Ep 374 - Escape From Capitalism with Clara Mattei

Steve Grumbine: 00:00:01

All right, folks, this is Steve with Macro and Cheese.

Folks, it's been a long time. Actually, it's been since we had the onset of the che, which is a organization that my guests started and then summarily moved on to free.

And her name is Clara E. Matei. Professionally, she is the professor of economics at the University of Tulsa and the founding president of Free Forum for Real Economic Emancipation.

You can learn more@freefreeforum.org where she hosts the weekly free podcast. And just so you all know, Clara was also the author of a book that was one of my true awakenings. I talk about awakenings all the time. This is.

This book brought about a clear awakening in my life called the Capital Order. And she told us that she was doing a trilogy. And now we're going to talk about her second book, which is the subject of today's conversation.

It is Escape from Capitalism, and it came out just this year. Very good read, very exciting. And let me just say up front for you MMT purists out there, I'm going to have some critique.

We're going to talk about this book because out of everything, it is an amazing redress and takedown of the Capitol Order. We learned all about how austerity was created by economists last time we had her on.

And now we're going to learn about how we're going to escape from capitalism. So without further ado, let me bring on my guest, Claire Matei. Welcome to the show.

Clara Mattei: 00:02:16

Thank you so much, Steve, for having me.

Steve Grumbine: 00:02:19

Absolutely. I listen to this book, folks. My eyes are terrible, so I listen frequently, but I follow along with my Kindle.

And I've gone through this book four different times. I've had people on my team comb through it as well. We all are Clara Stans.

We do have our own critiques because we are a modern monetary theory organization that is blending the understanding of Marxist theory and modern monetary theory. So we have our own positions on this.

And Clara and I had a conversation offline, so I'm so excited because we'll be able to discuss our differences and also accentuate the wonderful nature of this book. This book is must read, so please go out and get it. So with that Clara, three years ago or so, you talked about writing a trilogy.

We knew this second book was coming. Tell us a little bit about your prep and the foundation for book number two here.

Clara Mattei: 00:03:14

Thank you. The Escape from Capitalism is not exactly the sequel to the Capital Order.

That is going to be the one I'm writing currently, which is about actually the Golden Age and kind of dismantling the myth that Keynesianism could actually escape austerity. So it will be good conversation whenever that comes out, to continue our debate.

This one is an urgent call for action that I felt like was crucial was to get out a book that kind of systematized what I've learned through the historical research producing the Capital Order, but especially through talking to so many different audiences, especially non academics, a lot of organizers, a lot of union representatives, just a lot of people at large that were just like worried about our economic system. So the Escape from Capitalism is really kind of a broader theorization of where we stand and the origins and developments of capitalism.

And what is the type of economic theory that kind of justifies a system that right now has no reason to exist.

Honestly, we know that what is happening as we speak, the terrible violence in the Middle east, the displacement of millions of people, the death of children, this is in a way the pinnacle of deeper issues that are just escalating.

And right now, um, there's too much suffering going on of working people all over the world for us to just accept this incredibly irrational course of events. And what I tried to show in this book is that what is irrational for us for the logic of need is actually quite rational for the logic of profit.

So the idea is that it's only through explaining how capitalism actually operates that we can break free.

Part of breaking free, I would just like to say all also comes from the fact that I've not only been engaged in writing, but also in participating and building a democratic structure through an assembly based organization. So the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation, which is the website, is actually free.

Free forum.org because free forum was already not possible to use. Freefreeforum.org is really an attempt to say, well, academics speak a lot and then do very little.

While I wanted to actually be very true to Gramsci's insight, and I know on this podcast you had a chance to really dig into Gramsci. Gramsci has been a very big source of inspiration.

that Gramsci was building in: 1919

Well, I thought that this is really important is to remain true to the concept of praxis, that the idea that really new ideas can only emerge if we participate concretely in institution building. And so the Free for me is really this space in which I've been learning way more than like reading 10, 20, 30, 40 books.

I mean, if you engage in actually trying to build a horizontal structure that is participated taking decisions and building an alternative to capitalism on the ground in a place like Tulsa, Oklahoma, that's really when you get a lot of insights.

So the book is also trying to like discuss, especially in the last chapter, the book Escape from Capitalism, this current one that just came out with Simon and Schuster, is really trying to kind of grapple with what are these alternatives and how can we even in, you know, the periphery of the empire in Tulsa, Oklahoma, kind of take action. And the free is going extremely well. So not only our YouTube is growing, so if you want to follow us, it would be great again at Free.

Free Forum is our handle, but it's also growing physically on the ground. We have over 80 people that join our assemblies twice a week.

We have events on the ground that are really bringing together a lot of folks that have not had the luck to like, learn about critical knowledge and exposing them to it.

We are now building a participatory budgeting campaign to get participatory budgeting to be enacted in Tulsa, as well as taxes on wealth at a local level, which are actually possible constitutionally. But, you know, there's not a lot of political will usually, and we're operating to build a community land trust.

So there's a lot of these empowering movements on the ground that show that capitalism can be defeated if we start local with initiative, that bring back the agency of people in our economy.

Steve Grumbine: 00:07:50

I love it. I mean, this is to me, one of the big awakenings I've had since we last talked.

Also, I had been a very positivist mmt' er, where I believed that we could do all these wonderful things, but I didn't have a really deepened theory of understanding capital, even though I had read your book. I've read pretty much all of the books that matter in terms of the old theory and even some of the new theory.

