Occupy the World — Life Without Money

This roundtable discussion explores why we must, and how we can, free ourselves from monetary values and monetary relations in order to achieve the key left agenda of social justice and environmental sustainability. The panel engages with the conference theme by arguing that human and environmental values are constrained by market systems. To permanently occupy our world we need to create and expand non-market structures for living, producing and exchanging. The speakers include practitioners and theoreticians of non-market socialism. Half of the panel has contributed to a new Pluto Press publication: Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies, which argues that the urgent environmental and economic crises that we face cannot be overcome without dispensing with money. Resuscitating the Left’s humanist critique of twentieth century communism and drawing on utopian, anarchist and Marxist literature, the book explores work refusal, self-management, gift economies, a collective labour-credit system and the non-monetary ecological economics of urban and rural squatters. The chair will introduce the topic and the speakers, canvassing a range of questions drawing on each speaker’s ideas and experiences, and summarising key commonalities and distinctions before opening the discussion to the audience.