Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up - Why you should still care about Modern Monetary Theory
Submitted by annieli on Sun, 09/30/2018 - 5:31pm"The biggest capital power in London is of course the Bank of England, but its position as a semi-state institution makes it impossible for it to assert its domination in so brutal a fashion. Nonetheless, it too is sufficiently capable of looking after itself... Inasmuch as the Bank issues notes that are not backed by the metal reserve in its vaults, it creates tokens of value that are not only means of circulation, but also forms additional - even if fictitious - capital for it, to the nominal value of these fiduciary notes, and this extra capital yields it an extra profit." Marx, Karl. Capital, volume 3. Penguin. pp. 674–675.
Someone who had the time and wherewithal will probably have a first-hand report on this past weekend’s recent 2nd annual Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) conference in NYC.
Until that happens it seemed important to remind ourselves how important MMT is to progressive politics and how a radical political economy approach requires the continuing research work in this area, albeit largely academic. For a MMT primer go to this link.
It is one of the few contemporary movements that from a double-coding or even a dual coding perspective has the advantage of implying socialist solutions without ever having to mention socialism or Marx.
This is not a trivial matter, considering the ignorance of the US populace.
MMT is not necessarily a socialist stalking horse, but its adoption by folks like Bernie Sanders, provides one of many tools for how the current idiocy can be brought under control.