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 scholar of the racial wealth gap in the United Stats, Darity is perhaps best known for his committed public advocacy for acknowledging, re...
Oct 01, 2023•59 min
In this brief podcast message, Scott Ferguson announces the publication of Maxximilian Seijo's peer-reviewed journal essay, " Money’s Place: Science Fiction, Realism & Modern Monetary Theory in Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future ," in Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice. 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 ecosociali...
Sep 05, 2023•14 min
This month, we discuss democratic possibilities for public finance with Saule Omarova, the Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law at Cornell University and President Biden’s original nominee for Comptroller of the Currency. Omarova’s work on financial regulation and banking law has long informed how we at Money on the Left understand the modern monetary system. Her and Robert Hockett’s “ finance franchise ” metaphor for modern banking-–according to which the federal government is the franchisor...
Sep 02, 2023•1 hr 40 min
Scott Ferguson is joined on the Superstructure podcast by Ruth E. Kastner, philosopher of physics and research associate at the University of Maryland. In their conversation, Ferguson and Kastner explore metaphysical resonances between Modern Monetary Theory’s approach to money and Kastner’s “Transactional Interpretation” of quantum physics. Setting the stage for their dialog, Ferguson and Kastner critique orthodox commitments in both economics and physics to a pre-relational individuality: what...
Aug 11, 2023•1 hr 18 min
We are excited to rerelease our inaugural episode of Money on the Left alongside a brand new transcript. Conversation originally published on May 27, 2018 Money on the Left is the official podcast of Modern Money Network: Humanities Division ( @moneyontheleft ). In our inaugural episode, we consider the recent resurgence of full employment politics in the United States from both a political and historical perspective with historian David Stein (@davidpstein). Stein is currently a fellow at UCLA’...
Aug 03, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Mark Paul joins Money on the Left to discuss his new book, The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights (University of Chicago Press, 2023). Paul is assistant professor in the Bloustein school of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. In his book, Paul scours U.S. political and economic history to recover, reclaim, and adapt the rhetoric of economic rights for our current political moment. For too long, Paul demonstrates, progressives and leftists have let...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 6 min
We’re joined by Jennifer Mittelstadt (@MittelstadtJen), professor of history at Rutgers University, to discuss her involvement with Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education . We speak with Mittelstadt about how Scholars for a New Deal for Higher Education is organizing to address the most pressing threats to US public higher education today, as well as about how her own scholarship on publicly-provisioned welfare systems in the United States shapes her political organizing and advocacy. We a...
Jun 01, 2023•1 hr 40 min
In the third installment of Superstructure’ s “Postmodern Money Theory!” series, Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson wrap up their discussion of B.S. Johnson’s novella, Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, which self-consciously weaves money and accounting into the very fabric of literary form. Rob and Scott tease out the text’s lingering potentials and blindspots in order to problematize dominant forms of political economic and aesthetic critique. (Click the following links for Part 1 and Part 2 .) To ...
May 17, 2023•1 hr 41 min
Dan Rohde (@DanEricRohde) joins Scott Ferguson to discuss his Superstructure Vertical piece, “ Bank of the People: History for Money’s Future .” The piece is based on a longer scholarly article titled, “The Bank of the People, 1835-1840: Law and Money in Upper Canada,” which is forthcoming from Osgoode Journal of Law. Visit our Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/MoLsuperstructure Music: “Yum” from “This Would Be Funny If It Were Happening To Anyone But Me” EP by flirting. http://flirting...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 59 min
Elizabeth S. Anker joins Money on the Left to discuss her provocative new book, On Paradox: The Claims of Theory (Duke University Press, 2022). Anker is Associate Professor of English at Cornell University and Professor of Law in the Cornell Law School. In On Paradox , Anker contends that faith in the logic of paradox has been the cornerstone of left intellectualism since the second half of the twentieth century. She attributes the ubiquity of paradox in the humanities to its appeal as an incisi...
May 01, 2023•1 hr 58 min
Money on the Left presents a public conversation with Dan Berger about his important new book, Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey (Basic Books, 2023). Berger’s Stayed on Freedom tells a new history of Black Liberation through the intertwined narratives of two grassroots organizers. The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokesmen, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freed...
