THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM

Isabella Weber was born in 1987 in Nurenberg and is a young German economist for whom I have the greatest of respect. She is the author of the 2021 book How China Escaped Shock Therapy and has just published Anti-fascist Economics – in defence of affordability, dignity and democracy (2026)

IN THE SAME YEAR THAT Friedrich von Hayek published the neoliberal manifesto “The Road to Serfdom” in 1944 (see chapter 3), the Hungarian-born economic historian and social theorist Karl Polanyi — then teaching at Bennington College after fleeing the rise of fascism in Central Europe —published a counter manifesto of sorts: The Great Transformation. Polanyi’s central argument was that the attempt to build a self-regulating market economy inevitably destroys the social fabric and natural foundations on which human life depends, provoking a defensive countermovement, of which fascism was the most brutal expression.

He had earlier in 1935 published a pamphlet The Essence of Fascism 

The Capital Order – how economists invented austerity and paved the way to fascism Clara Mattei (2022)

In his famous book Austerity: Th e History of a Dangerous Idea, the political scientist Mark Blyth shows that although austerity has not “worked” in the sense of achieving its stated goals across history (e.g., reducing debt or boosting economic growth), it has nonetheless been employed by governments over and over again. Blyth refers to this pattern of compulsive repetition as a form of madness. However, if we view austerity in this book’s terms— as a response not just to economic crises (e.g., contraction of output and heightened infl ation), but to crises of capitalism— we can begin to see method in the madness: austerity is a vital bulwark in defense of the capitalist system.

When I refer to a crisis of capitalism, I do not mean an economic crisis— say, a slowdown in growth or an uptick in inflation. Capitalism is in crisis when its core relationship (the sale of production for profit) and its two enabling pillars (private property in the means of production and wage relations between owners and workers) are contested by the public, in particular by the workers who make capitalism run. As part of these expressions of unhappiness, people have historically demanded alternative forms of social organization. Indeed, and as this book will demonstrate, austerity’s primary utility over the last century has been to silence such calls and to foreclose alternatives to capitalism. Mostly austerity serves to quash public outcry and worker strikes— not, as it is oft en advertised, to spontaneously improve a country’s economic indicators by practicing greater economic discipline.

Austerity as we know it today emerged aft er World War I as a method for preventing capitalism’s collapse: economists in political positions used policy levers to make all classes of society more invested in private, capitalist production, even when these changes amounted to profound (if also involuntary) personal sacrifi ces. In the early 1920s, austerity functioned as a powerful counteroff ensive to strikes and other forms of social unrest that exploded on an unprecedented scale after the war— a period traditionally, and oddly, overlooked by political and economic scholars who study austerity. Th e timing of austerity’s invention refl ects its animating motivations. Of greater importance than austerity’s purported economic effi cacy was its ability to guard capitalist relations of production during a time of unprecedented social organizing and public agitation from working classes.

Escape from Capitalism Clara Mattei (2026)

Today’s dominant theories are the result of academic and political battles that have lasted hundreds of years, with the aim of expelling the economic paradigm of the founding fathers of political economy. Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx studied capitalism through the lens of class and class conflict. Over the last century, this lens has been replaced by a gaze that substitutes classes with individuals and conflict with harmony. In this rosy world, the engine of growth is not the worker but the entrepreneur who heroically saves and invests. While Smith, Ricardo, and Marx all theorized labor as a key productive class in antagonism with landlords and capitalists, and Marx recognized labor’s exploitation as the structural trap of capitalism, neoclassical economists expelled class conflict from their analysis. They posited labor relations as equal exchanges between individuals, imagining a path to prosperity for all those who play their cards right in the game of the free market.

