‘People’s dignity, and democracy, is at stake’: meet the economist ditching ideology for reality

In Anti-Fascist Economics, Isabella Weber calls on governments to defeat fascism by making life’s necessities more affordable. Photograph: Steffen Roth/The GuardianView image in fullscreenIn Anti-Fascist Economics, Isabella Weber calls on governments to defeat fascism by making life’s necessities more affordable. Photograph: Steffen Roth/The GuardianEconomicsInterview‘People’s dignity, and democracy, is at stake’: meet the economist ditching ideology for realityMichael SegalovExclusive: Isabella Weber prescribes a common-sense solution to poverty, inequality and fascism – making life’s essentials affordable for all

Fri 16 Oct 2026 00.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 16 Oct 2026 08.20 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleThe trouble with economists, Isabella Weber believes, is they do not behave like dentists. They obsess over ideological purity and are inflexible when searching for solutions, regardless of society’s symptoms. Dentists have no such pretensions – patients have little patience for dogma when in insufferable pain.

John Maynard Keynes, Weber clarifies in the canteen of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study), was the first to draw this dental comparison – and she is running with it. As she sees it, the symptoms could not be more severe. “The status quo for the majority is entirely unbearable,” while extreme inequality and corporate concentration has reached levels “simply incompatible with democracy” worldwide. This is exacerbated by a climate crisis that “generates massive windfall profits” for big business as the “ecological foundations of our lives disintegrate”. All the while the far right is making hay.

This analysis echoes much mainstream liberal and left-leaning thinking. But Weber is concerned that her peers in the economic establishment act as if they are oblivious. “What’s common sense to most people is not to economists,” she says, and as such our economic system has “promised but not delivered”. She reels off disturbing statistics that highlight the growing disparities between haves and have nots. “As economists, we should do better. People’s dignity, and democracy, is at stake.”

In progressive circles, Weber, 38, is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after economists of her generation. An associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate at Harvard’s Fairbank Center, she advises policymakers in the US, Europe and Latin America. She popularised the term “greedflation” to describe profiteering during recent cost of living crises. Her new book, Anti-Fascist Economics, is the culmination of years of research into inequality and inflation, and a lifelong commitment to fighting fascism. As she writes: “If we understand economics as the study of the material foundations of society, then economics is key to averting the catastrophes in front of us.”

View image in fullscreenIsabella Weber in Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study in September. Photograph: Steffen Roth/The GuardianWeber is calling on fellow economists to “abandon ideology” and develop a “big tent economic policy” that can counter an ascendant far right. Their gains, she argues, are not the result of a particularly compelling offer, but a direct consequence of traditional political parties refusing to acknowledge the endemic hardship facing their constituents, and the absence of a coherent economic vision from progressives, liberals and the centre right. “Currently, only the extreme right is willing to say yes, something is broken, and a different present and future is possible,” Weber says. “We can’t leave an alternative to this dystopia to them.”

In Anti-Fascist Economics, she pitches a solution: make life’s necessities affordable. That is housing, transport, food, water, energy, healthcare: the stuff humanity depends on. “Fascism is rising from frustration, born out of a crisis of livelihoods,” says Weber. “So, we need to reclaim these essentials now.”

Progressive politicians are already heeding her instructions. At a meeting of city mayors last month, the New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, outlined how Weber’s work, which he had followed for years, had informed his affordability agenda in the city: free buses, universal childcare, rent caps, public groceries. Weber has consulted with other US politicians – Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders – and UK ministers including Ed Miliband. The speech of the British prime minister, Andy Burnham, to Labour conference last month was Weberesque in its messaging. “Homes. Water. Energy. Transport. Care. Broken up and sold off,” he declared from the lectern. “Economic control diminished by selling off essentials.”

View image in fullscreenAndy Burnham’s Labour conference speech was distinctly Weberesque in its messaging. Photograph: Phil Noble/ReutersWhile it is a simple slogan, making the essentials affordable is a complex policy challenge. Each sector has unique properties, and functions differently from place to place. Weber argues that any and all levers should be pulled in pursuit of putting this floor under livelihoods, from novel approaches to centuries-old thinking. “The goal isn’t more state intervention,” she clarifies, “it’s just a tool, as are profits and markets to ensure affordability. In economics, we tend to have these overarching models and an inclination for silver bullets. I’m arguing not for universal solutions but nitty gritty detail.”

Take food, for example. At every stage of the value chain from source to table, she is urging governments to identify and implement interventions to keep prices down. At one end, four multinationals control between 70% and 90% of global grain trading (with profits that “thrive on volatility”). This does not optimise affordability. Her proposal? Create public buffer stock systems – publicly owned entities that can buy and sell grain into its market, not with the goal of maximising profits, but stabilising prices to protect producers and consumers. Keynes made this case a century ago.

A global public option would be a diplomatic nightmare, so Weber champions an orthodontist’s approach. She advised the South African government to pool regional buying power. “If the African Union developed its own buffer stock system, already this joint procurement would get them better terms.” Then, when prices are low, it could purchase; during peaks, it could sell to stabilise its market and provide regional insulation to shocks.

At the other end of the chain is retail. Weber cites the Mexican government’s canasta básica policy, through which retailers voluntarily cap the total price of a basket of two-dozen essential goods. In return, the government offers advantageous tariff rates and tax relief, “and at a weekly press conference lauds those who do a good job and calls out those who don’t”. In Mexico’s 2024 presidential election, the governing Morena party increased its vote share from 55% to 61%.