Will Beaman joins Billy Saas & Scott Ferguson to discuss the enduring influence of David Graeber’s debt-centered work in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s election to Mayor of New York City. Will and Scott unpack their jointly authored essay, “The Utopia of Refusal: David Graeber, Debt & the Left Monetary Imagination,” which is the latest in a series of pieces by the Money on the Left Editorial Collective to agitate for credit-centered experimentation through and beyond the Mamdani mayoralty. 

Most crucially, Will and Scott find that the Graeberian framework on debt funnels political attention and action toward periodic acts of cancellation or refusal to the exclusion of radical democratic alternatives such as those outlined in “Blue Bonds: A Fiscal Strategy for Overcoming Trump 2.0” and “How the Zetro Card can Save New York City (Really).” While Graeber’s work has been indispensable to left organization and advocacy since before Occupy, what’s needed now, the hosts argue, is a framework for mobilizing--rather than refusing to engage--the considerable fiscal agency already at hand across all levels of governance.

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Music by Nahneen Kula: www.nahneenkula.com