The rise of neoclassical economics at the beginning of the twentieth century portrayed economic theory as being 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 power relations. Economists became the gatekeepers of infallible models on par with those used by the hard sciences—like, say, Newtonian mechanics—and too sophisticated for most citizens to understand. This coincided with the rise of allegedly politically independent economic institutions such as central banks, which began removing key policy decisions from democratic scrutiny. The tidying of the economic discourse placed any suggestion of a more human, more commonsensical political project out of bounds. Even well-meaning progressives limit themselves to pointing the finger at exceptional corporate greed or the out-of-control rise of the financial sector. These critiques go nowhere because they ignore the problems within the basic structure. Neoclassical economists have peddled the market society as one in which everyone, if rational and virtuous enough, can thrive. They claim that social hierarchies are reflections of individual merit, meaning that those who aren’t at the top don’t deserve to be. It is an argument that supports those in power very well. According to this perspective, the profits of saver-entrepreneurs are the result of their virtuous behavior, enabling them to sign workers’ paychecks, which sounds good. The message is so persuasive that today almost everyone has internalized it: if we try hard enough, each of us can become a rich investor. Those who cannot make it can blame only themselves. The economy is profoundly political at multiple levels. The capitalist economic system that oppresses us is political; the economic policies aiming to safeguard and manage it are political; and the economic discipline that provides a lens through which we see the world is political. In the following pages, it will become clear how these three dimensions operate in support of one another. When we hear the term “political,” we mostly associate it with the squabbles between parties and the trivial personalisms of our political class. When I use the term, however, I am asserting something more fundamental: both that the economic world is currently antidemocratic and that it is one in which we can have collective agency. We need not be bound by any supposedly natural and scientific laws dictating that most people must suffer. The economic dimension of our lives is pervasive—it defines who we are as individuals and as a society. But it is also a dimension that we have created. We thus have the power to transform our socioeconomic order into one that does not make us subservient to the interests of the few winners of our current system. This book is for all those who wake up in the morning with a sense of profound dissatisfaction. 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 weaker than us. Instead, I want to clarify that classist economic decisions are the basis of the major problems afflicting our time. I want to clarify the mechanisms that oppress us and identify the freedoms for which we must fight. All the problems afflicting our era—from the rise of ultranationalist parties to perpetual wars, hatred for migrants, the environmental catastrophe that is especially hitting the Global South, and the mental health crisis, especially among younger people—can be explained by an economic system that oppresses the majority both nationally and globally. When people decide to stop engaging in electoral processes or to vote for parties that present themselves as against the liberal establishment, they are expressing deep dissatisfaction, or even despair, for an economic order that has failed them. These symptoms of our sickly economic order have led to the rise of political figures like President Donald Trump in the US and President Javier Milei in Argentina, who sell themselves as alternatives to the system. But they are false alternatives. The spectacle of strongman personalities distracts us from the fact that their policies are in perfect continuity with capitalism and its austerity logic. At a conservative gathering in 2025, for instance, Milei gifted Trump’s then right-hand man Elon Musk with a chainsaw in symbolic support of Musk’s proposals to slash nearly all federal funding for the working class, including Medicaid, food stamps, and public schools, especially education programs for low-income communities. These governments’ violent leanings are only accelerating capitalism’s destructive tendencies toward humanity. Yet people’s calls to change the establishment tell me that there is ample space for ambitious, courageous thinking—thinking that envisions radically different principles to govern our society. In the chapters that follow, we will learn to re-see the way our economic world works, discovering why the same problems seem to arise again and again, and why the usual economic models cannot explain them. Chapter 1 deconstructs the concept of growth, uncovering how this much-celebrated metric produces vast inequality and is grounded on exploitation. Chapter 2 shows the real purpose of austerity and why it is crucial to maintaining the structural oppression that capitalism requires. Chapter 3 subverts the commonsense understanding of unemployment and inflation, revealing how these two enduring social problems are not flaws in our system but are actually core features. Chapter 4 helps us rethink the reasons for the great progress in the US and Europe; it is inseparable from the active creation of poverty in the Global South. And chapter 5 reconsiders the compatibility of democracy and freedom with capitalism. Real democracy requires a completely new worldview. I write these pages without the detached manner typical of economists. This does not mean abandoning the scientific rigor of investigation. On the contrary, I accept my role as an academic researcher gathering evidence. I accept the unavoidable social positioning of the intellectual, which, as Antonio Gramsci reminds us, is organic to the class struggle. No one who produces knowledge is exempt from the influence of their socioeconomic status: my life, and my place in the world, informs my work. Unlike most economists, therefore, I am aware that I don’t exist above the economy, simply observing it; like all other citizens, I live within it. I thus try to overcome the limits of my point of view by considering other peoples’ historical and contemporary struggles to build a stronger and bigger picture of the economic world we live in. Having done so, I go beyond mere criticism of neoliberalism to propose an anti-capitalist view that I hope will shake readers into participating in real social transformation. As I write, many are fighting for a different society, believing in it with such dedication that they risk their lives. My contribution is from a safe position, but I understand the need for daring. My great-uncle and great-aunt continue to be sources of inspiration. My grandfather Camillo’s siblings fought fascist oppression. His sister Teresa Mattei, with the battle name Chicchi, was the youngest woman to sit in the 1946 Italian Constituent Assembly after the fall of Mussolini’s regime. It was thanks to her that the words “de facto” were included in Article 3 of the Italian Constitution:

It is the duty of the Republic to remove the obstacles of an economic and social order, which, by limiting de facto the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic, and social organization of the country. (my italics)

A free spirit, Teresa began her journey of radicalization when, at the age of sixteen, she stood up from her classroom chair to publicly denounce the antisemitic racial laws that banned Jewish students from Italian public schools. For her defiance, Teresa was permanently expelled from all schools in the Kingdom of Italy, but she retained her bravery to challenge power for the rest of her life. Only six years later, she was uncowed by the violence of the SS Nazi guards when, during the Resistance, they took advantage of her body while she carried messages to her partigiani comrades. And when the Communist Party betrayed its ideals, she did not hesitate to walk away, proving that her loyalty was to justice, not to any party line.

Her brother Gianfranco Mattei, a twenty-seven-year-old chemistry professor and member of the anti-Fascist resistance, was captured on February 1, 1944, while building bombs to be used in the fight against the Nazi occupation. After a few 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 tools. To deliver them is my purpose.