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FREE with Clara Mattei

FREE with Clara Mattei

Clara Mattei

The FREE podcast is hosted by economist Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order & Escape from Capitalism; and Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa. FREE stands for the Forum for Real Economic Emancipation. Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum

30 - Disproportionate Force: The long history of anti-colonial resistance.
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  • 30 - Disproportionate Force: The long history of anti-colonial resistance.

    Hamza Hamouchene on French colonialism in Algeria, Frantz Fanon, Dien Bien Phu, and the anti-colonial history linking Vietnam, Algeria, and Palestine today.He is co-editor of the recently published book Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance and Solidarity, https://tinyurl.com/Towards-Palestinian-Liberation, a collection praised by a wide ranging group of international scholars including Laleh Khalili, Andreas Malm and Yanis Varoufakis. He joins Clara Mattei to trace that history from Vietnam to Algeria and onward.France occupied Algeria for 132 years. Three million Algerians died in the first five decades of what the colonial authorities called pacification. In May 1945, while Europe celebrated the defeat of fascism, Algerians marched peacefully in SĂŠtif carrying their flag for the first time. Roughly 45,000 were killed in the two months that followed. By 1962, a quarter of the population had been confined in camps and 8,000 villages destroyed.Most of this appears nowhere in standard histories of France, and Hamza explains why the omission matters. Demands for self-determination meet disproportionate force, the response becomes the entire story, and the larger violence that produced it drops from view.Frantz Fanon read the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 as a victory belonging to every colonized nation. Algerians launched their revolution six months later. Hamza follows the solidarities behind it: Algerian and Moroccan dockworkers refusing to load cargo bound for Vietnam, Abd el-Krim writing from exile in Cairo, Palestinians funding and training movements across Latin America and Africa long before anyone spoke of a Global South. Bandung in 1955 and the New International Economic Order of 1974 grew from the same soil.Clara then turns to Adam Hanieh's chapter and the political economy of Western policy in the region. Hanieh identifies two pillars of US domination: Israel as an imperial outpost, and the oil monarchies of the Gulf. Normalization agreements from Camp David through the Abraham Accords work to bring those pillars together. The prize is control of the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal, which means leverage over global energy, fertilizer, plastics, and the trade routes carrying Chinese goods to Africa and Europe. A human rights framework explains none of this, which is much of why it remains the framework on offer.Clara connects the argument to FREE's recent Tulsa forum on data centers. The dispossession Oklahomans are organizing against runs on the same economic logic Hamza describes.Hamza Hamouchene is Programme Coordinator for North Africa at the Transnational Institute and the author of several works on political ecology and extractivism in North Africa.
    #vietnam #algeria #colonialism

    Wed, 19 Aug 2026 - 1h 17min
  • 29 - David Adler: The Freedom Flotilla, Peter Thiel & the New Colonial Order

    David Adler sailed on the Freedom flotilla to deliver aid through Israel's blockade, was intercepted at sea, and detained for days. Political economist Clara Mattei talks with him about what that experience opens onto: the shape of a new international disorder.David Adler is a political economist and co-General Coordinator of the Progressive International. With Clara, he argues that colonization is back on the table, a century after the great wave of anti-colonial struggle. He traces the coalition driving it: a Reactionary International of leaders, technologists, and financiers. He shows the surveillance infrastructure that locks it in, from Palantir's expansion into Europe to the global spyware economy.The conversation runs from Peter Thiel and Palantir to the comprador elites whose role is to sell away the sovereignty of their own countries. David and Clara compare two strategic bets, Cuba's investment in biopharmaceutical innovation and Israel's investment in military spyware. They close on what people can actually do: building assemblies, reclaiming sovereignty, and organizing the institutions that a weakened multilateral order has stopped providing. Along the way they take in Venezuela, Colombia, and the elections that signal where the next phase is heading.CHAPTERS00:00:00 Intro: 00:01:11 David Adler and the Progressive International00:01:58 On Board the Freedom Flotilla00:06:15 Organizing the Mission and the Interception at Sea00:11:24 Europe's Silence and the Recolonization of the Planet00:15:25 Peter Thiel and Palantir's Move into Europe00:19:49 The Warfare Economy and Resource Extraction00:26:02 The Reactionary International, Explained00:30:38 The Comprador Right: Selling Off Sovereignty00:36:50 Cell Phones, Atomization, and Political Breakdown00:40:10 Hyper-Politics and the Crisis of Consensus00:46:15 The Hague Group and the Strategy of Disarticulation00:48:05 Why Infrastructure Comes First00:53:43 Cuba's Biopharma Bet and Israel's Spyware Bet00:57:16 Building Alternative Institutions and Solidarity01:01:21 The Fight for Economic Sovereignty01:02:16 Progressive International's Campaigns: Peru and Colombia01:04:00 Closing Thoughts


