OBSERVER ob•serv•er
noun \əb-ˈzər-vər\
: a person who sees and notices someone or something
: a person who pays close attention to something
: a person who is present at something (such as a meeting) in order to watch and listen to what happens
an OBSERVER
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
Oh CANADA our Capitalists are on the take :Clara Mattei: capitalism is not natural - it’s enforced
Bloggers note: This is the "seeds of economic fairdom"
Freedom and sizing up capitalists stronghold of the 99% of us.
She is an author and professor of economics whose work explores how economic ideas become tools of power, shaping policy while masking the political decisions beneath.
Her new book, Escape from Capitalism, argues that many of the problems that we see as inevitable - poverty, unemployment, inflation - are built into the system and shored up by models and theories designed to convince us that there is no alternative.
On this episode of Ways to Change the World, Krishnan Guru-Murthy speaks to Mattei about whether there is an alternative to capitalism.
Clara Mattei: capitalism is not natural - it’s enforced
videos here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M_dq_0ljsc
TRANSCRIPT HERE
We're in a situation in which the violence of the economy has reached a very very obscene [music] peak. We have
0:07
actually 12 people in the world owning more than the bottom [music] 4 billion people. We've built it. We need to see
0:14
how the systemic forces trap us and shape us. But we're the architects. So
0:19
there is space for alternatives if [music] we build them. How do you actually think change would happen? Are you revolutionary?
0:29
Hello and welcome to ways to change the world. I'm Christian Giri Murphy and this is the podcast where we talk to
0:34
extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them. My guest this week is
0:40
an economist who wants us to rethink the idea that capitalism is simply the natural order of things. Claraara Matai
0:47
is an author and professor of economics whose work explores how economic ideas become tools of power shaping policy
0:55
while masking the political decisions beneath. Her new book escape from capitalism argues that many of the
1:01
problems that we see as inevitable, poverty, unemployment, inflation are built into the system and shored up by
1:08
models and theories designed to convince us that there is no alternative. Welcome to the podcast.
1:14
It's such a pleasure. I mean how can you escape capitalism? I mean we we we are all brought up to believe uh or to think
1:22
that it is just the way of the world. It is human nature to want to accumulate
1:27
things and wealth and to have the freedom to choose what you want and what
1:34
your destiny is. So the first point is to escape the mental trap that
1:39
naturalizes the system that makes us think exactly what you just said which is that we have a spontaneous tendency
1:46
towards this capitalist economy. What I show in the book is that capitalism is far from spontaneous. It requires
1:52
constant violent enforcement of those policies of austerity to preserve the
1:58
system in place. So what the state needs to do is to protect the market by
2:04
keeping the majority of us subordinated to the to the market itself and
2:09
maintaining us in a situation by which we have no alternative but to go work for wage and usually a very low wage and
2:16
very precarious conditions. So what is capitalism in your terms? Capitalism is a system based on two
2:21
pillars. One is wage labor. Exactly. the idea that the majority on the planet has no option but to go sell its cap their
2:27
capacity to work in return for a wage and produce much more value than what they actually get in their paycheck and
2:34
have very little say on how things are produced and why and on the other hand
2:39
private investment. So the idea that it's actually very few that we have basically as society delegated the um
2:46
the command over what is produced and why. So private investment and wage
2:52
labor are the two pillars. And of course the roof is production for profit. The fact that nothing we have around us
2:58
would be ever produced if it weren't for the fact that there's expectations to get more money from what you started off
3:05
with. I mean are you so so to what extent are you different from the anti- capitalist
3:11
protesters who've been around forever uh who are a tiny minority? um you know but
3:18
you're you're you're you're sort of respectable and at a university and uh and and and not hiding your face.
