, is in the proposed horizon beyond capitalism. Mattei often points toward democratizing economic decision-making, expanding public control, or reshaping institutions so that markets serve social needs. Yet as long as production remains organized through wages, money, and exchange, the underlying social relations that generate crisis and inequality persist. A system based on buying and selling inevitably reproduces value relations, competition, and accumulation pressures, regardless of how democratic its management may appear.
From a more radical standpoint, the problem is not merely who governs the economy, but the continued existence of an economy structured around value production itself. Political reforms may soften outcomes, but they cannot abolish the impersonal economic laws that arise when human labour takes the form of commodities. The real break would require moving beyond production for exchange toward production directly for use, where social cooperation replaces market mediation.
Mattei’s work therefore plays an important educational role in exposing capitalism’s political foundations, even if its conclusions stop short of questioning the necessity of money, markets, and wage labour altogether.Thank you! I’m glad you found it useful. I’m just trying to understand and discuss these ideas as clearly as I can.
Just listened to that. She is very good at demolishing all the arguments in favour of capitalism. I think I’ll get a copy of her book. But I think the recent discussion in the thread on the Labour theory of value is relevant here as her alternative would seem to accept the view that exploitation would be ended if the workers had full democratic control over how the value they produce over and above their wages should be used.
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