In opposition to Cash is now out. It’s been noticed in a variety of bookstores, together with the Union Sq. Barnes and Noble, the place it seems to be shelved subsequent to Marx’s Capital within the Enterprise part.
As my pal Suresh mentioned to me the opposite day, as writers we must always consider books as landmarks for a bigger physique of thought, somewhat than self-contained arguments in themselves. That’s actually the case with this guide. However I’m glad to see this piece of the bigger challenge out on the planet.
We had two very good launch occasions, one on the College of Massachusetts (the place each of us went to graduate college) and one at John Jay Faculty, my tutorial house now. Each occasions had a fantastic turnout, and I very a lot appreciated the dialogue with Christine Dean, Jerry Epstein and Perry Mehrling on the UMass occasion, and with Zach Carter on the John Jay one. For me, it was like celebrating the vacations first with your loved ones of origin after which with your personal household.
Sadly, we weren’t capable of document the John Jay occasion; there was video of the UMass one, however I’m not positive when it will likely be obtainable. However there are a pair different conversations we’ve had in regards to the guide lately that I can share.
First is an episode that Arjun and I did with The Local weather Pod again in April. Regardless of the title (and normal focus) of the podcast, host Ty Benefiel had a variety of sharp and insightful questions in regards to the nature of cash and its relationship to the social and materials world.
Second is an on-line roundtable we did with members of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society. This was a really good dialog — I feel philosophers and political theorists with a deep curiosity in cash are maybe the perfect readers for the guide.
One factor I appreciated about each these conversations — and the 2 launch occasions — was the strain our interlocutors placed on us to convey out the real-world implications of our arguments, which the guide itself is a bit mild on. There’s naturally a dialogue of local weather coverage on The Local weather Pod, however we additionally get into the pandemic response, democratizing the Fed, and different extra real-world questions.
The guide itself is primarily an try and get out of the flybottle of financial eager about cash, to borrow a phrase from Wittgenstein. However in fact this isn’t simply a tutorial critique — as Christine Desan noticed on the UMass occasion, economics isn’t just one other self-discipline, it presents a imaginative and prescient of the world that corresponds to the logic of life beneath the rule of capital. Or as she put it, “We’re all within the flybottle.”
We’ve additionally recorded interviews with Nathan Robinson of Present Affairs, Brian Edwards-Tiekert of UpFront on KPFA, and Doug Henwood for his present Behind the Information. I’ll put up the hyperlinks to these as they arrive out. As we talked about to Doug, our unique title for our guide, on the very begin of the challenge, was The Tyranny of Cash. This was a nod to the closing traces of his Wall Road, which describes it as “a primary draft for a challenge aiming to finish the rule of cash, whose tyranny is typically a little bit onerous to see.” Just like the fly within the bottle, it’s onerous to flee after we can’t see the factor we’re trapped in.