3:25
So I think right now we are in a situation in which the violence of the economy has reached a very very obscene
3:32
peak. Um we know right now that we have actually 12 people in the world owning
3:38
more than the bottom four billion people. We have soaring poverty,
3:44
equality that is extreme, inequality that is extreme. We know the climate catastrophe, constant wars and and
3:50
militarism and genocide. People are suffering. So actually the point is to
3:55
say that if we want our basic needs met, if we want people to even get fed, we
4:01
have two billion people who are suffering from food insecurity. If we want these basic needs to be met for
4:06
everybody, you're an anti- capitalist because the system is not meant to provide for the need. It's meant to
4:13
provide for profit. And so what I'm trying to do here is shift the logic again propose a different lens through
4:19
which we can say we can't blame crony capitalism. We can't blame you know excessive greed. We can't blame the idea
4:26
that the system is not working as it should and this is why we have all the inequality and the suffering. It's the
4:32
opposite. the system is actually working as it's always been structured to work. And this is why we have such high
4:38
accumulation at the top while the majority suffers and we know that the reality is that even in Britain the
4:44
reason why we have so much wealth in the the west again very divided in the UK one out of three children are in poverty
4:51
and since 2020 for 2014 we have had
4:56
billionaires grow sixfold. Okay. So while billionaires keep growing, children keep getting poorer. And what
5:04
we see is this. Even in the if in the UK the wealth is distributed very unequally, the reality is that the west
5:11
is basing its capacity to develop on the structural underdevelopment of the global south. And this is very
5:17
important. Still today when supposedly colonialism is over, we have $65 billion
5:23
or more every year that flows from the global south, especially Africa to Europe. and the United States
5:29
because of debt because of debt because of um extraction of resources because of the fact that
5:35
you know capital we go we we invest and we take everything else also in terms of
5:41
profit so it's it's it's the dependency how development is there because there
5:48
is a the creation of underdevelopment we wouldn't this is the thing we're not on
5:53
an equal path in which we're all growing progressively and getting better and better what you see is actually the fact
5:58
that those countries that have developed have developed because the rest was going down and was underdeveloped. It
6:04
was structurally destroyed and this is what austerity policies are all about and austerity is a basic feature of
6:11
capitalism and this is I guess what distinguishes my work from other critical political economy is to say
6:17
that austerity is not irrational. It's irrational for us for the logic of need
6:22
but it's very very rational for the logic of profit. Why? because it keeps us in a subordinate condition. It keeps
6:28
us needing to go work for whatever job to pay our bills and to pay for healthcare and education. So if you cut
6:35
social services as the capitalist state does while financing private investors
6:41
de-risking you know um militarizing the surveillance economy, the protection of the borders, this is what capitalism
6:48
needs because it protects the two pillars, right? You keep wage labor and private investment in check. So, so
6:53
you're saying that when people say austerity is a necessity, um, in a way they're right because it is
7:00
a necessity of the system. Yes. And this is the point. It is a necessity, but it's not a natural
7:06
necessity. So, this is the big point is that it's not a technical fix. You know,
7:11
austerity is not just a tool that economists in with their neutral models adopt to save us all. It's the opposite.
7:18
It's the point that economic models, as I show in the book, are deeply classist in the sense that they depict the
7:23
problems as being due to workers misbehaving. This is how inflation is understood. Why is there inflation? Oh,
7:29
because the cost of labor are too high or because people are consuming too much. This is literally what the models
7:34
say. So, if the culprits are the workers, the solution needs to be increasing interest rates so that you
7:40
create actually harsher unemployment levels. And unemployment, guess what? Is actually important for the system. We
7:46
would not have capitalism without a good dosage of unemployment. Why? Because if the workers did achieve bargaining
7:52
power, they wouldn't accept this conditions that allow for profit to keep accumulating. So this is really
7:58
important is to realize that austerity is not neutral. It's political, but it's
8:04
also necessary for this economic system. But I think the empowering element of
8:09
the conversation is that capitalism is not spontaneous and it has been around for very little time. Only 0.1% of the
8:15
time homo sapiens has been on the planet have we been under industrial capitalism and in this little time we've managed to
8:22
destroy as we know our ecology and many people around us. Did you mean just post the industrial revolution basically?
