Progressives like Isabella Weber, who has influenced Kamala Harris on price gouging and Zohran Mamdani on rent control, are campaigning for what they call anti-fascist economics. What does that even mean?
Weber, a German-born economist who works at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, explains in her article for The Nation that anti-fascist economics is “an economic policy that offers a solution to socioeconomic decline and can ease people’s fears about the future.”
Okay, almost all economic schools advocate for that, they think their plans are solutions to our problems and make our future better. But the story gets interesting on how the anti-fascist economics plans to achieve this. She writes, “As first steps, this means a policy that stabilizes essential prices — from food to energy to rent — and a policy that increases wages.” And how would such price stabilization occur? In practice, through price controls. That proposal even prompted Paul Krugman to call her plan “truly stupid” on X — before deleting the post. At its core, Weber’s program is a command-and-control vision: wages should rise not through supply-side deregulation or tax relief, but by legislating higher minimum wages; prices should remain stable not through sound money or credible macroeconomic policy, but essentially through direct government controls. Price controls are hardly “anti-fascist”; if anything, they lean in the opposite direction. They were central to Hitler’s autarky program, which aimed at economic self-sufficiency.
Basically, anti-fascist economics is a revolt against the basic conclusions of economic sciences. But the thing they get wrong is that, historically speaking, economics was a strong stand against fascism. Economists have historically stood against racists and fascists for centuries.
The Dismal Science — For Fascists
It’s an interesting story how economics came to be known as the dismal science. Many assume it’s because of too much mathematics, or boring theories that can make students fall asleep in class. But that’s not the true story. The phrase was coined by Thomas Carlyle because economists opposed slavery. They believed that all human beings share the same motivations — what Adam Smith called the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” — regardless of race or nationality. As Deirdre McCloskey put it: “The phrase ‘the dismal science’ was coined by Thomas Carlyle not because economics was gloomy or mathematical — but because economists opposed slavery. That made their science dismal — in Carlyle’s eyes.”
The basic facts of supply and demand weren’t pleasant to extremists then, and still aren’t. Carlyle first used the term in his essay Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, where he mocked economics for explaining the world with such “simplistic” tools as supply and demand. Did he offer a better alternative? No — but he worried that a world governed by price theory would reduce “the duty of human governors” to “letting men alone.”
One may call it simplistic, dismal, or even cold, but the simple idea of price theory — letting people decide for themselves — has been a guardian of liberty from the time of Hume and Smith to today. And “letting men alone” has never pleased social engineers or those who want a “mission-driven” economy. Letting men alone to take their own decisions, make up their own minds, and conduct exchange with each other isn’t pleasant for those who think people aren’t smart, moral, and worthy enough to make their own decisions, so they need the visible hand of the state to guide them. This social engineering mindset that echoes itself in anti-economics rhetoric is closer to totalitarian ideologies than the idea of “letting men alone.”
Still Upsetting People
To this day, the basic idea of an upward-sloping supply curve still upsets people. The simple truth that Mamdani’s rent controls don’t work can trigger calls for “anti-fascist” economics. There has been a war on economics — but why is there this hate against economics?
The Pourers of Cold Water
George Stigler, in his Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist, has an interesting chapter titled “Are Economists Good People?” He wrote that hatred toward economists had become fashionable. And though he wrote it 40 years ago, the fashion hasn’t changed. His explanation? “The main reason is easily named — economists have been the premier ‘pourers of cold water’ on proposals for social improvement.”
One of the main strengths of the economic way of thinking is its ability to separate intentions from outcomes. History shows that government intervention is often a story of good intentions producing the opposite of what was intended. That doesn’t mean economists don’t care about intentions — it means economic laws don’t obey political emotions and angry, social activist screeds. They follow the logic of incentives, trade-offs, and scarcity — often pouring cold water on grand plans.
Another aspect of the war on economics is the tendency to confuse assumptions with recommendations. Take the idea that people act in their own self-interest. This doesn’t mean economists endorse greed or arrogance. It’s just a simple observation about how the world works. People aren’t greedy because economists want them to be. Economists notice and observe how people behave and build theories to explain that behavior.
These simple assumptions and tools are not pleasant to those who want to manage every part of human life. But one of the greatest insights of economics is how much we don’t know. The recognition of what we can’t know leads to intellectual humility — something deeply opposed to totalitarian ideologies, whether left or right.
At their core, totalitarian systems claim to have all the answers. Their only obstacle is “execution.” That’s why statism and totalitarianism go hand in hand. But economics is skeptical of these claims. As Hayek famously wrote: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
Telling the self-proclaimed all-knowers that they might be wrong is bound to irritate them. A famous Persian proverb says: Don’t blame the mirror for what it reflects — blame yourself. If the mirror of economics shatters the dreams of utopia — whether proletarian or Aryan — the problem isn’t the mirror. The problem is with the fantasy.
But what many anti-economics movements have done is not reflection — they’ve tried to smash the mirror instead.