Looking forward to listening to so many interesting papers, and to discussing the Modernist flâneuse at NWiMS 15 on Friday.

Since 2020, the Money on the Left Editorial Collective has been arguing for a new approach to university finance that we call the ‘uni’ proposal. Here are links to our essays and interviews related to this project.

It's the first #ModWrite of the New Year! Let us know what you're working on using the hashtag 📚 (and don't forget to sign up for the BAMS New Work in Modernist Studies conference, held online this Friday 9th January, here: forms.gle/RQEkATXgkGcg...)

Looking to start 2026 off with a dash of modernist inspiration and community? There are three days left to register to join New Work in Modernist Studies 15. Sign up here forms.gle/5qyW6Yzx2imE... by 5pm on Wednesday 7th. Peruse the programme here: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Public design is too important a generational project for the left to cede to neoliberal technocrats. moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/29/t...

“How can we empower local governments and universities to prioritise ecosocial justice and sustainability by redesigning money creation, underscoring their roles as allocators of public credit?”

Will Beaman joins Billy Saas & Scott Ferguson to discuss the enduring influence of David Graeber’s debt-centered work in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s election to Mayor of New York City. moneyontheleft.org/2026/01/02/g...

New to Money on the Left? Here’s a good place to start. 👇

This is as good as a time to spread the word about substance of policy Frameworks that are being developed by some very smart people. Many neoliberal policy wonks promoted the myth that they had a monopoly on policy expertise.Policy design is too important to be left to modelers on corporate rolls.

States need to reclaim agency and govern in coordination against this tyrannical administration moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/09/b...

“Money cannot be something we need to hoard to create a livable future. And it certainly cannot be scarce unless we make it so. Money is, instead, the world-making act of crediting those actors who construct the future."

We’re kicking off the new year by discussing our recent writing about David Graeber. “What’s needed now,” we argue, “is a framework for mobilizing, rather than refusing to engage, the considerable fiscal agency already at hand at all levels of governance.”

✨MotL 86 is live!✨ moneyontheleft.org/2026/01/02/g... In this episode, we discuss the enduring influence of David Graeber’s debt-centered work in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s election to Mayor of NY City. Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌

Storytelling is another word for accounting; accounting is another word for storytelling. Who you include in your story matters. Let’s tell new stories in 2026. It’s time to give credit where credit’s due.

Today in #DemocraticPublicFinance Mamdani in his speech challenged the casual narrative erasure of many in his coalition. Narrative erasure is the first step of an accounting trick: if someone can be said to not really exist, then their existence presents as a cost to the city that excludes them.

Let’s do this.

"As 2025 draws to a close, we should all be 'horrified beyond belief,' but not by @zackpolanski.bsky.social's calls to think differently about 'the markets.' What ought to 'frighten' us all 'to death' is the status quo." moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/20/z...

Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision: The Case for Democratic Public Finance moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/20/z...

We're happy to announce that we have extended the deadline to sign up to attend New Work in Modernist Studies 15! Please register by 5pm on Wednesday 7 January. Take a look at how the programme is shaping up below: docs.google.com/document/d/1... We can't wait to see you there!

Great essay about design and democracy.

Very cool post from @greenbackbetter.bsky.social at @moneyontheleft.bsky.social about the politics of design.

It’s remarkable (i.e. not really remarkable at all) that the right wing press and the ostensibly socialist Fabian Soc are making all the same rhetorical moves in their attacks on Zack, but I guess it’s kinda fun marking off all the rainbows and unicorns on my exhausted economic paradigm bingo card 🦄

“The idea that squeezing a tiny elite of billionaires will pay for everything is fantasy and we do need to expose that.” Good job no one’s ever actually said that - including me. So why is Labour again repeatedly lying to avoid taxing the super-rich? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It has been refreshingly obvious from day one of @zackpolanski.bsky.social’s leadership of @greenparty.org.uk that he rejects the failed economic dogma that has only driven (and can only continue to drive) social and ecological breakdown. The real fantasy is that we can carry on with the status quo.

“The orthodoxy, which we name Neoliberal Public Finance (NPF), treats money as a thing that we either have or don’t have, of which there is a finite ‘supply,’ and which we can run out of if we are not careful.”

For me, one of the highlights of 2025 was launching @wherecreditsdue.bsky.social with my dear friend @robynollett.bsky.social as part of the #GlobalDonutDays. You can catch a glimpse of our event at 0:52 in this video, which beautifully captures the GDDs’ celebration of #DoughnutEconomics.

🎙️NEW PODCAST EPISODE! Political economist Emma Holten talks with @austerityismurder.bsky.social about how mainstream economics erases care work and social reproduction, even though all economic activity depends on them. realprogressives.org/mnc-podcast-...

"Why can’t credit be extended to support essential green infrastructure while ecologically destructive profiteering gets the green light?"

In public finance, the seemingly inevitable design to contest is that of Neoliberal Public Finance. Our task is to replace it—first in legitimacy, then in governing power—with Democratic Public Finance, as Will and the other fine folks at @moneyontheleft.bsky.social urge. bsky.app/profile/gree...

Each time Will Beaman writes a new essay, I somehow always find the time to read it because they're just that good. Here's the premise of this one: Design can either attempt to insinuate the inevitability of a choice or openly invite contestation—and one is certainly more democratic than the other.

Refusing tradeoffs huh 👀 moneyontheleft.org/2025/10/10/d...

That’s called Democratic Public Finance (DPF)!

1/ In a Marxist idiom you could think of MAGA’s crisis right now as a crisis of interpellation. People need to be interpellated as innocent, special, exceptional—as friends, not enemies. There is a whole discursive infrastructure of transference, scapegoating, and projection that stabilizes this.

✨ New Essay! ✨ @greenbackbetter.bsky.social argues that the current turn toward the analog isn't simple nostalgia. It's a rejection of design as inevitable. From frictionless UX to balanced budgets, it's time to stop treating the politics of design as natural constraints. Please read & share! 👩‍💻 🙌

A quick look at #GlobalDonutDays 2025 — a community-led festival centred on #DoughnutEconomics, and how it came together around the world:

The CFP deadline for BAMS/MSA is today! Get those abstracts in! 📣

"Why can commercial banks legally create money but not local councils or NHS trusts?" moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/20/z...

"As 2025 draws to a close, we should all be 'horrified beyond belief,” but not by Polanski’s calls to think differently about “the markets.' What ought to 'frighten' us all 'to death' is the status quo." moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/20/z...

The article by Will Beaman corresponds closely with the position I took in my review of Heather McGhee's book The Sum of Us. www.researchgate.net/publication/... Du Bois' "psychological wage" describes a host of tangible benefits to the white working class.

Jim Crow to Trump: Reconsidering the Psychological Wage

With Democratic Public Finance at the heart of a new, bold, green economic vision, Zack Polanski can deliver on his promise to bring hope back into British politics.

“It is a political choice to keep people in poverty whilst billionaire and multimillionaire wealth grows larger.”

🧵

Tired: Monetary Sovereignty Wired: Democratic Public Finance

"It is hardly surprising that Polanski faces resistance both within and beyond his own party; it has been clear from the start of his leadership that he rejects the narrow terms of the economic debate that have dominated British politics for over four decades."

Hypothesis: If money is a designed human construct, then we can design experiments that test various design elements to yield alternative outcomes.

Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics Requires an Even Bolder Economic Vision

This is fascinating

"[H]ow did we ever come to regard the concept of “budget responsibility” as compatible with a society where children go hungry while billionaire wealth rises by £35 million each day?"