8:27
Yes. But but even before that wasn't it essentially a capitalist system?
8:33
Yes definitely it was you know capitalism was born in the UK. So the cradle of capitalism is right here where
8:39
I stand today through the enclosure system. And this is very important. This is a story that economics never tells
8:45
you because economics as a discipline is deeply ahistorical purposefully to make you think that this is a natural
8:51
spontaneous order. The reality is that if you look at history, our economic system was born through violence. And
8:57
what was this violence? It was the the um exclusion of people from the land.
9:03
The land was the basic means of subsistence in which people could reproduce themselves autonomously from
9:09
respect to the market. Once you eliminate the self-sufficiency, then people become market dependent and thent
9:16
and thus in a way necessarily are have to accept going to work for whatever
9:21
situation they can find. Well, wasn't that a product of natural
9:27
human nature to acquire and to exercise power over others?
9:32
I don't think so. If you look at all the indigenous cultures um in many places in the world, you know, I'm in Oklahoma
9:38
right now. Um this was the reservation land after the indigenous people had been kicked out. They had the trails of
9:44
tears. Many many died and they reached uh this uh reservation land and then all
9:50
the oil was stolen from the indigenous people. But the indigenous people, the Cherokee nation for example was based on
9:57
circular um horizontal organization through councils and actually women had
10:03
a very very big role there and it was about caring for the commons, caring for nature rather than extracting. So you
10:10
know indigenous values tell you that actually humanity um is not has no
10:16
essence for uh self-interest. This is the adaptation
10:22
under capitalism. Uh we can be different according to what social relations we construct. um in Tulsa the forum for
10:29
real economic emancipation I now founded very interesting experiment to try to bring back these different social
10:35
relation that need to start locally because it's at the local level that we can associate through assemblies in
10:40
which you show how collectively we can think to be together in a different way
10:46
and pressure our local and national institutions to do not austerity but
10:52
democratic decision-m over the budget and much else well where does democracy come in, you
10:58
know, because because you know, the defenders of the system will say these
11:03
are choices that people have made deliberately through their democratic rights.
11:09
Well, I would say that these choices have been made by a tiny elite since the very beginning. Um, and they are choices
11:17
that by definition require the lack of economic agency of the majority. So what
11:22
you see is that democracy, liberal democracy is really only a superficial facade. And this is why in my work
11:29
historical work I also show how in moments in which people challenge this capital order liberals and fascists are
11:37
great allies. And this has been my work on the post first world war period is you see that Benito Mussolino sorry
11:43
Benito Mussolini was adored by the bank of England and by Bontagu Norman because
11:48
he was the right man at a critical moment to keep workers in check and to avoid postcist experiments. So this is
11:56
the whole point is that you see that liberal democracy presupposes economic coercion and when people rise up against
12:03
economic coercion, liberals and fascists are best friends to implement austerity.
12:09
So so these are choices that people are making within a framework of coercion. Absolutely. in in in your in your
12:15
framing. I mean why then when we have seen alternative economic models um in
12:22
the uh 20th century have they all gravitated towards capitalism?
12:28
This is you know why in Russia, why in China, why in parts of India do they all end up
12:33
like us? Yes. Well, I don't think it's because we have a magnetic attraction or a fair
12:39
system. It's mostly because we impose our capital order globally. Right. If if
12:44
one one reads just the postc world wars the golden age period the United States
12:50
were actively imposing capitalism everywhere else in the globe right through militarism through coups we have
12:57
the CIA involved in really taking over um during the cold war to protect
13:03
capitalism so you know there was nothing spontaneous about this it's about really a struggle a political struggle and the
13:08
political struggle happens geopolitically but also within each country and this is veryant important is
13:14
that, you know, luckily with Trump, um, we've we're seeing what capitalism
13:19
actually looks like and he's revealing the face of the brutality of the United States. In Tulsa, where I live, um,
13:26
people can't afford anything. People don't have teeth. People can't afford to actually have a roof over their head.
