Max Haiven (and company)

This is an open access book, published September 15 2026 by MIT Press.

In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Game, and much of reality TV are cultural reflections of a society of relentless, lonely competition, where each of us must become a player: a savvy risk-taker, a miniature corporation of one. But in a gamed economy we players feel played, and new forms of fascism promise harsh justice and revenge. This book theorizes the connections between the financialization of the capitalist economy, the gamification of our lives, and the rising threat of a uniquely twenty-first century form of fascistic politics.

From vicious online swarmings to the QAnon conspiracy fantasy, from the siege of the US Capitol to the abuse of “free speech,” The Player and the Played analyzes the “playgrom” as a new form of extremist violence. Max Haiven explores how “derivative fascisms” both repeat and reinvent the terrors of the past in a financialized form. How have we learned to love the cheats who have power but loathe the cheats without it? It unpacks the worldbuilding (and world-destroying) urge of Silicon Valley. And it poses the urgent question: What is the antifascist game?

Max Haiven is Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University and author of many books, including most recently Palm Oil and Revenge Capitalism. He is the designer of the board game Billionaires & Guillotines. He was called “perhaps the most theoretically creative radical thinker of the moment” by the late David Graeber.

On 27 May 2026, Max Haiven sat down with Manuela Zechner at Housman's books in London to discuss the latter's newly published book The Plot is on Fire: Care Struggles after Progress, Plantation and Patriarchy.

From the book's publicity:

As myths of progress and modernisation collapse in the relentless polycrisis of our time, how do we strengthen other plots—in community, practice and struggle? How do we come together as movements for earthcare?

This book weaves stories, proposals, and analyses around a key domain of living reproduction in crisis: agriculture. Looking at peasant, indigenous, and transecofeminist practices, it formulates another plot on how we want to sustain life collectively—beyond progress, plantation, and patriarchy.

Recovering and repurposing old and new technologies, and breaking down the division between rural and urban, the ground is made fertile for growing other futures. Alongside writers like Ursula Le Guin and Octavia Butler, this work of radical political theory raises critical questions about technology and storytelling, as matters of care and community.

For more information about the book, visit: https://www.plutobooks.com/product/the-plot-is-on-fire/

For more information about Common Ecologies and the Earthcare Fieldcast, visit: https://commonecologies.net/

Audio of the June 13 Berlin launch of Julio Linares' book Decolonizing Money: The Promise of Abolishing the US Dollar, hosted by Miho Soong and Jabi.

The book is now out as part of the VAGABONDS series from Pluto Press.

https://www.plutobooks.com/product/decolonizing-money/

DECOLONIZING MONEY: THE PROMISE OF ABOLISHING THE US DOLLAR

By Julio Linares

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.

How can games be part of the struggle against fascism?

​Guests:

​Mark Bray (author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook)

​Marijam Did (author of Everything to Play For: How Video Games Are Changing the World)

On ​19 May 2026, Games Transformed (a festival for radical games and play) hosted an online event exploring

​What can games contribute to antifascist struggles?

​How can game designers think about antifascism?

​The event supported Games Transformed's 2026 game jam 'Smash the Fash' where digital and analog game-makers are invited to submit games and game ideas.

​At this free online event, Briar Dickey and Max Haiven interviewed the guests, and passed along questions from the audience.

​This event was supported by RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

​Mark Bray Mark Bray is a historian of Modern Europe at Rutgers University focusing on themes of radicalism, political violence, and, more recently, scams. He is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists and Martyrs in Spain and France among other works.

​Marijam Didžgalvytė is a Lithuanian-Tatar games industry critic dissecting the intersection between videogames and IRL politics. Her work has been published by the Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and others. Marijam was a Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is currently a Senior Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning videogames studio. In the past, Marijam served as the Chair of Communications Committee for Game Workers Unite International - an organisation that assisted the global push for unionisation in the videogames industry; she also co-founded GWU UK - the first legal trade union that has come out of the movement. She is an author of Everything To Play For: How Videogames Are Changing The World published by Verso Books in 2024 with 8 translations.

