Category: Journal

Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice
Vol. 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 more edifying policy visions to emerge from recent work in modern money theory, reimagines the university as a currency-issuing institution, a kind of public or community bank that can create money as a means of provisioning itself and mobilizing campus resources in more democratically accountable ways. The Black University movement—which, during its heyday in the late 1960s, sought to pioneer a new model of the university, one dedicated entirely to Pan-African research and community development—likewise sought to move beyond conceits of capitalist finance in order to leverage the campus community in service of cooperative and sustainable investment initiatives. In exposing their understanding of money and finance, I show how theorists of the Black University provided a rich critique of an orthodox or private money paradigm but did not have the language or conceptual tools to think beyond it, even if implicitly they imagined something like a public or modern money framework— what I call a Black counterpublic money—as fundamental to a broader Black worldmaking agenda. An appreciation of modern money theory and the potential of endogenous credit creation may help to renew the Black University movement in our time. Still, Black radical concerns about empire and racist state violence, key impetuses of the Black University, pose challenging questions for any philosophy of money rooted in the history and conceptual apparatus of European modernity.

Andrew J. Douglas is a professor of political science at Morehouse College. As a political theorist, Douglas focuses on theories and histories of Black radicalism, capitalism, money, labor, and debt. Douglas is the author of several articles and three books, including W.E.B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society (2019) and, with Jared Loggins, Prophet of Discontent: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Critique of Racial Capitalism (2021).

Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2023)
ISSN 2833-051X

Money’s Place: Science Fiction, Realism & Modern Monetary Theory in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future
By Maxximilian Seijo

Abstract

Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative near-future novel Ministry for the Future (2020) centers the heterodox political economy of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to forge a new path for ecosocialist politics. This money-positive path diverges radically from critical traditions in political and literary thought that reject money as the ultimate source of environmental exploitation and climate catastrophe. In this essay, I argue that Ministry’s centering of money challenges and displaces the generic conventions of science fiction and realism, each of which has historically related to money in opposing ways. Whereas science fiction prioritizes escape to an enclave “outside” of money’s mediation of social relations, and realism laments the immanent dynamics of money’s mediating force, Ministry estranges both genres from their relationship to money by redefining money as an inextricable expression of social relation and interdependence. As opposed to dominant Marxian modes, Robinson’s redefinition draws attention to money’s radical place within the speculative imagination, disclosing new political economic and ecological capacity to remake global reproduction. 

Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2022)
ISSN 2833-051X

Food, Money & Democracy: Cultivating Collective Provisioning for Resilient & Equitable Communities of Work
By Benjamin C. Wilson, Taylor Reid & Max Sussman

Abstract

Coordination rights, or the right to coordinate, is an emerging concept in law and political economy that establishes who is permitted to engage in economic coordination and who does not. Coordination rights are fundamental to the process of building resilient communities and determine whether social provisioning systems are “collective” or “concentrated.” In concentrated provisioning systems, decision-making is consolidated in the hands of a few actors who tend to prioritize profit-seeking over environmental and labor concerns, leading to inequality and ecosystem degradation. Collective provisioning systems instead involve rich human experiences that foster cooperation and a holistic approach to production that improves environmental and social wellbeing. We demonstrate these differences through comparative analysis of industrial agriculture and alternatives such as the La Via Campesina movement for Food Sovereignty, the Black Cooperative Movement in the U.S., and restaurant reactions to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, what is also displayed is that without reliable access to monetary resources collective provisioning systems are vulnerable to financial crisis and collapse. Alleviating these vulnerabilities requires that monetary systems themselves also adopt collective coordination principles. Accordingly, we present small and medium-scale monetary experiments that use food systems as a way to build community capacity. These experiments challenge the exclusionary nature of the dominant profit-driven mode of financial coordination and illustrate the potential of community-driven and socially beneficial frameworks for increasing resilience, equity, and health in our communities.

Benjamin C. Wilson is associate professor of economics at the State University of New York College at Cortland and Research Scholar for the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity.

Taylor Reid is an Associate Professor of Applied Food Studies at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Max Sussman has been a chef for over 20 years. He was formerly the chef de cuisine of Roberta’s in Brooklyn, New York. With his brother Eli he has co-authored 4 cookbooks and owns Samesa, a fast-casual Mediterranean restaurant in New York City. With his wife Kate he founded Bog & Thunder, a regenerative food travel company based in Ireland.

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