And one of the things that came to mind was that MMT doesn't have to be a description of all these wonderful things we can do. MMT can also show the tools of war that the Capitol Order uses through the government against us.

And the lies that they tell us to keep us believing that we can't do great things. And I meshed it up with your book because I believe that MMT strengthens your case.

I believe not necessarily in, like, hey, we can vote for a Green New Deal tomorrow, honest weekend, right? Like all these kind of Pollyanna ideas and not taking into account who.

Who the dominant institutions serve, who the people are served by, and whether or not the people are served in any way, shape or form by this government. And I love the way you expose the fallacy of democracy within a capitalist system.

And so when I thought through this, I'm reading your book and light bulbs are just shooting off everywhere. And one of the things that jumped out at me was things like in chapter two, you discussed interest rates, for example.

And I was like, yeah, because you were talking about how interest rates provide money to the wealthy and they hurt the working class. True. I'm like, yes, yes, yes.

But then you said that because of interest rate hikes, the government's cost of borrowing would go up and so it would create austerity. And I said no, because the government doesn't really care about the interest rates.

You know, and this is where my faulty knowledge of capital kicked in, because I kept thinking, like many other mmt, oh, we can just vote our way into the prosperity. Well, we could just overthrow capitalism at the ballot box. Honest, we can.

And it just sort of dawned on me how naive that is and how childish that viewpoint is. And I don't mean to be derogatory in saying that. I just meant, like, I did not have an understanding of how institutions serve the ruling elite.

That I get to Gramsci, I give Vijay Prashad a big shout out for his helping me through that. And also your book, which is what really turned me on to reading prison notebooks, which was a hard read.

But with all that said, I think it's important to note that the government is the creator of the currency. It doesn't require private banks to give them its currency.

So when they tell us that they can't do these things, it's not just an economic story, it's a lie. It is a functional lie that they use to ensure that your version of austerity that you've detailed so well comes to be.

They lie to us about the ability to afford, they lie to us about where money comes from.

They do these things and they confuse people, especially working class people who are trying to figure out why in the world this government doesn't serve them. But in reality, you are the reason why I understand it, because you describe the capital order so well. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

That to me, I think one of the things that I wish I could have talked to you about was the fact that interest rates do not in any way, shape or form affect the government's ability to spend money into existence and tax it out of existence.

They just maintain that lie so that we accept the crumbs off the table and then we end up fighting each other, thinking it's our hard earned tax dollars paying for Israel, paying for abortions or paying for trans medical care or what all the things that we find icky, we can say, ah, I don't want my tax dollars going to that. And they do this on purpose. So to me, that was one of the critiques I had there because the rest of it was spot on.

I was like my head just didn't stop nodding.

Clara Mattei: 00:12:00

Yeah.

So I guess it always depends what government we're talking about because yes, the federal government in the United States, of course, has a lot of more space in a way to acquire monetary power. But I also think that it's important to note that at the local level, for example, interest rates do tie the hands, you know.

Steve Grumbine: 00:12:20

Yes.

Clara Mattei: 00:12:21

That's why cities are so broke, because A, they don't tax wealth and this is something they could do.

Steve Grumbine: 00:12:27

Yep.

Clara Mattei: 00:12:28

B, is that, you know, they do have to borrow a lot because they don't have a lot of resources.

And so of course, countries in the global south that depend on the dollar, that is of course the world money still, and they depend on having large reserves of dollars in order to maintain their financial credibility.

Steve Grumbine: 00:12:46

Amen.

Clara Mattei: 00:12:47

That is the hands of the majority of governments in the world are tied. Right.

So we are talking about a very specific case, which is the case of the United States as still financial hegemon, not anymore a productive hegemon, but still financial. So in a way, yes, I agree with that.

But I also think that it's important to not universalize the American situation because otherwise we make it too simple. Like part of the how capitalism, militarism and imperialism are very connected.

And I actually we just recorded today with Costas Lapavitsas, who will be on our free podcast.

You know, this is part of how the capitalist imperialism of the United States maintains its force is through the Fed and the interest rates by subordinating most of the periphery. So I think part of the escape from capitalism as a book rather than just taking Europe.

You know, my first book, the Capital Order, was a case of a comparison between Italy and Britain. While here, I really tried hard to include a perspective from the global south in the key of decolonizing economics, which is very important.

And, you know, there's a whole movement on decolonizing economics that I think should be taken very seriously, 100%.

And it all was sparked also by, of course, the terrible genocide that continues because, you know, now we know Lebanese and other people in the Middle east are being hit really hard in Gaza still. The food is not entering and people are starving.

I did reflect a lot on what the current massacre of civilians in Palestine meant for the evolution of capitalism. And I think this is a historic moment. And I wanted really in the book to also center the relation between Palestine and Israel.

Palestine in quotes, in the sense that it's occupied territories in relation to economic violence, because I think the economic dimension that is so violent, not just in Palestine, but everywhere, is what mainstream economics hides and what we really need to bring to light.

And I think focusing on how the relation between Palestinian territories and Israel really just emphasizes these relations of subordination and financial subordination also to monetary authorities, that is true much more globally. Right.

So de exceptionalizing Palestine and like, giving it a role as, like, explaining to us in a much more stark way what is true in a broader sense. So this is what I would say to your point.

And now what you say is also very important because it shows you that actually there is a lot of space for political change.

