Money on the Left

Money on the Left:

An Editorial Collective

Installation is a collaboration between New Roots Art Collective, Illsol, and LiveWork Studios, commissioned by Tempus Projects, and Crab Devil. Photographed by Tony Krol.

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Medieval ink on a medieval budget

By Sara Charles Originally published at Teaching Manuscripts, a site that hopes to inform and educate about making medieval manuscripts. Explore the site to learn about the different processes of manuscript production. As autumn is the season for collecting oak galls, now seems a good time to consider how to make ink without access to… Continue reading →

On Merger Policy and Labor

By Sanjukta Paul What’s a merger? A merger is a specific method of expanding the scope of a particular form of economic coordination that has been authorized by law. There is nothing natural or necessary about firms as a form of economic coordination or organization. All throughout history, people have been innovating and creating and… Continue reading →

Internationalism in Name Only: The Left’s Realist Turn

By Jane Ball The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 touched a dormant but significant fault line on the left. On the one hand, much of the left was outraged by the invasion, believing it to be an illegal and genocidal land grab. On the other hand, a cadre of the left, especially in… Continue reading →

Bank of the People: History for Money’s Future

By Dan Rohde Who would’ve guessed that the sudden failure of a state-chartered, regional bank would’ve inspired fundamental reckonings with the nature of money and banking? Yet, this is exactly what we see today. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (“SVB”) and its $200 billion of mostly-uninsured deposits has spurred renewed debates about not only… Continue reading →

Rising Tides Sink All Boats

The Fed’s aggressive monetary austerity is pushing rival currencies lower… Continue reading →

Austin Credits with Jonathan Wilson (White Paper and Podcast Interview)

For this special episode of Superstructure, cohosts Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) and Andrés Bernal (@andresintheory) are joined by Jonathan Wilson (@DeficitOwl24601) to discuss his new white paper, “Proposal for a Local Currency Issued by the City of Austin,” which proposes a complementary currency for the city of Austin called Austin Credits. Jonathan’s proposal contributes to a developing… Continue reading →

Aesthetics after Autonomy with Grant Kester

Money on the Left is joined by Grant Kester, professor of Art History at University of California, San Diego. We speak with Kester about his multi-decade career, researching and teaching the history of socially engaged art. Kester’s scholarship underscores the limits and contradictions of the dominant modern Western tradition of aesthetics. Such aesthetics value “autonomy,” insisting… Continue reading →

Modern Money & the Black University Concept

Money on the Left: History, Theory, PracticeVol. 1, No. 1 (2024)ISSN 2833-051X Modern Money & the Black University Concept By Andrew J. Douglas Abstract Recent efforts to rethink the university as a site of monetary experimentation share several affinities with the “Black University” movement of the mid-twentieth century. Today’s “Uni” currency project, one of the… Continue reading →

Economic Democracy with Pavlina Tcherneva

Money on the Left speaks with Pavlina Tcherneva, Professor of Economics at Bard College and leading scholar of–-and advocate for—Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). Many of our listeners will be familiar with Dr. Tcherneva’s contributions to MMT, especially her book, The Case for a Job Guarantee (Polity Press, 2020). She is also Director of Open Society University Network’s Economic Democracy… Continue reading →

The Alternative w/Nick Romeo

Scott Ferguson and Billy Saas speak with New Yorker writer Nick Romeo about his exciting new book, The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy, released in January 2024 with Public Affairs. Romeo’s The Alternative rebukes Margaret Thatcher’s infamous axiom that “there is no alternative” to neoliberal capitalism. In doing so, the book inventories the… Continue reading →

How can novels help us think about money … and maybe even save the planet? (Guest Lecture)

Can novels and, by extension, other works of art help us to think about money and trust in new ways? Could embracing alternative perspectives on trust and money help us to avoid climate catastrophe? Rob Hawkes shares a new version of a talk previously presented at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art as part of… Continue reading →

Resisting Predatory Finance w/ Raúl Carrillo (Recovered Audio!)

Money on the Left is proud to present recovered and remastered audio from our interview with Raúl Carrillo, published previously solely as a written transcript. The recording also includes a new audio introduction in which Billy Saas reflects on the significance of our dialog with Carrillo for contemporary politics. In our discussion, we explore the promise… Continue reading →

Modern Movie Theory: What We Do in the Shadows

Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) is joined by Robyn Ollett (@robynollett) and Rob Hawkes (@robbhawkes) to discuss What We Do in the Shadows. Citing Robyn’s interpretations of vampirism in The New Queer Gothic: Reading Queer Girls and Women in Contemporary Fiction and Film, the cohosts situate What We Do in the Shadows within the vampire’s long history as a… Continue reading →

Criticism LTD w/ Matt Seybold

Matt Seybold joins Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson to discuss the political economy of literary criticism from past to present, amateur to professional. Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature at Elmira College and Resident Scholar at the Center for Mark Twain Studies. In addition to writing and teaching in the field of literature &… Continue reading →

Teaching Economics with Benjamin Wilson

We are joined again by Benjamin Wilson to discuss what it is like to teach Economics from a heterodox Modern Monetary Theory perspective in 2023. Wilson is associate professor and recently-minted chair of the department of Economics at SUNY, Cortland. In previous episodes, we have chatted with Wilson about his research, the Uni Currency project,… Continue reading →

Monetary Foundations of Education with Larry Johnson

This month, we speak with Larry Johnson, associate professor in the Social Foundations of Education Program at the University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg. In his pedagogy, Johnson focuses on the complex relationship between education, culture, and society with the goal of exploring policies and practices from historical and contemporary perspectives that address structural inequality,… Continue reading →

Power to the People w/ Sandeep Vaheesan

Sandeep Vaheesan (@sandeepvaheesan) joins Scott Ferguson on the Superstructure podcast to discuss the still-undecided political significance of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their conversation focuses on Vaheesan’s article, “The IRA is Still Being Formed: An Episode in America’s Past Contains Important Lessons for How We Move Forward in Greening the Economy,” published recently in Democracy:… Continue reading →

Reparations for Black Americans w/ William A. Darity

We’re joined this month by William A.( “Sandy”) Darity to discuss reparations for Black Americans. Sandy Darity is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. A founding theorist of stratification economics and foremost… Continue reading →