videotroph
@videotroph.bsky.social
@moneyontheleft.bsky.social
(posts do not reflect the views of my employer)
(posts do not reflect the views of my employer)
Reposted by videotroph
I could go on for 30 more tweets sharing work we’ve put out, but it’s beside the point.
The institutional Marxist left simply doesn’t want to creatively incorporate the idea that money is a contested choreography between issuers and receivers because it’s hard and they’re lazy.
The institutional Marxist left simply doesn’t want to creatively incorporate the idea that money is a contested choreography between issuers and receivers because it’s hard and they’re lazy.
December 1, 2025 at 9:47 PM
I could go on for 30 more tweets sharing work we’ve put out, but it’s beside the point.
The institutional Marxist left simply doesn’t want to creatively incorporate the idea that money is a contested choreography between issuers and receivers because it’s hard and they’re lazy.
The institutional Marxist left simply doesn’t want to creatively incorporate the idea that money is a contested choreography between issuers and receivers because it’s hard and they’re lazy.
please and thank you
Periodic reminder that @moneyontheleft.bsky.social has been pushing MMT lightyears past this “here’s what a benevolent government can do” shit for many years.
It would be nice for the left commentariat to acknowledge that this work exists and engage with it.
moneyontheleft.org/2025/09/18/t...
It would be nice for the left commentariat to acknowledge that this work exists and engage with it.
moneyontheleft.org/2025/09/18/t...
December 1, 2025 at 9:48 PM
please and thank you
Reposted by videotroph
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
December 1, 2025 at 7:40 PM
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
Reposted by videotroph
Arrington argues that the works of art that many women created under the Federal Arts Project made visible Black, immigrant, and women’s lives in a way that challenged segregationist, xenophobic, and sexist structures intrinsic in the nation’s institutions.
Women in the Federal Arts Project with Lauren Arrington
We speak with Lauren Arrington about her forthcoming book on women artists in the Federal Arts Project. The Great Depression rendered 140,000 women and girls across the United States homeless. In 1…
moneyontheleft.org
December 1, 2025 at 7:41 PM
Arrington argues that the works of art that many women created under the Federal Arts Project made visible Black, immigrant, and women’s lives in a way that challenged segregationist, xenophobic, and sexist structures intrinsic in the nation’s institutions.
Reposted by videotroph
✨ MotL 85 is live! ✨
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
December 1, 2025 at 6:53 PM
✨ MotL 85 is live! ✨
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
Tremendous thx to @schooldaves.bsky.social for joining us on the podcast this month. We had such an important & wide-ranging conversation about entrenched problems in the history of K-12 finance & about what it's going to take to create a robust & democratic public education system for all.
✨ MotL 85 is live! ✨
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
We are joined by David I. Backer, associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall U., to discuss his new book: As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Schools (@thenewpress.bsky.social, 2025).
moneyontheleft.org/2025/12/01/r...
Please listen & share! 🎧 🙌
December 1, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Tremendous thx to @schooldaves.bsky.social for joining us on the podcast this month. We had such an important & wide-ranging conversation about entrenched problems in the history of K-12 finance & about what it's going to take to create a robust & democratic public education system for all.
Reposted by videotroph
Great thread. Accountability will be an ongoing infrastructure that keeps Trump’s abuses legible and actionable for a reconstructed democratic society. Not a final settlement.
I also think it's useful to recognize that there can be a range of kinds of accountability. Many of them are inadequate! but they still are limited consequences, they still matter, and we can still work towards them (and towards more.)1
While this usually isn't the intent, "no one will ever be held accountable for this" doomerism is an excuse not to try.
There'll be at least some accountability if enough Americans work for it. And this time really is different. Doesn't guarantee the aftermath will be, but it increases the chances.
There'll be at least some accountability if enough Americans work for it. And this time really is different. Doesn't guarantee the aftermath will be, but it increases the chances.
December 1, 2025 at 5:19 AM
Great thread. Accountability will be an ongoing infrastructure that keeps Trump’s abuses legible and actionable for a reconstructed democratic society. Not a final settlement.
Reposted by videotroph
Obviously I’m happy to see these things tried, and I am optimistic they will open up space to think about social value apart from profit. But this is a case where something should be publicly backstopped whether or not it is profitable. Hopefully this contradiction can be politicized.
