✨New Essay!✨ How do we counter the imagination deficit enforced by an austere private money paradigm? Read @robbhawkes.bsky.social's latest: “Reclaiming Money’s Public Powers for Imaginative Intersectional Politics.” & please share! 🙏

Reclaiming Money’s Public Powers for Imaginative Intersectional Politics

By Rob Hawkes Alongside my Money on the Left colleagues Will Beaman and Tyler Suksawat, I recently joined Gus Dunn-Hindle of the Maine People’s Alliance to discuss public money and public banking o…

moneyontheleft.org

“Picturing another world is not the same thing as bringing one into being, of course, but freeing our imaginations from the austere limits of the private money paradigm is an important first step towards a better, more inclusive, and sustainable future.” 2/

free your mind

Alt: free your mind

static.klipy.com

“For the former @greenparty.org.uk leader @carolinelucas.bsky.social, ‘the failure to rise to the challenge of the nature and climate emergencies’ is reflective of an ‘imagination deficit’ and ‘a failure to imagine that a better world is possible’.” 1/

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · 2d ago

"Many of today’s most intractable challenges, from crumbling public services to the accelerating ecological crisis, look very different when we cease to view them through the orthodox prism of monetary scarcity, privation, and limitation."

4/ Dessert

What is the Public Money Paradigm?

Why reconfiguring our understanding of money changes everything, not just how we think about economics.

robhawkes.substack.com

3/ Main

Green-Lighting Gatsby: Austere Modernisms, Exuberant Avant-Gardes, and their Orgastic Futures

“Inflation” has been associated, by modernist artists and scholars alike, with a crisis of faith in representation, with exuberance and excess, and with the relativisation and loss of all ...

link.springer.com

2/ Appetiser

Money, Modernism & Inflation in The Great Gatsby (Part 2)

Rob and Scott return to their dialog about modernism, inflation, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s celebrated 1925 novel The Great Gatsby (click here for Part 1). During their conversation, our co-hosts fo…

moneyontheleft.org

1/ Amuse-bouche

Money, Modernism & Inflation in The Great Gatsby

Rob Hawkes (@robbhawkes) and Scott Ferguson (@videotroph) kick off a new Superstructure series about money, modernism, and inflation by revisiting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s widely-read novel, The Great…

moneyontheleft.org

Weird, huh?

Money Is Weird

by Rob Hawkes Isn’t it strange that social inclusion and climate justice appear unaffordable, but not the status quo? In July, I presented at the Weird Modernisms conference at Loughborou…

moneyontheleft.org

We need more public banks! Our friends @moneyontheleft.bsky.social & @mainepeople.bsky.social recorded an easy-to-follow chat about how public banks can help cities and states save money and fund things that make life better and more affordable. Thanks for the shoutout, @mainebeacon.bsky.social!

Maine Beacon@mainebeacon.bsky.social · 2w ago

The Money on the Left Collective joins the Beacon podcast to rethink how we talk about money and public spending. They dig into public banking, why money doesn’t have to be treated as a scarce resource, and how states like Maine could use public finance to invest in public needs. Listen now!

The Money on the Left Collective joins the Beacon podcast to rethink how we talk about money and public spending. They dig into public banking, why money doesn’t have to be treated as a scarce resource, and how states like Maine could use public finance to invest in public needs. Listen now!

What if we rethought money through public banking? - Maine Beacon

The Money on the Left Collective joins the Beacon podcast to rethink how we talk about money and public spending. Will Beaman, Tyler Suksawat and Rob Hawkes of the collective join MPA legislative stra...

mainebeacon.com

“[A]s we @moneyontheleft.bsky.social have been arguing […] systemic exclusion is baked into the present logic of monetary design, [but] this is not and has never been inevitable – we can design another, more inclusive and sustainable system just as we can redesign our banknotes.”

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · 2w ago

Animal Spirits and Public Promises: Phantom Beavers and the Politics of Monetary Design

“In asserting that money is weird, it is my hope that we can all ‘unzip’ our ‘normal-person monetary imaginations’ and refuse to be constrained by the artificial restrictions the economic orthodoxy imposes on our understanding of money’s limitless creative potential.”

“At the conclusion of my talk […], I turned to the words of the neuroqueer theorist @dr-nicky.bsky.social, who explains […] that: ‘Neuronormativity and heteronormativity […] are systems of artificial restriction on human potential. […] To neuroqueer is to refuse to be constrained by those limits.’”

In July, I presented at the @moderniststudies.bsky.social / @modernistudies.bsky.social Weird Modernisms conference @lboroenglish.bsky.social. My talk (which you can read via @moneyontheleft.bsky.social’s new Arts & Culture page) argued that *money is weird*.

