There's Nothing Natural About Capitalism

Clara Mattei, Assistant Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, joins the program to talk about the history of 'pure economics' as a tool to naturalize capitalism.

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Check out more from the MR crew:

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Brandon Sutton THE DISCOURSE

Emma Vigeland ESVN

Matt Lech LEFT RECKONING

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Even the classical political economy perspective of someone like Smith Ricardo and Marx sees the world as made up of seized capitalism as a unique economic system made up of class conflict in which the source of value is the worker and surplus comes from unpaid labor. Well, this framework was completely substituted at the end of the 1800s so in the beginning of the 20th century it's just really emerging. With this novel framework not of classical political economy but as you put it before pure economics. Neoclassical economics was at the time very intelligently called Pure economics. Exactly to expel the political element from the very title of the discipline. And instead of classes and conflict pure economists were seeing a world made up of individuals and Harmony. And the world in which capitalism disappeared. Magically we shouldn't be talking about capitalism anymore. We should be talking about markets. Because capitalism was in these models completely naturalized to the point that you weren't even discussing it as a unique socio-economic system. It was just the only system, it was just normal, it was just the way the world works. And that's it. and the way and I assume the way that the concept of pure capitalism or pure economics I should say Rises to the top is I would imagine at the turn of the 19th century entering into the 20th century. The way that an academic discipline Rises or Falls is a function of how much monetary support it gets from wealthy people.