Apr 01, 2023•1 hr 28 min
In Part 2 of Superstructure ’s “Postmodern Money Theory!” series, Rob Hawkes and Scott Ferguson explore B.S. Johnson’s postmodern novella, Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry (1973), which self-consciously weaves money and accounting into the very fabric of literary form. Regarded as brokering a broader transition between modernism and postmodernism, Johnson paradoxically conceded that “to tell stories is to tell lies,” while remaining committed to the revelatory “truthfulness” of literary form. I...
Mar 25, 2023•1 hr 29 min
Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) inaugurates the first of a lecture series on the work and ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin. Drawing parallels with right wing attacks on contemporary drag performance and ballroom traditions, Will discusses Bakhtin’s analysis of the Medieval carnival humor, its manifestation in Renaissance literature, and its unique aesthetics of what he terms “grotesque realism.” Quotations are drawn from the Introduction and first chapter of Bakhtin’s text, Rabelais and His World (1965), w...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 49 min
In this bonus episode of Money on the Left , Rohan Grey joins co-hosts Scott Ferguson and Billy Saas to assess the epistemological and political implications of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure. While orthodox economics and law tell us that economic crises are essentially matters of private risk and market discipline, Rohan, Scott and Billy argue that blatant federal mediation throughout the ongoing SVB crisis exposes money’s public and contestable nature. Rather than another story of capit...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 30 min
Launching a new Superstructure series, Rob Hawkes joins Scott Ferguson to explore the ins and outs of “postmodernism.” Postmodernism is a heterogenous and disputed regime of aesthetics and theory that arose in the second half of the 20th century. Dated to midcentury, but promulgated as a discourse from the 1970’s to 1990’s, postmodernism is known primarily for its preoccupations with multiplicity, difference, surface, language, image, constructedness, reflexivity, and the integration of art and ...
Mar 16, 2023•1 hr 16 min
This month, Money on the Left is joined by Thomas Schwab who, as mayor of Gramatneusiedl in Lower Austria, oversees a promising Job Guarantee pilot program. Seeking to eliminate long-term unemployment, the program guarantees public jobs to anyone in the community who seeks them. In our conversation, we explore the philosophy and structure of Gramatneusiedl’s municipal employment service. We also discuss a key inspiration for the program: a Depression-era study of the effects of unemployment cond...
Mar 01, 2023•1 hr 22 min
Money on the Left is joined by Andrés Arauz, recent candidate for the Ecuadorian presidency, heterodox economist, and outspoken advocate for the creation of the “Sur.” The Sur is a complementary currency for use in intra-Latin American trade and cooperation. Dismissed by New York Times blogger, Paul Krugman, as a “ terrible idea ,” Brazilian President Lula De Silva’s proposal for development of the Sur as a tool for encouraging economic and political integration between Latin American countries ...
Feb 01, 2023•1 hr 28 min
Co-hosts Naty T Smith ( @orangeasm ), Will Beaman ( @agoingaccount ), and Charlotte Tavan ( @moltopopulare ) discuss the rise to power of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni near the 100th anniversary of Mussolini's March on Rome to frame the international moment and the ascendance of red-brown tendencies, the urgencies of anti- fascism, and the shape of contemporary reaction. Through the example of Meloni’s election, they explore how monetary austerity, anti migrant tactics, fascist nostalgia...
Jan 17, 2023•2 hr
Will Beaman and Scott Ferguson tease out the multiplicity of voices that shape The Little Mermaid (1989) in order to problematize racist outcries against Disney’s forthcoming 2023 live-action version of the film starring singer Halle Bailey. The co-hosts answer and invert an imperative promulgated by a reactionary meme circulated on social media: “Don’t take away my history." The meme falsely imagines Disney’s 2023 reboot displacing and replacing a past white heterosexual monoculture. This episo...
Jan 14, 2023•1 hr 54 min
This month Money on the Left is joined by the folks behind the MUSICat project, an online music streaming service for public libraries designed to share heterogenous local music with local community members. We speak with Preston Austin and Kelly Hiser from Rabble, the company behind MUSICat, as well as with Racquel (“Rocky”) Mann, who coordinates the MUSICat service with Edmontonians as Digital Initiatives Librarian for Edmonton Public Library . Launched by the Madison Public Library in 2014, M...