This is an audio recording of an academic paper, "Capitalism cheats: Three moments of normalized swindling" by Max Haiven, forthcoming in the journal Finance & Society in 2026. You can read it at https://maxhaiven.com/capitalismcheats/

In a financialized world where we are all conscripted to be competitive players, the category of cheating takes on new political and cultural potency and has become key to reactionary ideology. This speculative essay moves beyond the conventional framing of cheating as the exceptional malfeasance of bad economic actors, as well as beyond the claim that capitalism’s drive to profit encourages dishonesty and manipulation (thought that is indeed true). Rather, it proposes we recognize cheating at capitalism’s ideological and operational core, not its periphery. By examining (1) imperialism’s ‘Great Game’, (2) the links between game theory and neoliberalism, and (3) the role of recursive rule-breaking in the history of finance, we can triangulate the normalization of cheating within the dominant economic paradigm. This essay approaches cheating as a discursive formation entangled with financial power. Such an approach can help us recognize some elements of the rise of reactionary, far-right, and fascistic sentiment and politics today. These in many cases revolve around a rhetoric of cheating that misrecognizes the culprits, targeting poor and precarious minorities rather than those at the commanding heights of the economy.

We take the occassion of the first Trump-Mamdani meeting to ask: How can Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority help us understand fascism and the struggle against it? Do we need a charismatic leader to save us? PLUS: we spill the tea on Max Weber's spicy poly life. And the ghost of David Graeber makes his usual appearance.

THOUGHT SNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.

Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity. senseandsolidarity.org/

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025). www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022). maxhaiven.com/

Music by Dan Gouly.

In this episode, we speak with Omar Zahzah about his new book Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, published by the Censored Press and Seven Stories Press. Our conversation touches on: the gamified collaboration between big-tech and the apparatus of mass murder and apartheid; the digital targeting, harassment and silencing of Palestinian solidarity organizers; the colonial violence invested in the algorithms that shape our lives (and deaths); and the way a profoundly transformative "Virtual Palestine" is created through the protagonism of those resisting genocide and their supporters around the world.

Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, artist, musician, freelance journalist, and Assistant Professor of Arab, and Muslim, Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Omar is the former Education and Advocacy Coordinator for Eyewitness Palestine, a role that saw him training delegates to Palestine on Palestinian political history and culture and racial justice. Omar’s writing on Palestine has appeared in outlets such as The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, andThe Nation. Omar holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Sarah indulges Max's controversial take that...

- Students are workers

- Use of ChatGPT and generative AI is the refusal of work

- Workers can and should reclaim the means of study as part of a class war

THOUGHTSNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.

Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.

http://senseandsolidarity.org/

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).

http://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).

http://maxhaiven.com/

Music by Dan Gouly.

In this episode we discuss the contradiction within games between gender play and fantasies to control and order; video games as reproductive technology; the playfulness of the far right which could be characterised as play without pleasure; how rulebreaking and gamebreaking play out in liberal democracy and fascism; and the possibilities of play and protest in antifascist practices and riotous revolution.

Vicky Osterweil is a writer, worker and agitator based in Philadelphia. She is a founding member of the anarchist writing collective CAW, which can be found at cawshinythings.com She is the author of In Defense of Looting and the forthcoming book The Extended Universe: How Disney Destroyed the Movies and Took Over the World.

Against the Fascist Game is the second season of The Exploits of Play, a podcast about games and capitalism. Join Max Haiven and Faye Harvey as they interview game designers, critical theorists and grassroots activists struggling with games to understand, confront and abolish the rising threat of fascism in our times. We ask questions including: how is the far-right using games as platforms for ideology, recruiting and violence, both close to home and around the world? How have vicious reactionary politics emerged from a form of capitalism where most people feel trapped in an unwinnable game? What do fascism and antifascism mean today? And what role, if any do play and games have in confronting the fascist threat and creating a new world? The Exploits of Play is a production of Weird Economies, a platform for exploring the intricacies and excesses of our economic imaginaries, in cooperation with RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab.

Sarah and Max try and figure out why everyone is so obsessed with (mis)counting babies. Of course, we talk about capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy and much more.

Here's what set us off:

"The Birth-Rate Crisis Isn’t as Bad as You’ve Heard—It’s Worse" in The Atlantic.

"How does Low Fertility Affect Economic Growth, Worldwide?" in Rocking our Priors podcast

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THOUGHTSNACK is an occasional podcast from Sense & Solidarity where Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven explore the big ideas that make and break our world.

Sense & Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity.

http://senseandsolidarity.org/

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a writer and researcher who specializes in the social psychology of politics. She is the author of Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds (2025).

http://www.sarahsteinlubrano.com

Max Haiven is an researcher and educator who uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. His latest book is Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022).

http://maxhaiven.com/

Music by Dan Gouly