The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, most assessments of his work have been strongly affirmative and hence often one-sided. What follows is a more critical engagement, offered in the…
Beyond Loans: The Public Grant-Making Bank
By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Public banking has been gaining traction for years, driven by a growing recognition that our current financial system often fails to serve the public good. The Bank of North Dakota has operated successfully for over a century, and states like New York have recently seen legislation proposed…
Mamdani Win Could Be The First Step Towards Seizing The Means of Knowledge Production (Let CUNY Socialize EdTech for All of Us)
by Matt Seybold This essay originally appeared on Matt Seybold’s The American Vandal Substack. We are grateful for his generous permission to republish it here. An understandable response to the most-publicized outcome of yesterday’s election—Zohran Mamdani becoming Mayor-Elect of New York City—is to ask, however you feel about Mamdani, what impact does it have on…
The Paradox of Political Thrift
By Will Beaman Democratic endorsement politics around Zohran Mamdani continue to bend in ways that feel at once familiar and strange. A spokesman for House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries brushed off Senator Chris Van Hollen’s endorsement with a Trumpian dismissal—“Chris Van Who?” Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul published an endorsement in the New York Times, listing disagreements…
The Case for Fiscal Insurgency
by Will Beaman A common refrain keeps surfacing among prominent journalists- and commentators-in-digital-exile on BlueSky. Commenting on the emergence of yet another shadowy centrist think tank, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie observes: “Trump’s numbers are tanking and there is a palpable desire in the electorate for a real alternative and yet the only money…
Why Credit’s Due: Reclaiming Pride in Boro
By Rob Hawkes and Robyn Ollett The summer of 2025, like the summer of 2024 before it, has been one of heightened tensions surrounding the issues of race and immigration in the UK. This year, Union Flags and St George’s Crosses have adorned innumerable lamp posts, motorway bridges, roundabouts, and zebra crossings – ostensibly as…
Zohran’s #ZcavengerHunt was a Rehearsal
by Will Beaman What yesterday’s New York City #ZcavengerHunt made visible is a coalition rehearsing public works before even winning the general election. It was not just people spending time together. With simple, posted invitations carried on cards, the campaign coordinated routes, rooms, roles, and care so that participation became possible and clear. That is…
How the Zetro Card Can Save NYC (Really)
by the Money on the Left Editorial Collective A domestic occupation is currently being staged in the United States. National guard units have been deployed to Washington, D.C., with similar moves signaled for Chicago and New York. The script pairs visible deployments with their fiscal equivalent: threats of impoundment, selective audits, procurement slow-walks, and last…
Tax the Rich Campaigns Need Coalition Credits
By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective As Zohran Mamdani and allied progressives turn a campaign victory into governing capacity, the primary weapons used against them will be fiscal. Centrist state legislators—already hostile to progressive tax policy—will be doubly pressured by a Trump White House threatening to impound funds and condition support for core…
Blue Bonds: Duck or Rabbit?
Chronicle of a Summer by Will Beaman We are living through a strange reversal of the monetary story many of us have spent the last decade telling. Modern Monetary Theory helped a broader public see that the federal government—the so-called “monetary sovereign”—does not fund itself like a household and should not be bullied by austerity…
Coalition as Credit
Reading the Mamdani-Lander-Warren Coalition as a Credit Event by Will Beaman How do you keep governing when opponents try to stage a fiscal loss? In New York, that will be the fight: not just what to do, but how it will be underwritten as Albany and national actors slow-walk budgets until the calendar finishes them…
The Unofficial Lives of Public Money
by Will Beaman Recent Money on the Left proposals for endogenous credit campaigns—like Unis or Blue Bonds—often run headlong into an unspoken but deeply rooted distinction between “official” and “unofficial” money. This distinction can make such projects seem peripheral, even when they are designed to work alongside and strengthen existing public infrastructures. Clarifying how this…
Jim Crow to Trump: Reconsidering the Psychological Wage
by Will Beaman W.E.B. Du Bois’s “psychological wage” has long been treated as a metaphor. In Black Reconstruction, he describes how white workers, denied meaningful economic uplift, found compensation in racial status. Many have read this as a bribe, or as a symbolic reward for class betrayal—something less real than money, but no less effective…
A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois: Monetary Populism and the Scapegoating of Black Political Life
by Will Beaman In July 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois received a letter from an Atlanta resident named Gus Reich. We are excited to share both Reich’s letter and Du Bois’s short reply below. A lay theologian and self-styled monetary reformer, Reich in his letter proposes a spiritual plan for economic renewal. He urges Du Bois…
It’s Time for Complementary Currencies
By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Introduction Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win was not just a local upset—it was a turning point. It proved that member-led, volunteer-powered campaigns can defeat political dynasties even under conditions of national authoritarian drift. And now, others are lining up behind him. MN state Sen. Omar Fateh—another Democratic Socialist—won…
Accounting Identities or Accounting Analogies?
by Will Beaman Most people’s first exposure to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) comes with a gentle promise: It is just accounting. The government’s deficit is the non-government sector’s surplus, by simple double-entry logic. Sectoral balances show it clearly—your fear of public debt is a confusion. Every liability is someone else’s asset. The numbers must sum…
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Our vertical publishes essays on critical theory, media culture & aesthetics that are committed to unconditional inclusion and intersectional politics.