Escape From Capitalism

Clara E. Mattei

£22.00

We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.

To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.


Penguin Books Ltd
22 January 2026
ISBN: 9780241742181
Hardback
224 pages

From the publisher

'Capitalism seems invincible and inevitable. It is neither. Clara Mattei illustrates brilliantly its fragility and restores hope that everything could be different' Yanis Varoufakis

Economics is sold as pure and apolitical: scientific, neutral, exact. This urgent book exposes its true role: to convince us there's no alternative to capitalism.

We live in a world dominated by the dogma that austerity is necessary, unemployment natural, endless wars inevitable and central banks all-powerful. It doesn't have to be this way.

In her bold, ground-breaking manifesto, economist Clara E. Mattei tears the mask off our economic system. She unpacks key concepts like growth, inflation, unemployment and balanced budgets to show how they're weaponized to enforce market dependence, not freedom, stripping us of the power to shape the democratic decisions that govern our daily lives. Enduring problems such as poverty and inequality are not accidents or bugs in the economy, but core features - justified with pseudoscientific models to support a system that unfairly rewards people with the most resources.

Why should we accept this? Capitalism, Mattei argues, isn't inevitable, scientific, or natural - it's a relatively young system that can be replaced. Inspired by a lineage of political resistance, Escape from Capitalism calls for us to challenge the broken economics of our times, and pave the way towards liberation.