Austerity, unemployment, western dominance and democracy are the four lenses that Mattei trains on capitalist economics in her latest book, Escape from Capitalism. The four themes are hung together with a dominant narrative throughout: namely, that we are consistently asked to believe that There Is No Alternative (TINA) to modern economics. This is a familiar political slogan which Mattei doesn’t deploy herself, but the title and substance of this book expertly map out the dead ends that we inevitably arrive at when we try to discuss any possible alternatives to capitalism. Sine qua non, to give the Latin equivalent.
Mattei shares her family credentials early on, as the grandniece of two heroic Italian communist resistance fighters, Gianfranco and Teresa Mattei, both of whom fought against the last rise of fascism in Italian society. This project is personal for Mattei, given her family history, in which challenging capitalism and fascism were not just priorities but imperatives.
“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.”
Austerity is the first lens we encounter. It is described by Mattei as a suite of political choices within an economic system, choices which do not conclude with less money being spent, but rather money being spent for the benefit of significantly fewer people. This section begins to expose capitalism as a system which does not simply feature unwanted symptoms such as poverty and austerity, but enshrines them as key to its own survival.
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Similarly, unemployment is positioned in the next chapter as a crucial component of capitalism which allows the system to continue to grow. Mattei’s treatment of labour and its position within capitalism brings us to the heart of her thesis – that the decisions which affect our lives are political, not preconditions of a system. “Contrary to how it is presented in economics textbooks, the wage-price spiral is not automatic, it is not deterministic, it is not a fact of the universe; rather, it is the result of specific political decisions made by those who hold capital and who do not want (or cannot) bear the burden of increasing labour costs.”
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The intimate connection between colonialism and capitalism is brought to life in the next chapter, and the Israel-Palestine story is depicted as a microcosmic view of global western dominance. Mattei explains how the genocide “is inseparable from the economic incentive of higher profits: from the short-term buoyancy of stocks in the weapons industry… to the control of natural resources and commerce in a strategic region”.
This in-depth treatment of the economic relationship between Israel and Palestine will be of interest to Irish readers, given our solidarity with Palestine and our shared history of occupation. Mattei provides us with a chilling set of figures and historical details to describe the economic plundering of one state by another. She picks out key points such as the British Mandate, the Israeli occupation in 1967 and the Paris Protocols, bringing us to a point where Israel now unilaterally withholds much of Palestine’s wealth. In 2022, for example, Israel withheld $3.1 billion, 65 per cent of the Palestinian government’s total annual revenue.
The final of our four lenses discusses the difficulty faced by those wishing to challenge capitalism within the democratic system. Mattei explains how democracy supposes that it’s possible to look for change within the system while also pointing out that the system itself is not just broken, but actively designed to disadvantage people. But capitalism prevents such a holistic critique, and this is a problem: “Historical change does not happen out of blueprints; alternatives develop through peoples’ active participation, and it is only if we have the conceptual tools to understand the world differently that we can act differently.”
Mattei points out the reality that the people who mostly talk about economics and capitalism are the people who don’t have any difficulty with the system – those with opportunities, options. Escape from Capitalism looks at capitalism as a system, but with critical economic expertise which dismantles the preconditions we’re so used to, and which breaks through those many dead ends that prevent us from seeking tangible alternative solutions. It is important reading right now, with occupation and automation currently turbo-boosting the many features of capitalism that we know to be corrosive.
Ultimately, this book helps us to step beyond the TINA premise in which economics is currently framed: “The dissonance between our lived experiences 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…”.
Sinéad Gibney is a Social Democrat TD for Dublin-Rathdown
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