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · 3w ago

✨ New Essay! ✨ Why are climate justice & public services always labeled "unaffordable" while the status quo gets a blank check? In this brief meditation, @robbhawkes.bsky.social argues that money is far weirder, malleable, and redesignable than we've been taught. Please read & share! 👩‍💻 🙌

“… and underscores the foundational role of public provisioning across the social, economic and aesthetic spheres.” Rob Hawkes, “‘Too paranoid for you?’: Suspicion, Trust and (Post/Meta?)Modern Money in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge” @edinburghup.bsky.social 3/

“Thus, in place of the paranoiac logics of privation and competitive individualism, our shared project valorises ‘capacious alternative visions of political economic possibility’, advances a politics of care, collectivity and interdependence…” 2/

“The present chapter […] reject[s] the private-money-based economic orthodoxy in favour of the public money paradigm. This, I assert, entails moving away from a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ […] and towards what @moneyontheleft.bsky.social’s William Saas has called the ‘hermeneutics of provision’.” 1/

“My hope is that […] we can build a postnormal, inclusive and sustainable world and unzip our ‘normal-person suits’ (along with our normal-person monetary imaginations) together.”

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · 4w ago

Ain't money weird?

Green Politics and Public Money with Sheridan Kates moneyontheleft.org/2026/05/02/g...

“When we understand that inequality and exclusionary violence are built into the logic of private money we can begin to imagine new possibilities for monetary design founded on democratic inclusion, collectivity, and care.” robhawkes.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

“Money is always created (and can only ever make meaningful sense) in a public context; it is issued and redeemed by public authorities, and facilitates transactions only after it has been named as a public unit of account. Therefore, in a profoundly important sense, all money is public money.”

Much of my recent writing has referred to ‘the public money paradigm’, but what does this mean and why is it so important to me, both as a literature scholar and as an advocate for democratic public finance?

Rob Hawkes@robbhawkes.bsky.social · last mo.

What is the Public Money Paradigm? Why reconfiguring our understanding of money changes everything, not just how we think about economics. robhawkes.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

‘[W]hen we understand that inequality and exclusionary violence are built into the logic of private money we can begin to imagine new possibilities for monetary design founded on democratic inclusion, collectivity, and care.’ Let’s tell new stories about money. Let’s give credit where credit’s due.

Rob Hawkes@robbhawkes.bsky.social · last mo.

What is the Public Money Paradigm? Why reconfiguring our understanding of money changes everything, not just how we think about economics. robhawkes.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

What is the Public Money Paradigm? Why reconfiguring our understanding of money changes everything, not just how we think about economics. robhawkes.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

Q: How can we cultivate a paradigm of money founded on democratic inclusion, collectivity, + care—i.e., one of PUBLIC money? A: Part of the way is by seeing, as @robbhawkes.bsky.social notes, how "inequality + exclusionary violence are built into the logic of PRIVATE money," our current paradigm.

Rob Hawkes (@robbhawkes.bsky.social)

Money happens; @moneyontheleft.bsky.social editorial collective; credit @wherecreditsdue.bsky.social; Former Chair @modernistudies.bsky.social; researching literature, money, and trust; he/him; https:...

robbhawkes.bsky.social

Rob Hawkes@robbhawkes.bsky.social · last mo.

What is the Public Money Paradigm? Why reconfiguring our understanding of money changes everything, not just how we think about economics. robhawkes.substack.com/p/what-is-th...

Isn’t it though?

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · last mo.

Isn’t Money Weird?

‘Why the Humanities Need Democratic Public Finance’ In response to @theguardian.com’s recent editorial on cuts in universities, I urge those defending the humanities to reject zero-sum austerity and embrace what we @moneyontheleft.bsky.social call Democratic Public Finance (DPF).

Why the Humanities Need Democratic Public Finance

In opposing cuts to jobs and courses, we must reject zero-sum austerity and embrace the public credit at the heart of higher education.

open.substack.com

This thread is a manifesto I can get behind! ✊

Rob Hawkes@robbhawkes.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“As @dr-nicky.bsky.social explains: ‘[A]nyone can liberate themselves from the strictures of normativity. The already neurodivergent can reconnect with, and cultivate previously suppressed or undeveloped capacities, in order to more fully manifest their potentials for beautiful weirdness…’” 1/

✨ New Page! ✨ We’ve launched a dedicated Arts & Culture page on Money on the Left. We’ve always maintained that arts & culture are integral to political economy, never just an afterthought. This new space gathers all of our cultural critiques, interviews, & essays into one clear home on our site.

Arts & Culture

Arts & Culture

moneyontheleft.org

Isn’t Money Weird?

Weird Epistemologies of Money and Trust in Fitzgerald, Ford, and Larsen; or, Isn’t Money Weird?

By Rob Hawkes What follows is a slightly expanded version of a talk I gave at the ‘Weird Modernisms’ conference at Loughborough University, UK (1-4 July 2026), a collaboration between the UK-based …

moneyontheleft.org