Weber's Anti-Fascist Economics: Price Regulation and Affordability as the Left's Answer to the Far Right
Source: Niko Block. "We Can Beat the Right With a Left-Wing Affordability Agenda." October 22, 2026. jacobin.com
The Gist
The author argues that the far right is gaining ground because people feel squeezed by high prices and economic insecurity. Citing Isabella Weber, he says the old belief that price controls never work is wrong, and that smart, flexible price regulation can fight corporate-driven inflation. If the Left delivers affordability this way instead of austerity, it can beat the far right.
Conclusion
The Left can defeat the rising far right by adopting an affordability agenda built on effective price regulation and mixed-market policies, as Isabella Weber argues, instead of the neoliberal and austerity orthodoxy that has fueled fascist resurgence.
Premises
- Contemporary far-right revanchism is driven largely by economic stress and valid anxieties about scarcity and unaffordability, which make abandoning solidarity for 'bunkerism' look appealing.
- Neoliberal orthodoxy holds that price controls inevitably fail, so governments must choose between total command economy and laissez-faire. This claim does not follow from the standard price mechanism, and historical cases of successful price control show a viable middle ground.
- Commodity markets are inherently volatile, and supply shocks from disasters, wars, and pandemics cause price spikes whose costs fall hardest on those least able to absorb them and can destabilize societies.
- Mainstream economists mischaracterize modern inflation as demand-driven; it is largely 'sellers' inflation,' in which price shocks let corporations gouge consumers, so austerity and unemployment-based remedies (Phillips curve/NAIRU) are the wrong response.
- The 1930s show that austerity and liberal obstruction of planning and regulation made fascism's victory practically unavoidable, and even short periods of deprivation can produce irreversible authoritarian politics.
- Post-2008 austerity and post-pandemic calls for more austerity parallel the 1930s, fueling inequality, declining affordability, and a political backlash that the far right has exploited.
Assumptions
- Economic hardship and unaffordability are the primary causal drivers of far-right support, rather than cultural or other factors.
- Historical analogies between the 1930s and today are sufficiently similar to support policy lessons.
- Price controls and regulation can be designed and administered competently today without producing the shortages neoliberals predict.
- Sellers' inflation is a dominant cause of current inflation, not merely one contributing factor.
- Voters will reward the Left for delivering affordability and will not simply credit other actors or blame the Left for side effects.
- Short-term pain from austerity is not justified by long-run stabilization benefits.