Financial democracy or democratic finance?
Event Information
With Mike McCarthy, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Community Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Why is democracy so broken and how might it be fixed? The answer to both questions can be found in the flows of credit and investment bound up with finance capital.
Today, finance guides and constrains our politics, but there is no reason why this must be so. In this talk, sociologist Mike McCarthy develops a political and social theory of emancipatory change rooted in the interconnectedness of finance and democracy. Inspired by ancient Athens, where small groups chosen by lottery were used to ensure democratic participation, he shows how democracy and working-class power can be strengthened by creating new deliberative forms of financial governance, focusing on the inclusion of historically excluded groups.
His proposals for democratic financial institutions point the way to imbuing finance with a socio-environmental purpose and the funding of a just green transition, social housing, and other necessary public goods. These financial institutions might just be the first step toward a whole new kind of economy.
About the speaker
Mike McCarthy is an associate professor of sociology and the director of community studies at UC Santa Cruz. At the center of his work is a focus on class and democracy. His first book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal, was published with Cornell University Press in 2017. It was awarded the Paul Sweezy Book Award and was an honorable mention for the Labor and Labor Movements Book Award. His most recent book is The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (and a Radical Plan to Rebuild It), which was published by Verso Books in 2025. In addition to academic publishing, his work has been featured in Boston Review, The Guardian, Hammer & Hope, Jacobin, The New York Times, New Left Review, and The Washington Post. He is currently writing about class and political identity.