Anti-Fascist Economics

Isabella Weber’s excellent new book makes an urgent case that defending democracy is, at its heart, an economic question. Recognizing that markets alone cannot secure a dignified life for all, she cuts through the false dichotomy between taming inflation and protecting livelihoods to offer a bold alternative: an economics of essentials that treats access to housing, food, energy, and care as the material foundation of freedom—and of democracy itself. Anti-Fascist Economics is a well-written and necessary book for anyone who believes the economy must deliver for the benefit of all

Mariana Mazzucato

Isabella Weber can make a good claim to being one of the more influential economists of the past few years, and certainly one of the most prescient

Prospect, The World's Top Thinkers 2024

Weber’s bold ideas are helping shift the economic paradigm

Elizabeth Warren, TIME100 Next

One of the twenty-first century’s most exciting economic thinkers comes down from the mountain with a program to restore democracy that will resonate on every continent—a wonderful book by a marvelous mind

Zachary Carter

In Anti-Fascist Economics, Isabella Weber restores to economics its role in promoting dignity, arguing that markets should serve humans rather than rule over them. Written with the rigour of the scholar and the passion of the activist, the book is historically nuanced, showing how fascism was enabled by the collusion between economic elites and a hierarchical mindset hostile to democratic development, with free-market dogmatism degenerating into the rule of the fittest. But it is also forward-looking, and, strangely, hopeful. Anti-Fascist Economics shows us the path not just away from all too familiar horror but toward a feasible, different, better world

Lea Ypi

When inflation woke from its decades-long slumber in 2021, Isabella Weber exploded onto the scene with a fearless critique of mainstream economics. Now she’s back with an unapologetic account of what’s at stake for humanity and democracy if we fail to learn the lessons of the past. Drawing on history and evidence, she shows why the fight against inflation and the fight against fascism turn out to be the same fight, and what it will take to defeat both threats

Stephanie Kelton

Sinclair Lewis’s cleverly titled 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here was a fictionalized account of the conditions that could make fascism prevail in America. Isabella Weber’s new book demonstrates the horrific ‘it’ is happening here today. Weber argues that economic policies that produced a mix of episodic high inflation, rising inequality, white racial status anxiety, wars of aggression, and financial instability—disturbingly parallel with developments in pre–World War II Germany—have contributed to the flowering of totalitarian corporatism in the United States. Fortunately, she does not leave us in complete despair; she also details an alternative economic program that, if put in place, may stand as a barrier to the full consolidation of fascism on American soil. She suitably labels such a program ‘anti-fascist economics

William A. Darity Jr.