13:33
Many of the people who we organized through the form for economic emancipation are unhoused. And they
13:38
barter food stamps as the only way to actually like make a living. It's a situation in which
13:45
the money exists but it's really caught in the hands of very very very few
13:50
philanthropists that by the way then benefit from lending money to the titty
13:55
lending money to the governments and then get all the interest back. So and and yet some of the poorest
14:01
people in America are Trump supporters. So how how have they achieved this
14:08
hegemony over over people who have nothing to gain from it? This is why I think my book can be
14:13
relevant for people. It's because it's about the narrative. Again, the way we break free is first mentally. And what
14:20
you need to see is that Trump is thriving on a narrative that has been constructed by mainstream economists for
14:27
a long long time who which tell you there's nothing unjust about this
14:33
economy. If you are at the bottom, it's because you deserve it. And this is constructed through also mathematics in
14:40
telling you that those who are at the top are there because they save. They behave more rationally and they are
14:46
benefiting everyone else by employing everyone else and so they should be lucky. So this mythological
14:51
individualism, this idea that if you're poor, it's your fault, is spread everywhere and people have internalized
14:57
it so deeply that the only explanation they have for the fact that they're living not a human life at the end of
15:03
the day because it's dehumanizing what you see in the United States today. You blame it on those who are even weaker
15:08
than you because those are the ones who you fear the most because you don't see who's actually benefiting. You don't see
15:14
those, you know, 19 people in the United States, which is the 0.00 00001%
15:20
of the population have increased their wealth in the past two years by almost $2 trillion only 19 people this is what
15:27
we're talking about when we talk about this extreme red and these people are not taxed because capital gains are not taxed this is part of the austerity
15:33
policy as I was mentioning uh but isn't it the case as well that when you have very little and when you
15:40
have great economic insecurity you are desperate to hold on to whatever you have so so talking to people about
15:46
breaking the system means that they will lose everything is what they fear in the
15:52
short term. I think right now, first of all, many people have very little to lose at this point in the United States. Really, I
15:58
mean, 77% of American workers live paycheck to paycheck. Half of the homeless population that keeps
16:05
skyrocketing in the US,8 118,000 more homeless people, and this
16:11
is just the official statistics, in just one year. Um, these people, you know,
16:17
work. Half of the homeless population actually has a job. So you know working is not enough to secure your survival.
16:24
So this is what I'm seeing with the forum for real economic emancipation is that people want to come together with
16:29
alternative models with solidarity based economies with mutual aid with the idea
16:34
that let's breach market dependence. Let's take back our relation with nature with land with resources. We need to
16:41
create this alternative infrastructure that can actually serve the logic of need that the governments both at the
16:47
local and at the federal level and also in Europe can no longer support because our governments are there to maintain
16:54
the capital order in place and the fact that Europe is militarizing like crazy while people are losing their social
16:59
services is not by chance. It's not to be you know um attributed to the bad
17:05
person in power that moment. This is the tendency of the system that we though
17:11
have the power to fight against because the system is us. And this is the empowering message of the book is to say
17:17
we've built it. We need to see how the systemic forces trap us and shape us.
17:22
But we're the architects. So there is space for alternatives if we build them. Are we also trapped by our education
17:29
system and the way economics is framed and taught? Completely. So I'm a professor of
17:35
economics and I've for years um tried to introduce alternative frameworks in the
17:42
economics discipline. They do exist. They're at the margins. So anyone who teaches econ sorry who studies economics
17:49
rarely gets exposed to alternative frameworks. And in my book I try to expose the classical political economy
17:56
framework. So it's built on not just my ideas. This work is built on a tradition that is very strong. It dates to Adam
18:02
Smith himself. the founding father of modern economics. Well, people are talked about Marx,
18:07
aren't they? And that's the only alternative way of looking at the world. Yes. Well, I think absolutely the
18:14
important point is that you know Marx has been demonized in all ways. But at the end of the day, he was one of the
18:20
most important economist ever existed because again he does not he did not
18:25
accept the narrow idea by which things happen because of individual choices.
