FREE with Clara Mattei

$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

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

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

Professor Munira Khayyat is speaking from Beirut, where she's currently hosting over 30 displaced families as Israel expands its invasion of South Lebanon. She has studied and lived in war for over two decades. Her book, A Landscape of War, builds a theory of war from the ground — from the farmers, beekeepers, and families who refuse to leave their land.In this conversation with Clara Mattei, she explains why the "peace" that followed World War II was only peace for the powerful — and permanent war for everyone else. From South Lebanon to Gaza, from the Cold War to today, war has never been an aberration. It's a feature of the system.In this episode:• What is happening in Lebanon right now — 1.5 million displaced, bombardment of Beirut, occupation expanding• Why Western theories of war treat it as an exception when it's a permanent condition for most of the world• How capitalism, empire, and settler colonialism converge in the war on Lebanon• The 22-year Israeli occupation and the roots of Lebanese resistance• Life as resistance — how people survive in conditions designed to make survival impossible• The connection between austerity, financial collapse, and war• Why borders drawn by Europeans still define who lives and who dies• What "decolonizing war" means from someone living inside oneSUPPORT DISPLACED FAMILIES IN LEBANON:https://www.gofundme.com/f/mqg2kw-support-displaced-families-in-lebanonABOUT THE GUEST:Munira Khayyat is Clinical Associate Professor of Anthropology at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her book A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (University of California Press, 2022) won the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing.Book: https://www.amazon.com/Landscape-War-Ecologies-Resistance-Survival/dp/0520389999X: https://x.com/mu_kha2🔔 Subscribe to FREE (Forum for Real Economic Emancipation) @FreeFreeForum⁩
Watch AD-FREE: https://patreon.com/freefreeforum
❤️ 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/FreeFreeForumChapters:00:00:00 - Introduction00:00:44 - What's Happening in Lebanon Right Now00:03:15 - A Month of Bombardment and Displacement00:07:35 - 1.5 Million Displaced: The Humanitarian Crisis00:11:07 - How Do People Live in Unlivable Conditions00:12:47 - What It Means to Decolonize War00:15:22 - The Atomic Bomb and the "Peace" That Followed00:18:33 - War Never Ended — It Was Outsourced00:24:39 - Empire, Capitalism, and Endless War00:28:15 - How Europeans Drew the Border Between Lebanon and Palestine00:37:13 - Lebanon and Palestine: An Entwined Struggle00:44:24 - The Roots of Lebanese Resistance00:51:38 - Life as Resistance: Growing Up in a War Zone00:55:56 - Religion, Identity, and the Nation State01:03:09 - Resistant Ecologies: Farmers, Beekeepers, and the Fight for Land01:14:52 - What Comes Next: War, Austerity, and the Future01:21:35 - Closing#Lebanon #SouthLebanon #War #Occupation #Resistance #PoliticalEconomy #ClaraMattei #Anthropology #FREEPodcast

Oil just crossed $100 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed. Gas prices are surging. And the dollar? It's getting stronger — not weaker. That's not a paradox. It's by design.In this episode of the FREE Podcast, economist Clara Mattei sits down with Costas Lapavitsas (Professor of Economics, SOAS University of London) to explain what no mainstream outlet will: the Iran war isn't a disruption to the global economic system — it's a product of it. From the dollar's imperial grip to the hollowing out of US industry to the $2 billion a day being spent on bombs instead of schools, this conversation maps the economic machinery driving the current crisis.Costas brings a new theory of imperialism rooted in Marxian political economy — connecting the financialization of the last four decades, the rise of China, the structural decline of the US as a productive power, and the escalation of militarism that follows when a declining hegemon refuses to let go.In this conversation:• Why the dollar strengthens during war — and who pays for it• Oil at $100+: what breaks next in the global economy• The US spends $2 billion a day on this war — enough to fund free college or universal childcare• How US multinationals hollowed out the domestic economy they claim to defend• Trump as symptom, not author — why this crisis predates and outlasts him• Capitalism and militarism: why markets produce war, not peace• The military-industrial complex: corrupt, inefficient, and structurally incapable of rebuilding US productive power• The WWI analogy: why this moment has no natural point of equilibrium• Why Costas sees hope in American workers and youthGUEST:Costas Lapavitsas is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London, and a scholar of contemporary capitalism and imperialism. His latest book is The State of Capitalism (2023). Recent articles include "A Topography of the New Dollar Imperialism" (New Left Review) and "Trump's Chaotic Imperialism" (forthcoming, Socialist Register).Watch Ad-FREE: https://www.patreon.com/freefreeforum🔔 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#IranWar #OilPrices #DollarImperialism #Imperialism #StraitOfHormuz #MilitaryIndustrialComplex #ClaraMattei #CostasLapavitsas #PoliticalEconomy #AntiCapitalism #FREEPodcast #EconomicCrisis #USHegemony #GasPrice