Clara E. Mattei (https://claramattei.com), Assistant Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, joins the program to discuss the history of so-called ‘Pure Economics’ as an instrument of propaganda for implicitly normalizing capitalism as a natural, even universal part of life.
Her research contributes to the history of capitalism, exploring the critical relation between economic ideas and technocratic policy making. She recently published her first book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, November 2022). It investigates the origins of austerity after the WWI crisis to understand its logic as a tool of reaction against alternatives to capitalism.