18:30
things happen because of systemic forces that have been built by us. And what Mark says that is very important and
18:37
liberating is that capital as wealth as money is nothing but the surface
18:43
expression of capital as a social relation of the fact that we we relate to one another in production processes
18:50
that are very anti-democratic. I mean what I mean is you say people are not taught any alternatives ever.
18:55
I'm saying they are taught about Marxism. Are you saying are you saying the way Marxism is taught?
19:00
Okay, so this is important. A a I think very few people are actually taught about Marxism. Definitely if you take a
19:06
econ class, you will not hear that his name or even the word capitalism. As a matter of fact, you always you only hear
19:12
about markets and and individual choices and maximization. So when you do hear the word marks, it's usually attributed
19:19
to some crazy deterministic way of seeing the world. um which doesn't make any sense because again the critique of
19:26
political economy that Markx brings about is exactly to say you economists take for granted capitalism. I as a
19:33
scholar a historicalminded scholar will tell you that capitalism is a specific social economic system that requires
19:39
specific social relations and we can change it because it's us who's who have built it. So are you a neo-Marxist? I've
19:46
definitely been inspired by Marxian political economy and I think this is really important for economic students
19:52
to go back to the original text. Does does that make it almost impossible for you given everything you said to gain
19:59
traction? No, I think the opposite. I think right now historically we're in a moment in which people are fed up by the liberal
20:06
narrative that can't explain the current crisis of humanity we're living in. And
20:12
so Marx, the Marxian tradition is a tradition that actually speaks to people
20:18
who consider themselves on the right or considers themselves, you know, Trumpist or whatever. Um because it goes to the
20:25
real root of the problems. So in the end, if you want to get fed, you are an
20:30
anti- capitalist. And you will see that only like a a critical really a critical lens not a superficial lens a critical
20:37
lens that I try to develop in this book will be the source for emancipation of
20:42
your mind and of your actions. And so I think we are in a historical moment in which people are thirsty for radical
20:48
explanations that can push us beyond and until we try it we can't you know
20:53
predict but right now what we know is that the current situation is getting worse and worse as we speak. I what what
21:01
I mean is if you are taking a lot from Markx does that make you for huge
21:06
numbers of people public enemy number one. You know if you think about how America responded to communism after the
21:12
second world war in this sort of almost hysterical way but but but much deeper
21:17
in terms of foreign policy and all the rest of it. Um that is still deeply ingrained
21:23
in American psyche. Yes. and and and in Europe to some degree as well for different reasons,
21:28
but you know, the fall of the Berlin wall and all of that. But I think that speaks to the reason why um marks and analysis is so powerful
21:36
because it was so scary that it need to be purged from academia. You know, it
21:41
was it was a political project like academics were you know, you can read the the PAL report. It's all about
21:48
a project of purging academia from critical knowledge. And this is the whole point is that um part of it is
21:55
this demonization of marks but you know the most emancipatory tradition you see the Frankfurt school Antonio Grahamshy
22:01
Rosa Luxembourg people who were for the liberation of humankind so what I do is
22:06
to say let's drop old categories let's um think about ways reclaiming words
22:13
like freedom is a word that should be reclaimed in the radical tradition you know we're not for the state the idea
22:19
that Marx is a statist is absurd You know, Marx was seeing the the capitalist state as a problem and as an oppressive
22:27
machine. And this is the whole point actually. Markx was vindicating the idea of freedom and agency and subjectivity
22:34
and collective welfare. And this is the problem is that if we still are trapped
22:39
in categories that made sense during the cold war, we will never look forward. So I want to rec claim the word freedom,
22:45
the word economic democracy because these are words that I think can connect people much more. And how do you
22:50
actually think change would happen? Are you revolutionary? We are testing alternatives on the
22:56
ground. You know, academics love to like preach uh about general ideas and never