    #DavidAdler #GazaFlotilla #PoliticalEconomy

    Sun, 16 Aug 2026 - 1h 04min
  • 28 - $50 Trillion Moved From the Working Class to the 1% | Ben Johnson, Inequality by Design

    $50 trillion has moved from the working class to the top 1% of Americans over the past four decades. Clara Mattei talks with Ben Johnson, co-author of Inequality by Design, about how the rules were written to make that happen.Drawing on four decades of public data, Ben Johnson and economist Dr. Ryan Mattson trace the widening gap between what the economy produces and what working people take home. A federal minimum wage frozen at $7.25 since 2009. A purchasing-power gap between minimum and average wages that has grown past $22 an hour. GDP figures that climb year after year, with the gains collecting at the very top. According to a RAND Corporation study, about $3,700 a year has left the pocket of every American below the top 1%, every year, for forty years. The book grounds these numbers in the lives of real people, then follows the policy choices that built the gap.The conversation widens to the long view. Johnson compares today's inequality to Bourbon France in the years before its revolution and to Tsarist Russia in its final decade, reading the historical record of where extreme concentration of wealth has led before. They look at worker-owned alternatives like Mondragón, the Spanish cooperative that employs tens of thousands and shares its profits, and they close on whether new technology and AI spread opportunity widely or gather it into even fewer hands.Ben Johnson holds undergraduate degrees in Russian and international relations and spent years as an emergency medical technician, which put him face to face with the families behind the statistics. He is now a member of the FREE Assembly. Inequality by Design: How a Rigged Economy Fractures America and What We Can Do About It is available now from Upriver Press. https://www.upriverpress.com/home/inequality-by-designAs of June 2026, Ben Johnson is running for Tulsa City Council District 9.CHAPTERS00:00:00 3,000 Billionaires and Counting00:01:22 Inequality by Design00:02:11 Why the Book Starts With People00:04:08 Why Your Paycheck Buys Less00:06:14 What the GDP Numbers Hide00:09:26 Where $50 Trillion Went00:11:19 How the Money Leaves Your Town00:12:24 Where Profit Really Comes From00:14:19 Who Sets Your Wage00:15:27 When Workers Own the Company00:16:57 Oklahoma Minimum Wage at $7.25 Since 200900:18:44 Why Investors Buy Land They Never Use00:23:58 America and France Before the Revolution00:28:21 When Money Loses Its Value00:30:40 Have America's Flour Wars Begun?00:31:53 The Revolution's Unfinished Promise00:33:47 Why Revolutions Split and Fail00:35:37 The Third Way That Keeps Getting Crushed00:40:10 What We Can Do About It00:42:40 Will Technology Save Us?00:46:07 Cancer Cures or Another Yacht?00:47:09 Beyond "Profit Line Go Up"🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate🎧 Listen as a PodcastApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/free-with-clara-mattei/id1828302105Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m5xbrPzTSmdGZFQuZP7ZC▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#Inequality #Economics #Capitalism #Meritocracy #minimumwage

    Wed, 10 Jun 2026 - 48min
  • 27 - The Alternative to Capitalism Nobody Talks About | Eleanor Finley & Camila Vergara

