The Disruptor
Contrarian and drawn to the edge; challenges the settled answer.
Clara Mattei is The Disruptor in its most rigorous form, an economic historian who attacks the legitimacy of capitalism itself rather than proposing repairs within it. She recasts austerity as structural necessity, not policy failure, and strips economic models of their claimed neutrality. Crucially, she does not stop at critique.
“Is that debt is okay if it's used to subsidize and de-risk private corporations, but it's not okay, of course, if the source is social resources because these social resources are what allow people to get a little bit less hooked by market dependence, right?”
“Absolutely. And that's so interesting what you're saying is that I would love to learn more about that. What we see in our system is, of course, that this coercion is much more invisible because, again, it seems like you're deciding whether to work or not. It's you who are in competition with other people.”
“And also the cost on the Italian working class, right? On electricity as everywhere. We're not getting the bombs, but we're getting the economic cost of the war These right wing figures, I think, are the expression exactly of the success of austerity.”
“Rose up, right? And this was happening in the heart of industrial capitalism in Britain, in Italy. It wasn't just happening in Russia and Eastern Europe. It was happening.”
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “Clara Mattei: capitalism is not natural - it’s enforced”
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