23:02
get involved. I think they're culprits. They're responsible. They're part of the problem. Even these supposed lefty
23:09
scholars, they're part of the problem if they don't engage. in academia even on the left is so elitist and so separate
23:16
from people's problems and people's ways of thinking that again they are responsible. So what we're trying to do
23:22
in Tulsa, again, Tulsa is I think one chapter of what I hope will continue building as a pilot project that can be
23:28
reproduced with its own characteristic everywhere else is the idea that knowledge is of the people for the
23:35
people coming and stemming from people's participation and that's why we do public education. That is really the
23:41
first step and then we organize through an assembly that is a way for people to try out something different. But what does what does getting involved
23:47
mean? I mean you don't just mean protest no movement do you? I mean, you know, should should they be involved in local
23:53
government in collective? So, to give Yeah, to give you an example, we just had a a big event with
24:00
400 people, which is a lot for Tulsa, um, with the mayor sitting there to respond to a conversation about
24:07
participatory budgeting. Participatory budgeting is a reality that has been completely excluded from the way um we
24:16
run our economy because it's dangerous for the status quo but is something that was invented in Brazil actually and we
24:22
should really look at uh in the 80s it's the idea that people can take on
24:28
responsibilities in ideulating how their money should be spent and um voting on
24:34
it in a way that actually is much more inclusive. This is happening in some parts of the world. But this could be,
24:40
for example, an instrument to get people to realize that they can have much more agency. You know, that's the value
24:45
workers produce. It's overly taxed because it's workers that pay taxes, not investors. Okay? And that money that has
24:52
been taxed, it's used not for people and their social services, but again to fment wars in the south of the globe. So
24:58
the whole system is completely irrational that we need to completely subvert it. Markx would tell us we live in an upside down world and he was
25:05
right. we do live in an upside down row. So what I'm saying is that we need to propose these alternatives. Putting
25:10
pressure on the local governments is one possibility. So as an institution as the free, we are now um launching a campaign
25:17
for participatory budgeting which is all about taxing the wealth in in in in town through actually income taxation of the
25:24
very rich and at the same time um demanding that this money is not allocated according to the priorities of
25:31
the usual suspects but according to the logic of need. And this is something that can happen. It's realistic. It fits
25:37
even within the constitutional framework and the current laws. It's just about political will.
25:42
So, so, so at the moment you think democracy is the vehicle to deliver change even though you think democracy
25:49
is corrupted and underpinning you know economics as we know it of of
25:55
capitalism. So what I would tell you is that I think we need to be more specific of what we mean by democracy. There's liberal
26:00
democracy which is again this uh oligarchic farce by which very few make decisions and then we as consumers get
26:07
to come vote once in a while and we feel like we're so empowered but actually we count nothing. And on the other hand
26:12
participatory democracy which is based on people actually having a say on the material conditions that we are
26:18
building. So what does this look like? It looks like you know different ways. Um the time I was reading that I studied
26:25
are the factory councils of someone like Antonio Gshy which is about workers actually deciding on how to produce and
26:31
and why. Now it's about neighborhood councils that exist in Latin America. They're very strong. For example, in
26:38
Tulsa the idea is that through this assembly we can start breaching market dependence. For example, again
26:44
organizing groups of people that go back to the concept of food sovereignty. How do we achieve food sovereignty in
26:50
Oklahoma? One out of four children suffers hunger. And the only way to get this to stop is if we gain back access
26:58
to food and we fight against food deserts. And this is one of the possible ways in which we can have participatory
27:04
democracy in action. So a political party is not necessarily the vehicle [snorts] to deliver this.
27:11
I don't think you necessarily need a political party, especially what parties look like today, especially in a country like the United States.
