Sign up for the new Downstream Newsletter here: https://novaramedia.com/newsletters/the-downstream-newsletter/ 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? 00:00 Intro 03:15 What Is the Capital Order? 04:24 Capitalism Isn’t Natural 05:27 Global Inequality Statistics 07:58 How Capitalism Is Propped Up 11:05 Doesn’t the State Give Loads of Free Handouts? 17:08 The Relationship Between Austerity, Rearmament & Fascism 25:37 Austerity Works for Capitalism: Here’s How 36:02 Post WW1 Italy, Austerity & Fascism 39:51 British Monetary Policy, Italian Fascism 45:09 WW1: A Lost Modernity 47:24 Liberalism: Expelling History Is the Best Way to Preserve the Status Quo 52:50 Economists Around Mussolini 55:49 How Liberalism Has Sided with Fascism 1:03:25 Market Dependence and the Coercion of the Wage Relation 1:06:00 The Re-Politicisation of History 1:07:47 Capitalism & Democracy Can’t Co-Exist 1:11:53 Alternative Institution Building 1:17:01 China as an Alternative Model Clara Mattei is a founder of the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation: https://www.freefreeforum.org/ @freefreeforum Support our work: http://novara.media/support Buy Novara Media merch: https://shop.novaramedia.com/ Discuss the show on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Novara/_Media/
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