That is a space that we need to explore, but we need to explore it realizing that if finding the money is not the problem, if you touch redistribution, that is a real problem for our economic system.

And again, it's not a problem for us because the majority of Americans are suffering economically and would benefit from larger distribution of resources.

But I think that what I try to emphasize in this book is, and I think we kind of discussed this already together, there are political limits to what is feasible under capitalism.

So even if you have, you know, the technical possibility, this doesn't mean that the political consequences won't be, at the end of the day, potentially destructive for the type of class balance that this economy requires, which is a balance that really oppresses the majority.

So, you know, if the MMT fight is a fundamental fight to say there is the technical space there, but then we need to, like, own the political consequences which could be potentially disrupted for the status quo, which would be great given how horrible the status quo is.

But then, you know, as you were pointing out, like, not to think that we can Just be naive technocrats and be like, okay, we fixed this and everything is going to be fine.

I mean, we fixed this and class balances might change and this is a good thing, but we need to own it and we need to know that, as Gramsci pointed out, transformative forces comes with reaction.

So either we're able to like fight against that reaction or that reaction will take also very ugly forms as we are seeing in many places in the Global South.

Steve Grumbine: 00:17:03

You are spot on. I just also want to say you talked to one of my good friends, Ndongo Sambasilla, the Senegalese economist, and he is an MMT as well.

And I seen you working with Jamie Galbraith many other times. So I'm really thrilled to see there is some integration going on.

Ndongo, you know, talks about the cfa, Frank and I really appreciated your conversation with him. Someone else I might recommend you talk to is African development economist FADL Kaboob. He is a dear friend. We just had him on recently as well.

Clara Mattei: 00:17:35

Very cool.

Steve Grumbine: 00:17:36

I think he would add tremendous value in this space because I think he's a fellow traveler with us.

In any event, getting back to this, we just did some great work on the Global south and empire and understanding the wages of war that are occurring and watching the empire as it thrashes around under Trump right now. And your book goes into so much detail. I would like very much to. To.

To kind of get away from the critique now and let's get into the real assessment of capital and really understanding the mechanisms by which capitalism maintains its hegemony. Would you mind diving into that?

Clara Mattei: 00:18:15

Yeah, there's a lot to be said there. How does capitalism attain its hegemony? Well, I think this hegemony is cracking right now.

And this is, you know, the only good aspect of all of this suffering and deaths is that I think we are living in a moment in which the stark violence is having even the most well meaning liberals wake up and realize that their type of narrative doesn't really explain what is happening or it has very limited potential to give us a better future. So I think the system is unraveling and this is why there is so much interest in, for example, the free.

The type of conversation about escaping capitalism is really reaching a much broader audience. I was on this Channel 4 News interview, which is a very mainstream channel.

It got over half a million visualizations and all the comments were of people just screaming. They were fed up with the system. Right.

So there is that element that we are living in a moment in which this buffing up of militaristic force to maintain the predominance of the United States.

States in Israel is really disclosing a lot of problems that go at the root and that are problems that have been there for a much longer time than just the past couple of years. So I would say that the book Escape from Capitalism really tries to problematize what we usually take for granted.

And I think what is very important for also MMT theory to really keep as part of its conceptual arsenal, which is labor relations. Right. And the connection between monetary theory and labor relations that needs to be really kept at center in the conversation.

And so the Escape from Capitalism starts really saying, well, we really take for granted that we are market dependent, Meaning that, you know, everything we need we have to buy and to buy things, from education to healthcare to a house to paying rent or our electricity bill. And now in the United States we'll see people will be having a hard time paying electricity bills and their gasoline, given what is happening.

While of course multinationals, especially in the oil industry, are making windfall profits at the moment.

We need to stop taking for granted this market dependence and realizing that market dependence is the foundation of how capitalism remains in place because it traps us in a way that is more invisible to exploitation.

And when I talk about exploitation, I mean it in the, you know, traditional Marxian tradition, which is that we lose our agency during the majority of our workday and we also give up the output of our labor. So we are forced to work in order to survive. We sell our capacity to work to our employer.

And in this very element we see how fundamentally our economic system is based on non democratic relations of production. And this is true both in the center of the empire and of course with the value chains and global value chains in the south of the globe.

So it's the universal characteristic of capitalism since its foundation, which I discuss in the book as being the result of these moments in which people were made market dependent.

And this is very important is that we weren't born market dependent as Homo sapiens, we become market dependent because this is exactly what capitalism is all about in the sense that it bases the extraction of value, this accumulation of capital, on the fact that there are people there willing to get a job. And when you get a job, you're working for someone else, producing value for that someone else, and getting very little in your paycheck.

And you know, what I stress in the book is that this market dependence that coerces us economically, of course, does lend justification to capitalism exactly because we don't see it. It's very different from a feudal lord that oppressed its serf. The serf was not market dependent.

The serf had access to his or her means of subsistence, right? The commons, the land, the pasture. But they were giving up portion of the product of their labor through political force.

This political coercion was much more obvious. Now what we see under capitalism is instead that this obvious political coercion is lost because we have lost our means of subsistence.

So no one can escape market dependence. And that is enough. You don't really need anyone to knock at your door and force you to work.

I would also say that exploitation, of course, has nothing to do with bad paid jobs.

Because of course, if you are a software engineer working for Google or Microsoft, and you know that Google and Microsoft are producing technology to exterminate entire populations, you have to do it if you want to keep your job, right? So this lack of agency is true also for those who don't consider themselves as workers because they are paid fairly well with respect to others.

