Decolonizing Money

'An important thinker' - David Graeber, author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years To change the world, we need a money revolution. Yet the debate over money has been dominated by two perspectives: those free-market capitalists who want money to rule everything, and those who want the state to harness money's power. Decolonizing Money presents an anarchist theory of money which sets out strategies for collective liberation beyond state and capital. Drawing on anarchist, abolitionist and anti-colonial feminist traditions, Julio Linares makes the heretical argument for a grassroots democratic movement to abolish the imperialist US dollar as a necessary step towards the cancellation of debt and establishing a worldwide basic income. Linares shows that money, beyond a store of value and a medium of exchange, is a series of promises a society makes to itself - and he challenges us to make them otherwise. This innovative book takes up lessons from global history and social movements in order to unleash the political imagination. It shows us how the creation, use and most importantly the destruction of money are forms of power that need to be reclaimed through direct action, as part of a radical democratic project for autonomy and self-determination.

Julio César Linares is a community organizer and economic anthropologist born in the territories known today as Guatemala. He holds an MSc from the London School of Economics where he studied and worked on projects with the late David Graeber. He serves as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). He lives in Berlin, Germany.

Introduction: A Money Burning Ritual
Part I: Why We Must Abolish the US Dollar
Part II: On Decolonizing Money
Part III: Elements of a Democratic Money Theory
Praxis: Five Tactics for Abolition
Epilogue
Now Is Your Turn
Acknowledgments
Notes