27:17
[laughter] So but if you're a scholar of sort of gshi I mean h how do you how do you
27:22
achieve that persuasion of enough people that's very important so gshia has
27:27
deeply influenced my ideas uh because gshi is the person who came up with the idea of hegemony right is the idea that
27:34
capitalism is strong because what capitalism is able to rule the capitalist elite rules not only by
27:41
coercion but also by consensus right and this is what hegemony is about is about convincing those who are suffering that
27:46
actually this system is doing their interest and this is the way you get people to comply to like passively accept. So what we need here is
27:55
something that goes two ways. You need a public education that is more critical and historical and this is kind of what
28:00
I tried to do in my book to like you know again it's not just me a lot of people are doing it but I'm trying to make it accessible in a way that I think
28:06
a lot of scholars have lacked interest in doing. Um at the same time public education has to go with participation
28:13
and institution building. This is what Graham was doing. He was saying the only knowledge that actually is interesting
28:18
knowledge comes from participation and construction of counter hegemonic um
28:24
spaces. How do you get the middle class, the people with some money to buy into this
28:30
when they only stand to lose? I don't think they stand to lose. That's the whole point is to realize that the
28:35
alliances are much broader. Uh the middle class class is really a construction that by the way now is
28:41
completely disappearing because that so-called middle class you know what matters the struggling middle class. Yeah of
28:47
course but there is also a middle class with with resources. Absolutely. But the point is that class
28:52
is not defined by your uh bank uh bank account. It's defined by your
28:58
social positioning within the social relations of production. So the question to ask is where does the majority of
29:04
your income come from? Does it come from labor or does with a paycheck or does it come from investment and capital gains
29:11
and rent? This is your class positioning. Then you can be a worker that is better off than other workers.
29:18
But the point is that as the system stands, the system is disintegrating all those social resources that are allowing
29:24
those happy workers to still maintain a h like a better life. And these people are being tracked down. We know the
29:31
middle class in the United States basically doesn't exist anymore. And it's a paradox because the American dream was based on the idea that
29:38
everyone if they worked hard enough they could achieve a car, a refrigerator and you know television. But this is again
29:44
reducing us to consumers. We can be much more humane if even people like me you
29:50
know I'm a professor of economics. I'm not starving in the street. I do pretty well. But I still will gain into
29:56
humanity if I participate in a collective that is not just my family and my neighbor but actually people at
30:03
large that come together through assemblies and try to actually take decisions together. This is how we
30:08
transform our humanity into something much more fulfilling. What are you asking people to do about their private property? I mean partic
30:15
middle class in America and Britain mean slightly different things I think but you know certainly in Britain you have a middle class that is homeowning uh
30:22
property owning that is their economic security um that's great
30:28
are you saying they've got to give up no but this is another myth about Marxism Marxism never said that we should get rid of you know of of
30:34
that is their capital gain that's where they make their wealth isn't it land and property absolutely but the point is that the
30:40
majority of their income I assure you comes from wages so again it you we it's not a binary workers capitalist
30:47
but it's it is important to keep track of like the the most important situatedness. So the idea here is that
30:54
everyone should be able to have a roof over their head and afford a roof over their head, right? And so we need to
31:00
make sure that this is a reality for everybody. And we know that this economic system is actually buying out
31:06
these people to make us all into renters that then again have to spend spend a
31:12
lot of time to find a to try to find a job to able to make that rent. So the point is that if you're lucky enough to
31:17
own a house, that is what you should imagine everyone else being able to
31:23
achieve. And by the way, right now owning a house is a is a real pain. If you're a property owner, you know that
31:28
it's a very individualistic mindset. There's a plenty of alternative ideas of collective ownership that are much more
31:35
empowering because you don't need to like worry about you know something breaking or um uh paying the property
31:42
tax. It would be a much more emanipated space in which everyone could think about the housing as a political project
31:47
and and you clearly think this is a moment for your ideas because of the
31:53
extremes that capitalism particularly in the west is throwing up. Yes. Yes. And I do think that the cause
31:59
of the liberation of Palestine, I talk about Palestine in the book by looking at the economic dimension of the
32:04
subordination of the Palestinian territories towards Israel and the West and and showing how that is just a
32:10
