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In this brief podcast message, Scott Ferguson announces the publication of Maxximilian Seijo's peer-reviewed journal essay, "Money\u2019s Place: Science Fiction, Realism & Modern Monetary Theory in Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s The Ministry for the Future," in Money on the Left: History, Theory, Practice.

Abstract

Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s speculative near-future novel Ministry for the Future (2020) centers the heterodox political economy of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to forge a new path for ecosocialist politics. This money-positive path diverges radically from critical traditions in political and literary thought that reject money as the ultimate source of environmental exploitation and climate catastrophe. In this essay, I argue that Ministry\u2019s centering of money challenges and displaces the generic conventions of science fiction and realism, each of which has historically related to money in opposing ways. Whereas science fiction prioritizes escape to an enclave \u201coutside\u201d of money\u2019s mediation of social relations, and realism laments the immanent dynamics of money\u2019s mediating force, Ministry estranges both genres from their relationship to money by redefining money as an inextricable expression of social relation and interdependence. As opposed to dominant Marxian modes, Robinson\u2019s redefinition draws attention to money\u2019s radical place within the speculative imagination, disclosing new political economic and ecological capacity to remake global reproduction.\xa0