So this is the whole point is to say that actually capitalist exploitation, which is the foundation of how our economy functions, is invisibilized by the very workings of the system. And this allows the system to seem less fragile than it actually is because we take it for granted.

And there are certain historical moments, of course, in which this relations of exploitation become more visible.

I would end by also telling you that of course, as you know, I really stress how not only does this specific characteristic of capitalism make exploitation invisible, it's also that the type of theories and the type of lenses through which we look at the world invisibilize exploitation even further.

And this is the role of economics that, you know, tells the people in the Global south that they're poor because their markets are inefficient and their institutions are corrupt, rather than pointing the finger to the fact that actually they're poor because we need to have them be poor if we want to be rich. And this is also true within the United States right Now we have 12 people who own more than the bottom half of the world population.

So that is actually more than 4 billion people.

Steve Grumbine: 00:24:35

Wow.

Clara Mattei: 00:24:36

So this is where we're at. We have 19 people accumulating over 2 trillion in the past two years, while we know that half of the world population is in poverty.

And we have over 2 billion people who are food insecure. So we are really in a situation which of course, inequality has never been so stark in the history of humankind.

And in all this we have economics as a discipline that is incapable structurally of understanding why. This is because they do not problematize exploitation.

This is because for them, value comes out of savings that are kind of just accumulated by individuals who then are capable of investing, and they get their fair remuneration for their investment. And this is what profit is at the end of the day, is just the marginal productivity of capital that goes back to the entrepreneur.

That is basically a proxy for these corporations completely losing sight that actually, according to the labor theory of value, it's this value, this extra value is actually coming out of unpaid labor. So we see here how economics as a discipline has helped invisibilize what is so unjust of our economy and goes to the root of it.

So this is how the system tries to remain intact and justified.

I do think that given the current escalation of violence and given how no one really believes in mainstream economics anymore, we are in a good place to propose a different framework that actually tries to connect the dots and look at all of the different aspects that make up capitalism. And this is what the book Escape from Capitalism tried to do.

Of course, it's a small pamphlet, and it's definitely, you know, building on the tradition that I participate in, and I give it my own twist, but it is definitely based on a tradition that, you know, I'm not discovering anything new in what I talk about in the book.

Steve Grumbine: 00:26:38

Well, I want to say this. I think this is really important.

When we first talked, I was still suffering from bad man theory, the opposite of great man theory, where I was looking at the individuals a lot of times and being upset with the individuals, although they may be horrible people in some way, shape or form, whether they're a good person or a bad person is almost irrelevant.

And I think this is the hard thing in the era of Trump, where we see this before buffoon driving everything crazy, starting wars every which way but loose. And so it's easy to say, oh, if we just get rid of Trump, everything will be okay. We'll be back to brunch, and life will be good.

It took a lot of reading, and I want to credit you for being the catalyst for my growth in this space here. It's really a system issue. It's not just, yes, they're bad people, yes, they're murderous, yes, they're committing genocide, yes, yes, yes.

But the system itself will still breed these outcomes.

In fact, one of the big aha moments Rosa Luxembourg quote that I pulled out, which was, you know, a socialist enters into the government doesn't change the government to a socialist government, but they become basically a bourgeois minister because the system itself is incapable of doing what they want it to do. It's like, why isn't this box a good wheel? Well, because it's a box, it's not a wheel. And so the box does what a box does. Why does a dog bark?

Well, a dog barks because it's a dog. And it's like, why does capitalism produce these outcomes? Because it's capitalism. It's a system of predation, of literal oppression and alienation.

It's not some benign thing. And I think people just assume these traits that you call out so well are just natural. There is no alternative kind of things.

And I do believe that there's a rupture, there is an opportunity. And I don't believe it's going to happen at the ballot box.

I do believe it's going to happen by building parallel systems of building dual power and organizing and working locally and working with people and educating because people, their brains are rotten right now because of the hegemonic institutional madness that the hegemony creates in us.

Intermission: 00:29:01

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Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon substack or our website realprogressives.org now back to the podcast.

Steve Grumbine: 00:29:21

I would love to hear more about your version of organizing and how that practices from taking your theoretical understanding, your historical understanding, and then adding it to your local organizing. Can you talk to me more about that?

Clara Mattei: 00:29:38

Yes, all you said. Absolutely.

And I think this is the whole point, is that we need to understand that someone like Donald Trump, for all his evilness, he's not the author of the disaster. He is really a symptom.

So he's accelerating and making more obvious, certain deeper, deeper trends that we need to lucidly understand historically right now and connect the ecological, the labor exploitation, the militarism. This is all like different facets of a capitalist economy working at its best.

And I think this is really important, is really the book Escape from Capitalism really tries to get out of the idea that again, it's the rotten apple by saying, no, this is what the logic of profit is supposed to fulfill. Right.

It's the point is that the system is working at its best in a direction that does not work for those very people who inhabit this economic system. And I think this is a line of thinking that is important to Avoid raising exceptions and individualistic perspectives.

And I guess to get into the organizing, the last point I wanted to make before is that my research on austerity, and I know that we can debate this, and I'm really happy to get the critiques on your end because I learned from them a lot. What I really tried to show is that capitalism and austerity have gone hand in hand, for basically I would claim all of capitalist existence.

And that's why I'm writing a book on the Golden Age, to show that actually it was there also during Kennedy and Johnson, paradoxically. Right.