Jan 01, 2023•1 hr 37 min
‘The Descent of Money: Literature, Inheritance, and Trust in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) and John Galsworthy’s The Man of Property (1906)’ Rob Hawkes ' paper argues that Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905) and John Galsworthy’s The Man of Property (1906) foreground, interrogate and enact questions of trust, both in their engagements with and departures from literary realism/naturalism and in their preoccupations with the value and power of money. Wharton’s novel is saturated ...
Dec 08, 2022•43 min
Money on the Left is joined in conversation with curator Emily Ebba Reynolds & artist Nando Alvarez-Perez, co-founders of the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, or BICA, in Buffalo, New York. BICA is a new and distinctly heterodox arts organization, offering physical space for artist shows and educational seminars, as well as fiscal space for provisioning micro-grants to local artists. In 2018 Emily & Nando founded BICA, in their words, in order to “reframe contemporary art around i...
Dec 02, 2022•1 hr 39 min
Charlotte and Naty continue their discussion of abortion and reproductive justice internationally in the wake of the repeal of Roe v Wade in this much delayed second segment of three. Topics include : vegetables souls, the AMA, the progressive era, 70s Australia, the Bruenigs, dirtbag left media, Joe Biden, the democrats, Dorothy Roberts, New Zealand, disobedience, community and care, doulas, travel, Judge Dredd, decriminilization, insect graveyards, eugenics, American exceptionalism, Japan, Mar...
Nov 17, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Cohosts Charlotte Tavan ( @moltopopulare ) and Will Beaman ( @agoingaccount ) discuss the reflexive and imaginative political economy of Nathan Fielder's HBO series, The Rehearsal . The show points towards an apophatic ethics of social provisioning, presenting an ambiguous portrait of care, production, and human agency. This portrait remains irreducibly and collective, in excess of the powers and intentions that constitute social belonging....
Nov 13, 2022•1 hr 56 min
Money on the Left is joined by Ben Tarnoff—tech worker, writer, and cofounder of Logic Magazine —about his book Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future (Verso Books, 2022). In his book, Tarnoff provides a comprehensive history and a critical topology of this thing we have come to know, love, hate, swear off, get on, and grow bored of: the Internet. Throughout our conversation, Tarnoff displaces the haphazard history of the Internet that circulates often-unquestioned in our fogg...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Benjamin Wilson and Scott Ferguson join guest-host Jakob Feinig to discuss their forthcoming article about Money on the Left’s “uni” project to democratize university finance. Titled “Stop Trying to Find the Money–Create It!,” the article argues that the Public Banking Act can empower universities to issue new forms of public money that serve democratic communities and repudiate austerity. The text will appear mid-October 2022 in the American Association of University Professors ’ publication Ac...
Oct 02, 2022•1 hr 23 min
Will Beaman (@agoingaccount) is joined by Erica Robles-Anderson ( @fstflofscholars ) for an examination of the Biden Administration’s public communications around student debt relief. If Trump-era communication was characterized by direct broadcasts from the Tweeter-in-Chief, this new style uses public policy to strategically hail online discussion. Erica and Will read "This You?" debtor discourse as an example of how political media forms can be suited to coalitional, democratic politics. Visit...
Sep 04, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Frederic Heine joins Money on the Left to discuss his recent essay, “Performing Hard Money: Monetary Policy, Metaphor and Masculinity in the Making of EMU,” published this summer in the Journal of Cultural Economy . Heine is a university assistant at the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies at Johannes Kepler University, Linz. In his essay, Heine analyzes the cluster of masculine metaphors that ground and mobilize the European Monetary Union’s hard-line opposition to soft money politics. At ...
Sep 02, 2022•1 hr 33 min
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 conversation in the Austin City Council, which was tasked by recent legislation with exploring possibilit...
Aug 11, 2022•1 hr 39 min
Money on the Left is thrilled to release English and Spanish transcripts from our Superstructure podcast with with Daniel Rojas Medellin ( @DanielRMed ), now Coordinator of newly inaugurated President Gustavo Petro's ’s transition team ( @petrogustavo ), and Mexican economist Jesús Reséndiz Silva (@Tlacuachito). In the episode, co-hosts Andrés Bernal ( @andresintheory ) & Naty Smith ( @orangeasm ) speak with Medellin and Silva about what it means to think beyond economic orthodoxies in Latin...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 22 min