December 1, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Obviously I’m happy to see these things tried, and I am optimistic they will open up space to think about social value apart from profit. But this is a case where something should be publicly backstopped whether or not it is profitable. Hopefully this contradiction can be politicized.
Reposted by videotroph
The underlying capitalist ideology that is pressing ATL to say the public grocery store should become profitable and self subsistent in three years needs to be dislodged. moneyontheleft.org/2025/10/10/d...
December 1, 2025 at 3:36 PM
The underlying capitalist ideology that is pressing ATL to say the public grocery store should become profitable and self subsistent in three years needs to be dislodged. moneyontheleft.org/2025/10/10/d...
Reposted by videotroph
Still here and still fighting. You can help. Call Congress and tell them to restore CFPB funding and impeach cowardly Trump Bro Rusty Vought. Remember he spent $5 mil of CFPB funds on body guards just so he could bankrupt the agency faster. #stopvought #savecfpb
www.nteu.org/top-news-upd...
www.nteu.org/top-news-upd...
NTEU Fights Trump’s Latest Efforts to Shut Down CFPB
The CFPB is threatening, yet again, to RIF employees. NTEU and its partners, Gupta Wessler and Public Citizen Litigation Group, have gone back to federal district court to make sure that the CFPB is…
www.change.org
December 1, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Still here and still fighting. You can help. Call Congress and tell them to restore CFPB funding and impeach cowardly Trump Bro Rusty Vought. Remember he spent $5 mil of CFPB funds on body guards just so he could bankrupt the agency faster. #stopvought #savecfpb
www.nteu.org/top-news-upd...
www.nteu.org/top-news-upd...
Reposted by videotroph
I know it’s hard to believe—it is for me, too—but they did this because they *wanted* to.
December 1, 2025 at 2:47 PM
I know it’s hard to believe—it is for me, too—but they did this because they *wanted* to.
Reposted by videotroph
💯
the primary thing that TPUSA provides to young conservatives is a blueprint for weaponizing the abject cowardice of university administrators against individual teachers and instructors, and university admins should take a long look in the mirror and think about what that says about them
OU has put the professor here on administrative leave:
November 30, 2025 at 10:49 PM
💯
Reposted by videotroph
A critique of David Graeber’s theoretical project, written with respect from within the world that it shaped.
TL;DR in conflating all formalized obligations with the accusatory logics of debt and Schuld, Graeber prevents any serious thinking about institutional design except for periodic amnesty.
TL;DR in conflating all formalized obligations with the accusatory logics of debt and Schuld, Graeber prevents any serious thinking about institutional design except for periodic amnesty.
✨ New Essay! ✨
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 30, 2025 at 11:27 PM
A critique of David Graeber’s theoretical project, written with respect from within the world that it shaped.
TL;DR in conflating all formalized obligations with the accusatory logics of debt and Schuld, Graeber prevents any serious thinking about institutional design except for periodic amnesty.
TL;DR in conflating all formalized obligations with the accusatory logics of debt and Schuld, Graeber prevents any serious thinking about institutional design except for periodic amnesty.
Reposted by videotroph
Excellent conversation on the framing of neoliberal public finance vs democratic public finance.
MotL 84 is live! 🔊
✨Democratic Public Finance✨
moneyontheleft.org/2025/11/01/d...
Billy Saas & Scott Ferguson are joined by Will Beaman to discuss Money on the Left’s framework for what we call “Democratic Public Finance."
Please listen 🎧 & share 🙌 !
*Transcript forthcoming
✨Democratic Public Finance✨
moneyontheleft.org/2025/11/01/d...
Billy Saas & Scott Ferguson are joined by Will Beaman to discuss Money on the Left’s framework for what we call “Democratic Public Finance."
Please listen 🎧 & share 🙌 !
*Transcript forthcoming
November 30, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Excellent conversation on the framing of neoliberal public finance vs democratic public finance.
Reposted by videotroph
Save the CFPB.
The Radical Potential of Consumer Financial Protection with Vijay Raghavan
We speak with Vijay Raghavan, Professor of Law at the Brooklyn Law School, about his recent article, “The Radical Potential of Consumer Financial Protection,” published in Boston College Law Review…
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Save the CFPB.
Reposted by videotroph
"For too long, the U.S. left has taken for granted that real politics happens in movements and oppositional parties, while governance is what the state does afterward."
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 11:56 PM
"For too long, the U.S. left has taken for granted that real politics happens in movements and oppositional parties, while governance is what the state does afterward."