During those years in which supposedly we were doing something different, at least in the United States, not of course, in the rest of the world. But that's the thing is to say, you know, right now we know that the US is spending over 2 billion a day on the war.

And, and we know that these 2 billion a day could be enough to offer Free Public College, $10 a day of childcare per American. Right? The Pentagon is now seeking $200 billion.

So these are exorbitant amount of money that could really solve all social problems in the United States. But this is not happening. And it's not happening not just because, you know, Trump and the whole Capitol Hill are against it. It's deeper than this.

And what I want to show is that in fact, austerity policies are those policies that the capitalist state prefers to use because they serve that very purpose of maintaining that basic subjugation of the majority in place. That market dependence that I discussed is not a natural feature. It constantly needs to be reinforced.

So this is for me a empowering message that comes out of historical critical scholarship is to say this capital order that is so oppressive is actually quite fragile because it doesn't happen on its own.

It constantly needs political pressure and political force from governments and state institutions and the Fed and all of the economic institutions to be maintained in place. And this is exactly what austerity does because it shifts resources away from common people.

You know, we've become more market dependent when food stamps, Medicaid is taken away away from us, while the money is going to protect these corporate elites that are benefiting even from genocide and war. So this is part of the toolbox that the state uses.

And it's not that optional because we see again that if there were enough pressure from below to actually say, well, why don't you use this money that you can create federal government, right, and use it to actually fund, for example, a real UBI well, we wouldn't be under capitalism anymore. I mean, it could happen historically because humans have lived in different economies in different societies.

So if there were enough mobilization to actually pressure these technocratic institutions to do something that shakes the current class structure, for example, decreasing market dependence with serious social redistribution, something that, by the way, has never happened in the United States, because even Lyndon Johnson Great Society project was based on the explicit idea that this was not going to any way touch the class balance. It was only going to try to help improve the lives of middle class, working class and elites all together. Right.

So there was no concept of redistribution. It was all about, you know, investment that could kind of lift all boats, if you will, right? Through increasing job opportunities.

So again, through making wage labor more productive, so maintaining people anchored to wage labor as the way out, including those minorities and, you know, the black communities that were being historically oppressed by capitalism. Right.

So this is the whole point is that if this system were to be pressured, if we as people were able to pressure these governing institutions to do serious social redistribution, we wouldn't necessarily be under capitalism anymore because people would oppose being stuck in wage labor. Right. And be opposed working for the ecological destruction and the militaristic destruction of the planet.

So I think this is really important, is that we understand that austerity is not really optional for capitalism because it's mostly a tool to maintain the basic political discipline that is at the foundation of our capitalist economy. And that's, for me, why it's the capital order.

This invisible order is a political order because it needs to be reinforced and costly, protected because it's historical and thus changeable. And if people do organize, they can change it.

And so we need to be aware of how reforms, structural reforms that are really redistributive could have potentially really social transformative consequences that we need to be able to live up to and courageously fight for. So I have a tendency to speak a lot in this interview. This is the general point.

What we're experimenting at, the free is, I think, one way in which this sense of agency that we need to rebuild because it's real, we do have agency, they're just trying to hide it from us.

So once we realize that the system is preventing our agency to be expressed and it needs us to not express our agency, otherwise it falls, then we have, I think, a much more of a sense that we can get creative as to what we can do.

The free forum, so the Forum for Real Economic emancipation is an experiment based in Tulsa, but it has a global reach in the sense that, again, our YouTube freefreeforum.org and our, let's say, online classes are for a global audience. And we have a lot of people now that are reaching out because they want to open chapters in other places.

And this is the whole point is to say this is an experiment that can be reproducible and we could potentially have chapters all over the world to connect as a network. Now, is this gonna, like, create right now a change of the status quo? Potentially not, but it's the beginning, right?

And I think that's the whole point is that if we think that we need to do things that are huge, we feel paralyzed. And our spirit at the Free is we start small, we start local, but we start concrete and we educate people.

And so there's that educational part of the story. And every month we have an event in Tulsa. They're all on our website if you want to see them.

We had one on food insecurity, we had one on slavery and capitalism, one on mass incarceration, one on participatory budgeting. Different topics to explain and teach. But then there's also the part about organizing in itself.

So the assembly is now a body that is run horizontally through circles. So we have seven operative circles right now.

Then there's the circle of the circles, which is the root circle that kind of has all the catalyst of the other circles come together once a week. So we're meeting a lot. This is the democracy takes time. There's a lot of time involved in democratic procedures. A lot of drama.

People, you know, are not easily socializable in assembly spaces. We are not educated to do so. So we're kind of re educating ourselves to be in a collective that is capable of making decisions.

And for now, it's working and it's growing. So I think this is also humanizing many of us. We all feel more human when we are in an assembly.

Steve Grumbine: 00:38:25

I appreciate this so much because, you know, our organization is very small and we focused on a niche area. So growing, you know, like that is a challenge.

And I can assure you, even with a small organization, that trying to get people to meet is a challenge. And then trying to get them to actually unmute their mic or participate is another challenge as well. I want to go back to something you said, though.

You know, when I think about what is the transformational things that quote, unquote, could happen if we weren't living under capitalism, or even if we were living under capitalism, but we had control of the state, which we don't.

