Decolonizing Money

“Writing in the tradition of Bookchin and Graeber, Julio Linares shows that when placed in the perspective of world history and anthropology, current attempts to reimagine money—from MMT to Bitcoin—are actually not terribly imaginative" David Wengrow, co-author of The Dawn of Everything “In this provocative book, Julio Linares explores the project of abolishing US dollar hegemony to decolonize money and create a real economic democracy by putting the power of money into people's hands" L. Randall Wray, author of Money for Beginners 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. Julio Cèsar Linares is an economic anthropologist and community organizer. At the London School of Economics he was a student and collaborator of the late David Graeber. He serves as Public Outreach for the Basic Income Earth Network.

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