Episode
Ep 374 - Escape From Capitalism with Clara Mattei
- Podcast
- Macro N Cheese
- Published
- Apr 4, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3582
- Processing state
processed- Canonical source
- https://macroncheese.captivate.fm/episode/ep-374-clara-mattei
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Summary
Join our community on Tuesday evening as we listen to and discuss this episode. April 7th at 8pm ET/5pm PT. Use this link to register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/nkkVRy2JQbW2Eh4VDtcNHQ Clara Mattei and her first book, The Capital Order , were hugely important to Real Progressives as we began to expand our focus from Modern Monetary Theory and investigate the political economy of the capitalist system. Now she joins Steve to talk about her new book, Escape from Capitalism . They discuss how capitalism maintains itself through market dependence, exploitation, and austerity, and why escaping it requires building alternative institutions rather than relying on elections or reforms within the capitalist state. Steve and Clara are largely aligned in their critique of the system, but there are some disagreements. They debate aspects of MMT, including how interest rates, state spending, and monetary sovereignty function across different contexts. Their differences open up a deeper discussion about the limits of reform, the state's role, and what meaningful change would require. There is a reason elections cannot deliver emancipation. The capitalist state is structurally designed to insulate elites from popular control. Clara describes her practical organizing work with FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) in Tulsa, building horizontal assemblies, participatory budgeting campaigns, community land trusts, and mutual aid. Steve touches on the concept of de-commodifying basic needs (housing, healthcare, food), to break market dependence. But then, capitalism would be unworkable. Clara E. Mattei is Professor of Economics at The University of Tulsa and the Founding President of FREE: Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. She was previously associate professor at…