Also things like universal basic services, where because when I think of a ubi, I think about the capital order still being able to jack prices around, and I've got my UBI in hand, and who's to say I can even get what I need? Because they control the pricing structure. They have monopoly power over pricing. So I have my ubi, but it doesn't necessarily get me anything.

It doesn't give me what I need. And Jason Hickel went out of his way, and I really. You and him both are very instrumental in a lot of my awakenings.

But Jason, you know, came up with this decommodifying our existence through universal basic services.

Clara Mattei: 00:39:41

Right?

Steve Grumbine: 00:39:42

And when you think about it, it goes back to the fundamental nature of capitalism.

Couldn't survive that way, because if we had alternatives, if our housing was taken care of, if our healthcare was taken care of, if our education was taken care of, if food was available and we weren't worried about, you know, going bankrupt over cancer or bankruptcy for whatever, we wouldn't need the capital order. We could literally walk away and we would serve one another. You know, it's not like employment would go away. It's just employment would change.

It's just the things that we do for one another would be about ensuring we survive and thrive versus the alternative.

And to me, when I think about all the folks that haven't had that epiphany yet that still are somehow or another thinking they can negotiate with capitalism, and, you know, they're looking at Gavin Newsom and weirdly ignoring the fact that he destroyed homeless encampments in California and doesn't want to tax billionaires.

And, you know, when I see them say, well, he's better than Trump and things like that, I mean, I'll be honest with you, we don't really believe we're voting our way out of any of this. We believe we need to organize, we need to build outside of this. And, you know, we believe in revolutionary theory here as well.

So to us, when we think about these things, I see elections as opportunities for us to educate, but I don't see them as being opportunities to somehow or another rule the ruling class through elections, when this system is their system, that they have all kinds of bulwarks and little blockers and, you know, the rotating villain. And what was that guy, the parliamentarian stopped the pro act.

I mean, at the end of the day, you see the executive is making decisions without Congress weighing in. He's just doing whatever he wants.

So this government, this capital order that is run through the government that is given legitimacy through the puppets in power. That's not for us, man. These are not the people we're looking for. This is not the system we are looking for.

Yeah, and I don't want to come off as what the trope ism of ultra leftist, but I guess I fit into that to some degree that I don't really believe that we can vote our way to the things that we're talking about. I believe we have to organize our way there. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because the role of elections has got a lot of folks very perplexed.

I mean, again, looking back to Rosa Luxembourg, these people that you voting for, you love them to death. They may be a wild flaming socialist, but once they're put into a position, they are suddenly now a manager of capitalism.

They are an administrator of capitalism. They are not revolutionary in any way. Can you talk about that?

Clara Mattei: 00:42:24

Yes. You raised so many important points, so let me see if I can trace back a few. Sorry, yes.

First is there is a colleague and dear friend called Camila Vergara who you should have on the show, if she hasn't come yet, who wrote this book called Systemic Corruption.

And it's a wonderful book, came out with Princeton and which I think she like, summarizes very well what a lot of theorists, such as, for example, Rasa Luxembourg clearly understood, which is of course, it's like the constitutional structure.

And the American Constitution is a clear example of how this operates, is built to encase the elite and structurally detach this elite from the majority of the population. Right. So again, capitalism is not just an economic beast. Right.

There's a socioeconomic political beast that requires a certain legal and political order to make it work. And this is really important.

This is like we get out of that positivist, like, naturalistic kind of sense by which, you know, capitalism is just a spontaneous market economy. Market economy is not capitalism. It's a very reductive and ideological way of understanding capitalism.

Again, because capitalism is based on specific relations of exploitation and the market is just a way to allow for profits to be realized. Right. The market has very little to do with. With fulfilling people's needs.

This is just in the pathetic models of those economists who try to justify the system. The market is not the most efficient way to like, exchange commodities to fulfill the need. Because this is the craziness of the economic models.

They make us think that the market is there to serve our purposes, it's there to fulfill our needs. It's the opposite.

The market is a tool by which corporations and Those private investors who we delegated the most important decisions regarding our lives to are able to realize their profits. And this has all to do with the logic of profit. The logic of needs is completely irrelevant unless it's instrumental to the realization of profit.

So this is really crucial.

And so once we understand this, we understand that the legal and constitutional apparatuses are as fundamental as anything else or a capitalist economy. And this is why the capitalist state is structurally detached from those who it's supposed to represent. Right?

So the big detachment between our representatives and the represented is not, again, because a specific elected official is just bad or corrupt or greedy or whatever. That's absolutely nonsense. The point is that he joins a structure that is meant to detach him or her from the base.

And this is, by the way, true also of union representatives who are structurally detached from the base from the very fact that once they start even like becoming a representative, they usually get paid a lot more money. They usually lose touch with those who supposedly they're represented. And this is the rules of the game. This is the whole point.

It's the rules of the game that matter here. To understand why there is such systemic corruption. Again, it's not individual corruption. It's systemic. Okay?

So Camila talks about that, and I think that's very important. You know, constitutional theorists, again, Rosa Luxembourg, many others have talked about this a lot. So what do we do about elections?

I think, again, Rasa Luxembourg teaches us that it's reform for revolution in the sense that you want to use all the occasions possible to mobilize people. Right? And if the electoral process is one way to mobilize people, then one should use it.

But not to be naive and thinking that, you know, once you put someone in office, that's done, and we're going to be happy because this is what we do. Risk happening. Also in New York with Mamdani, right, the idea that actually now that he's voted in, everything will be fine.

No, you need to pressure those who you're even able to elect.