Reposted by videotroph
“[Graeber’s notion of] baseline communism … affirms that care is constitutive, but it does so in a way that leans toward institutional unaccountability: it holds the minimal ethic of help outside the very infrastructures through which help is necessarily organized and provisioned.”
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 30, 2025 at 1:58 PM
“[Graeber’s notion of] baseline communism … affirms that care is constitutive, but it does so in a way that leans toward institutional unaccountability: it holds the minimal ethic of help outside the very infrastructures through which help is necessarily organized and provisioned.”
Reposted by videotroph
"Graeber develops a politics that amounts to what we call a *utopia of refusal*. ... Political creativity is anchored at the edges of institutions, in the capacity to say no or step aside. The relation to social form is either compliance or exit."
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 30, 2025 at 2:22 AM
"Graeber develops a politics that amounts to what we call a *utopia of refusal*. ... Political creativity is anchored at the edges of institutions, in the capacity to say no or step aside. The relation to social form is either compliance or exit."
Words have consequences alert, @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.
Indiana senator says he's a no on redistricting after Trump uses slur
President Trump's "choices of words have consequences," wrote Indiana Sen. Mike Bohacek, whose daughter has Down syndrome.
www.indystar.com
November 29, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Words have consequences alert, @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social.
Our featured image for this post comes from Chuck Jones' deliciously self-reflexive Merrie Melodies short Duck Amuck (1953). We chose it because it so vividly demonstrates how any act of erasure requires fresh and hence contestable inscriptions.
"[R]efusal, too, leaves people entangled, and therefore requires mediated care and empowerment both for those who refuse and for those who live with its aftermath."
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Our featured image for this post comes from Chuck Jones' deliciously self-reflexive Merrie Melodies short Duck Amuck (1953). We chose it because it so vividly demonstrates how any act of erasure requires fresh and hence contestable inscriptions.
Reposted by videotroph
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social and @videotroph.bsky.social are writing among the most visionary pieces today about how we can understand public finance in order to change it, and the trajectory of their vision is one that I hope will someday (soon) win the status of "common sense" on the Left.
✨ New Essay! ✨
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 4:47 PM
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social and @videotroph.bsky.social are writing among the most visionary pieces today about how we can understand public finance in order to change it, and the trajectory of their vision is one that I hope will someday (soon) win the status of "common sense" on the Left.
Reposted by videotroph
"If the domain in which obligations are formally recorded and enforced is structurally a 'dead zone,' then public money and public accounting can only be trusted insofar as they are kept at arm’s length."
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 10:27 PM
"If the domain in which obligations are formally recorded and enforced is structurally a 'dead zone,' then public money and public accounting can only be trusted insofar as they are kept at arm’s length."
Reposted by videotroph
"Baseline or everyday communism [in Graeber's work] comes across as a primordial, pre-coordinative ethic—an encounter between persons removed from institutional or public timetables—rather than as something that is itself shaped by ongoing arrangements of care, coercion, and provision."
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 5:22 PM
"Baseline or everyday communism [in Graeber's work] comes across as a primordial, pre-coordinative ethic—an encounter between persons removed from institutional or public timetables—rather than as something that is itself shaped by ongoing arrangements of care, coercion, and provision."
Reposted by videotroph
✨ New Essay! ✨
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 4:19 PM
✨ New Essay! ✨
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
Reposted by videotroph
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by @videotroph.bsky.social and myself. I'm hopeful that this essay will be a useful reference for a long time. Read and share!!! 🧡
by @videotroph.bsky.social and myself. I'm hopeful that this essay will be a useful reference for a long time. Read and share!!! 🧡
✨ New Essay! ✨
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
@greenbackbetter.bsky.social & @videotroph.bsky.social argue that, while David Graeber remains vital for leftist praxis, his "utopia of refusal" places a ceiling on what we can imagine & accomplish.
Please read & share. 👩💻 🙌
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by Will Beaman & Scott Ferguson Note: David Graeber leaves behind a rich and complex body of work that remains influential for leftist thought and practice. Since his passing in 2020, however, …
moneyontheleft.org
November 29, 2025 at 4:30 PM
The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination
by @videotroph.bsky.social and myself. I'm hopeful that this essay will be a useful reference for a long time. Read and share!!! 🧡
by @videotroph.bsky.social and myself. I'm hopeful that this essay will be a useful reference for a long time. Read and share!!! 🧡