microcosm of the subordination of the whole global south where the majority of the population lives of the world,
32:15
right? Seven out of the eight billion actually live in the global south. And so how
32:20
these are moments in which you see that people standing up for crude injustices,
32:27
people can wake up and say we need something different. And I really do think that connecting the struggles and
32:33
seeing that it they're all one struggle. It's a struggle for humanity over profit is a very important
32:38
but again you know if you go to the global south development is all based around mimicking
32:44
yes the the western capitalism of the global north completely and that's the real problem
32:49
and that's why u underdevelopment keeps growing and this is the whole point is that economists have this myth and it's
32:56
really interesting because it was this economist called Walter Rosto who came up with this um non-communist manifesto
33:04
about how to develop countries in the global south. And the myth is that it's
33:09
we're all the same. You know, the United States, Britain, and Africa, we're all countries are the same. They could
33:15
potentially all be on the same development path. It's just about where
33:20
you are. They're just behind us, but the path is the same. The trajectory is universal. This is a lie. If you ask
33:26
scholars, critical scholars on dependency theory, um it's the opposite. It's actually the trajectory of some
33:32
countries going up are based on other countries going down. So there will never be a universal trajectory. And
33:38
this is really important is for these countries in the global south to realize that if they listen to the IMF of the World Bank and open up their markets and
33:45
implement more austerity, privatize, deregulate labor, do the whole recipe that supposedly is going to help them be
33:53
more efficient. They are losing as they're doing that. And that that's why the trouble is the elites running those
33:59
countries game. Exactly. So the debt increases in these countries, the elites are gaining both internationally and locally, but the
34:05
workers are losing. So So I am still wondering how how the
34:11
workers unite, you know, um in in in your in your world without a revolution,
34:19
aren't you a revolutionary ultimately? Well, I think revolution is again a word
34:24
that we've um associate with such negative connotation, right? Blood,
34:30
disaster. Again, it shows you how indoctrinated we are because revolution just means social
34:36
transformation and change. And if there's blood, it's usually because they're reaction to revolution, right? There's actually reaction coming to
34:42
those at the top who don't want any social transformation. So revolution is really actually a positive word because
34:49
it just means change. It means change and as humans we deserve change to
34:54
fulfill our our full human prosperity.
35:00
So if you could just change the world now with one fell swoop, what would you do?
35:05
I would prioritize the two most important issues right now that are the physical violence and the killing of
35:12
people not just in Palestine, in Sudan and many other places and food as a
35:17
primary resource. And I would try to organize these two priorities as
35:23
society's priorities. And this is very important because this is potentially revolutionary and subvers subversive.
35:29
This is the thing. If you want people to get fed, you are revolutionary because the logic of profit will never bring you
35:35
there. So we need to say as a society we are intelligent agents. We can change things. Let's set ourselves basic
35:41
priorities. Everyone will agree that people deserve to have a plate in front of them once a day at least. Everyone
35:48
will agree that children should not be slaughtered by our drones. So this is the basic thing. How do we collectively
35:54
operate to achieve these goals without being dependent on the logic of profit? Because currently the idea is that if we
36:00
depend on profit, then as a byproduct, people will get fed. And this is completely irrational. Again, it's
36:06
upside down. Let's see how collectively we can have two priorities that are very basic and people on the right, on the
36:12
left, or wherever will say it's the it's just so basic. it has to like we can't
36:18
agree and let's figure out how to do that and I what I would say is that we will need to do this by focusing on use
36:24
value on the materiality on food itself rather than on value as abstraction as
36:29
money and if we can do this ch things will start to change and I
36:34
think we need to start locally I think the thing is that we can't you know it's very scary to think in a global context
36:42
because we feel so disempowered because we feel so little the idea is not we start local but we think global because
36:48
if we have different chapters of these alternative institutions that are actually devoted to achieving these
36:54
needs then things can change and I think this is why you can collaborate with local
36:59
institutions and with governments but you need to pressure them to do things differently because on their own they'll never do it because they're listening to
37:05
the technocrats that have these economic models that tell them that the problem are the people rather than the system
37:10
clar matai thank you very much indeed thank you so much for having me hope you enjoyed that uh you can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4
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