If you're able to actually get some of the people that stand for the workers within the systemically corrupt state apparatus, then you need to try to maintain the pressure on these people to actually represent their base, which is very, very difficult. But it's in the momentum of trying to create the pressure that people get organized and mobilized. And that, I think, is very important.

And that's why you need moments of mobilization, be it a campaign.

You know, this whole thing about what you just said about decommodifying our existence this is something that anyone would be in favor of, especially all the MAGA constituency. They would be all for it.

And the point is, this is tremendously revolutionary with respect to our economic system because it breaks its fundamental of market dependence, right? But if you find a campaign that can mobilize people, that is very positive, because right now we need to again, gain back our agency.

These campaigns, though, have to be encased within institution building.

And by the way, I'm not saying anything different than what Gramsci was writing in the prison notebooks already 100 years ago, because, I mean, this is just. Strategies of social transformation under capitalism are based on the same principles.

You know, there's the attack, there's the strike, there's the moment of mobilization. Can be a campaign, it can be, you know, trying to get someone in office. But this is just the fuel that requires some structure.

And the structure need to be these like dual power structures that we need to start building, right? And this is the whole point. That's why the councils were so important after the First World War.

That's why an assembly structure like the Free, I think, is really a good opportunity to say we can mobilize people, but we also need a permanent structure that can show that we can be democratic if we want to, right? So it's the dual power, like, they don't want to do it. Well, we'll do it anyway. And I'll give you a good example.

In Tulsa, we started this participatory budgeting campaign, right? So in February, we had a big event. We had 400 people in the room. We invited the mayor who came to respond.

So we kind of pressured him by having him on stage with a couple of people, a tax expert that was saying, look, you can, if you want, tax wealth locally.

And Matt Harder, who's been doing participatory budgeting all his life, which is the idea that people decide where the money goes, not the elite, right?

And this is already a really, really important thing that if it happened locally in Tulsa, could spread and it could really be an anti austerity cure. Now, we'd had the event, now we have a website called Tulsa Decides. We're running the campaign to really put pressure for this to happen.

Is the administration locally in Tulsa going to adopt it? Not immediately. Will it do it? If we show that we can organize ourselves and get results?

That's what we're trying to do is like we're gonna run a shadow thing and do it anyway and show that it's possible and give people a sense that they can participate. It's not true that they need to delegate it to experts. That's a scam.

They need to do it themselves and participate in the assembly, go around, ask people to do it. So this is what we're trying to do is like the dual power.

The fact that we'll do it anyway, then this will create a dialogue or at least a sense of accountability on the part of the administration, be it local or national. And I think this is a good strategy. Now, is it hard? Of course it's hard. Is it, though, very humanizing? Absolutely.

Like, I feel like a new person since I started organizing physically with the assembly in Tulsa. And now I'm in Italy for a couple of months due to family reasons.

And I feel very sad because part of me being alive was to participate in the assembly. But luckily, it's going well without me there, which makes me very happy. And they're gonna meet actually this Sunday, as every two weeks they do.

Steve Grumbine: 00:49:59

You know, I think I would like very much to figure out how we can be a part of this. Our organization, while small, seems to share in these desires. And I know we would like to be a part of something like that.

I hope there's a way that we can get involved.

Clara Mattei: 00:50:14

Yeah, that would be fantastic. Because, again, what you're doing, which is really educating people, is, I think, a fundamental element of this transformative process.

And I think, though, it can evolve into also having a broader base of people that actually come together. You know, for us, a big thing is to get people to take decisions on the event itself. Each event is a collective project. We cook collectively.

We decide on the artist. Each one of our events has grown. It started with a hundred people, and now we had.

Last event had 350 people in the room, and we are getting local press to cover it. Even Fox News has been covering all of our events very positively. We are flyering like crazy.

Flyering is crucial because you get out of the algorithm, the trap of the algorithm, Right. So you actually go and leave flyers around town. People come. You'd be surprised.

So many people want to get involved that are not in your usual circles.

So the events are kind of the place where you kind of attract people, and then from there, you tell people where we're meeting as an assembly, and you start meeting, and the assembly decides the events it wants to run.

And already, like, making decisions and getting a successful event in place is something that really empowers people to say, hey, look what we've done. You know, we had a really cool moment in which everyone was listening to a really important topic.

And at these events, we not only have scholars, we also have organizers. So people that come and kind of like give their perspectives on things. The next one we have is on April 10.

It will be on the Commons and regenerative economics and the Eleanor Finley, who will speak, she studied what's happening in Rojava, what's happening also in Chapas. In many places of the world, these types of stuff are happening. It's just that we don't know about them, but we can do that ourselves.

If we just start, like meeting. Just meeting with the neighbors is already a political act. And then you see what people want to do.

You know, we do the events, but now again, we have this campaign. We're starting to build solidarity networks. We have a lot of unhoused people in our group.

So we're like really building like mutual aid situations, gardening, the community land trust. Now we're trying to pressure the local government to give us some space to do that. So from the assembly, then ideas get created.

You don't need to have a template and like oblige people to do one thing. The point is that once we work together, we see what the community wants and where they want to focus their energies.

And this is something that can go in many different directions.

Steve Grumbine: 00:52:42

I think that is fantastic. Be counting on me coming back to you in email, finding out more. I watch your YouTube channel.

I really enjoy the presentations and I like the way you approach things. So I just want to say how grateful I am. You know, we are up against time, but I would like to give you the final word as to where we take this.