    War, austerity, and a political class that offers no way out. What does an actual alternative look like — one that's already being built?Dr. Camila Vergara sits down with Eleanor Finley, author of Practicing Social Ecology (Pluto Press), to trace how democratic, ecological alternatives to capitalism move from theory into practice — from the commons of New England to the municipalities of Burlington, Vermont, to the feminist communes of Rojava in northern Syria.Drawing on Murray Bookchin's intellectual legacy — rooted in Marx, anarchism, indigenous philosophy, and Hannah Arendt — this conversation maps what it takes to build real political power from the ground up: cooperative production, direct democracy assemblies, libertarian municipalism, and the internal transformation required to sustain a movement.In this episode:• What social ecology is and where it comes from• The Burlington Greens, Bernie Sanders, and the limits of electoral politics• How the Rojava revolution built democratic confederalism under siege• Why women's liberation is central to any serious socialist project• The "revolutionary personality" — patience, hope as discipline, conflict resolution• What activists in the US can learn from movements abroadEleanor Finley is a political ecologist and activist. Practicing Social Ecology is out now from Pluto Press.📚 Practicing Social Ecology (Pluto Press): https://www.plutobooks.com/product/practicing-social-ecology/📚 Systemic Corruption (Princeton University Press) https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691207537/systemic-corruption🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum00:00:00 Introduction00:00:39 What Is Social Ecology?00:05:28 Murray Bookchin: Origins and Intellectual Roots00:11:26 Theory Into Practice: Social Ecology as Praxis00:12:24 Agroecology and the Back-to-the-Land Movement00:17:57 Beyond the Garden: The Political Sphere00:19:14 Libertarian Municipalism Explained00:22:35 The Burlington Greens and the Limits of Electoral Politics00:26:33 Rojava: How the Revolution Began00:27:57 Democratic Confederalism: Building Counter-Power00:33:32 Women at the Center of Revolution00:35:51 Production for Need, Not Profit00:37:22 Changing Ourselves to Change the World00:38:22 The Revolutionary Personality00:39:22 Hope as a Political Commitment00:40:54 Responsibility, Conflict Resolution, and the Left00:45:16 Closing Reflections#SocialEcology #DirectDemocracy #Rojava #MurrayBookchin #EleanorFinley #CamilaVergara #PoliticalEconomy #DemocraticConfederalism #FreeFreeForum

    Wed, 03 Jun 2026 - 46min
  • 26 - What the American Left Got Wrong | An Indigenous Elder's Diagnosis

    Why does the American left keep losing? Roberto Mendoza — 82 years old, six decades of organizing from Alcatraz in 1969 to Standing Rock in 2016 — sits down with economist Clara Mattei to name what he thinks went wrong, and why it keeps going wrong.His answer isn't strategy or messaging. It's values. And Marxism, he argues, still shares too many of them with capitalism.Materialism. Industrialization. Top-down hierarchy. Roberto walks Clara through the three places where the supposed alternative to capitalism ended up reproducing it — why the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of those contradictions, and why China today is better understood as state capitalism than communism.Then he offers the alternative he's spent decades building: a side-by-side reading of indigenous values against capitalist ones — generosity vs. hoarding, reciprocity vs. extraction, commons vs. private property, direct democracy vs. top-down rule — and points to the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in northern Syria as places where those values are being built into actual institutions.A conversation about what the American left got wrong, what indigenous political thought has always known, and what it would take to build something that doesn't collapse back into what it claimed to oppose.In this conversation:- Why patriarchy was the main weakness of the 1960s and 70s left — including inside the Black Panther Party- How materialism became the shared value between Cold War rivals- Why Soviet planning reproduced capitalist hierarchy- China as state capitalism, not communism- The full indigenous-vs-capitalist values framework- The Zapatistas, Rojava, and Murray Bookchin's communalism- Why small, decentralized, and democratically-controlled beats large and efficient- Standing Rock, Wounded Knee, and the changing strategy of indigenous resistance- Why happiness lives in relationships, not material accumulation🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩❤️ Watch, learn more, and join the FREE Forum: https://freefreeforum.org🌱 Support FREE & Help Us Grow: https://www.freefreeforum.org/donate▶ Connect with FREELinktree: https://linktr.ee/FreeFreeForumSubstack: https://freefreeforum.substack.com/X: https://x.com/freefreeforumBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/freefreeforum.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/freefreeforum/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freefreeforumFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreeFreeForum#claramattei #robertomendoza #marxism #indigenouswisdom #politicaleconomy #zapatistas #rojava #freepodcast #leftpolitics

    Wed, 27 May 2026 - 30min
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