Downstream: The Middle Class Is Collapsing. Fascism Could Be Next w/ Clara Mattei
Novara Media
Novara Media
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 80 minutes
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Summary
Rising unemployment, increased military spending, and a decline in living standards for most people, including the middle class: the description fits both the 1930s and the 2020s. In the 1930s, it was a situation that morphed into the destruction and horror of the Second World War.
On Downstream with Aaron Bastani this week is Clara Mattei, professor of economics at the University of Tulsa, and author of ‘Escape From Capitalism: Economics Is Political and Other Liberating Truths’. Mattei’s PhD was on the relationship between austerity and fascism in inter-war Italy, and her book is a comparative study of Britain and Italy in that period.
What, they ask, is the relationship between austerity and fascism – both then and now? Is capitalism a ‘natural fact’, as its proponents would have you believe, or a contingent set of affairs designed and propped up by governments? And if capitalism is in fact a choice, how can we go about building an alternative?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A rising radical right, political polarization, downward mobility of the middle class. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm talking of course about the 2020s, but we've been here before, namely a century ago, |
| 0:17.9 | it didn't end well. You might already know that. But references to |
| 0:22.8 | fascism, World War II, Hitler, Mussolini can sometimes feel dated or even excessive. |
| 0:30.2 | Today's guest would disagree, however. Her PhD was on the connection between liberal economics, |
| 0:35.8 | liberal economic theory, and the rise of fascism. |
| 0:39.2 | She says that austerity programs and pushing down wages were the things that generated |
| 0:44.9 | fascism and what followed. She also contends, we're returning to that world. In fact, we're |
| 0:51.7 | more than a decade into something which seems, potentially in Europe |
| 0:55.5 | anyway, like a rerun. So what is liberal economics and what is its relationship to fascism? |
| 1:02.0 | Is capitalism even possible running alongside democracy? Or are these two systems which simply |
| 1:07.9 | can't work together? All important conversations and all tied up in a new book |
| 1:14.5 | published by Clara Matte, Escape from Capitalism, Economics is Political and other liberating truths. |
| 1:22.0 | Clara Matte, welcome to downstream. Thank you for having me. Who are you? |
| 1:29.9 | I'm... Let's start from the top. |
| 1:37.0 | So I'm the author of the book we're discussing today called Escape from Capitalism. Economics is political and other liberating truth. I'm a professor of economics. I teach in the US. I was teaching |
| 1:42.6 | in New York and now I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma. |
| 1:45.8 | And the reason is that I also started with other members of the group, the Forum for Real |
| 1:52.4 | Economic Emancipation, or free. So free, free forum.org is where you can get more information |
| 1:59.2 | of what we do, but essentially it is an attempt |
| 2:01.7 | to redemocratize our economy, take action in what is right now an economic system that is |
| 2:08.8 | really not working for people, and it's not designed to work for people. |
... |
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