Your parting words.

Clara Mattei: 00:53:06

Thank you, Steve. I think we could open a free Macro and cheese Real Progressives chapter together. Yeah, somewhere. You. Where are you guys based?

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:17

Well, we're all over the place. I am the founder. So I guess if you're gonna put the P.O. Box, we're out here in basically Harrisburg, slash York, Pennsylvania.

Clara Mattei: 00:53:28

Oh, Pennsylvania.

Steve Grumbine: 00:53:29

But. But the rest of the gang is all over the country and really around the world. We have folks all over the place, so it's okay.

Clara Mattei: 00:53:36

Good. Well, tell people that there is space to open a free slash Real Progressives chapter. And I love it.

People should just, you know, if it's enough to be three people, you'll be surprised if you put a couple of flyers up. How many people join. We're gonna attend to build a chapter in this little town next to Stansted Airport in the uk.

Stansted is where there's Ryanair as airport Is there? So, yeah, Ryanair, which is like, of course, very exploitative airplane company.

So all the workers, many of them live in Bishop Stratford, if I said the name correctly. And so we're going to try out, we're going to have an event and then see if we can get an assembly going in May, actually there.

So again, I think the point is to, like, you know, see. But you'll be surprised, I think. Bishop Stratford. Yes, Stratford. So you'll be surprised how much space there is to do this kind of stuff anywhere.

And you'll be also surprised.

I'm the only academic involved in this attempt in Tulsa, and there's so many knowledgeable people that come from all walks of life that then give so generously to the organization. We have a cool board. So then you can go check it out. We have a board. We have three academics that are on the board.

David McNally and Camila Vergara and Homas arguing, who's an economist at Columbia. They're on the academic part. But then we have three community board members that are selected by the group.

So we just had the election of one of them.

And again, this election process is again, a space to say we don't want to do, like, you know, liberal elections, when people just go and consume a vote. It's actually about deliberation. It's collective.

So even in the picking our representatives, there is a very interesting space for figuring out the beauties of democratic decision making.

So I highly recommend, if anyone wants to try it out, we're gonna have a meeting, I think, in a month or so, because we're getting a lot of emails from people around the world who are interested in organizing. So we'll have a general meeting to see how we want to organize this proliferation of free chapters globally. And this is, you know, a movement.

It's not going to be the solution. But I think if everyone tries out some solutions, this is definitely better than nothing.

Steve Grumbine: 00:55:49

I love it. I really do. It's putting one foot in front of the other, and I mean, our arms and our legs are like Tyrannosaurus.

I mean, they're very useless right now because we haven't used them, we haven't exercised them. So we have to start somewhere. Right? And I appreciate you taking a shot at this. This is amazing.

Clara Mattei: 00:56:06

And you know what? It's pleasurable.

This is the whole point, is that unfortunately, this type of lifestyle that we lead in the west, even if we know we don't need to worry about paying our bills at the end of the month, which the majority of Americans, of course do is still a very alienated existence. And very few of us have communities of reference at this point.

So building a community that is not based on, like, interpersonal stuff, but it's actually based on a common project is so fulfilling because people feel like, you know, again, they ended up interacting and being with people they would never otherwise interact. And this is what is the beauty of like human socialization processes is that they can be so diverse and enriching.

So it's also about just like feeling better ourselves as we try to do something. I was so depressed with the whole genocide in Palestine. I was crying every day.

Steve Grumbine: 00:56:56

Me too.

Clara Mattei: 00:56:57

You know, I'm still depressed.

But I must tell you that just doing something that is concrete when I'm in the assembly, that's the only moment in which I don't think about the horrors. And I feel like I have a sense of purpose. And of course, we've been fundraising for our brothers and sisters in Gaza.

So also that element of just, even economic solidarity can be very central to the organization. So thank you, Steve, for having me and I hope we get the chance to talk again some more. And if you want, please read the book Escape from Capitalism.

Steve Grumbine: 00:57:26

Absolutely. Well, for the record, four times, girlfriend. I've read it four times. It is really good. All right, well, with that, Clara, I will be in touch.

You can count on that. And folks, I hope you do read the book. It is really excellent Escape from Capitalism.

And please don't be afraid to go back and read the Capital Order as well. I really found transformation in both ways books. So they're very good and I look forward to the next book coming out here soon.

All right, with that, I'm going to take us out. Clara. Thank you again for joining me, folks. My name is Steve Grumbine.

I am the host of Macaron Cheese and the founder of the nonprofit Real progressives. We are a 501C3, not for profit. We live and die on your contributions. Don't assume someone else is doing it. Chances are they aren't. We need your help.

So please, if you would consider becoming a monthly donor, you can go to patreon.com forward/realpower progressives. You can go to our website real progressives.org and become a monthly donor or a one time donor.

We have all kinds of different ways of donating their Venmo's even on there. And of course we have our own substack, Real Progressives. So please follow us, join us. Consider becoming a monthly donor or a one time donor.

Either way, we need the help. And Clara, on behalf of myself and the group, we were so excited to have you and this did not disappoint. So thank you so much again for joining us.

Clara Mattei: 00:58:46

Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day.

Steve Grumbine: 00:58:48

All right, on behalf of my guests, Clara Matei, myself, Steve Grumbine, Real Progressives and Macaron Cheese, we are out of here.

End Credits: 00:59:04

with the working class since: 2015