Will we survive the 4th world war? Will we decolonize money?
Two new VAGAGBONDS titles and other news
This summer sees the release of two new books in the VAGABONDS series I edit for Pluto Press. They are on sale right now, until July 22
Decolonizing Money: The Promise of Abolishing the US Dollar
by Julio Linares
It has been truly transformative to work with my friend Julio Linares on this book, which is genuinely original and, to my mind, fulfils the faith that Julio’s mentor David Graeber put in him. Like David, Julio has is radical, playful, globally-minded, creative, unconventional. He brings us profound insights weaving social movement knowledge, the best of anthropology, and critical theory. Decolonizing Money is a gem.
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.
You can also listen to audio of the book launch event in Berlin, or to a recent interview with Julio.
Community Safety in the Fourth World War: Notes on Insurgent Conviviality
by Manuel Callahan and Annie Paradise
When celebrated radical theorist and member of VAGABONDS editorial advisory board Stefano Harney emailed me a few years ago to press me to publish a book by Manolo and Annie, he was emphatic in his enthusiasm. When I got their proposal for the book that would become Community Safety in The Fourth World War, I was too. The book makes a beautiful case for convivial research with movements, grounded in struggles against racial capitalism and police violence in the SF Bay area, but with a global view. It gives us the tools for rethinking how grassroots radical movements produce knowledge and the roles that “intellectuals” can play in that process. As Stefano and his long-time collaborator Fred Moten write in their foreword to the book, one thing that makes Manolo and Annie’s approach so vibrant and refreshing is that it says, in spite of everything, “we are winning.”
We are living through what the Zapatistas call the ‘Fourth World War’—a war waged by the forces of colonialism and racial capitalism—that insists we forget our victories, relinquish our practices of care, and abandon our struggle. For communities targeted and ravaged by policing and militarization, safety is a paramount concern. But where do we turn? To the state, with its warped ideas of security and all its attendant violences?
Drawing on more than a decade of ‘convivial research’ and ‘insurgent learning’, alongside struggles across the San Francisco Bay Area, and in dialogue with struggles across the Global South, the authors argue for self-organized, locally rooted insurgent conviviality. This, they claim, can be observed through a community safety with five critical elements: community self-defense; fierce care; assembly; knowledge production and self-representation; and autonomous justice.
Advancing conviviality as a praxis, as a counterforce to racial patriarchal capital, this book aims to re-enchant the world through a focus on life; to share and generate tools, strategies, and theorizations that build from below in order to cross-pollinate struggles everywhere.
You can read Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s foreword to the book.
The Player and the Played
My new book, The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to Twenty-First Century Fascism is out from MIT Press on September 15. Please get in touch for a review copy, etc. Here is an information sheet to, for example, send to libraries and bookstores.
The book will be open access, so free online.
I’ll also be doing a number of book events, including:
Book roundtable at the Finance & Society conference in Copenhagen, September 10-11 with Marijam Did, Joyce Goggin, Theresa Heffernan and Miguel Sicart.
Book event at the Games Transformed festival in London, October 31-November 1.
Book roundtable at the 23rd Historical Materialism conference in London, November 5-8, including Nick Dyer-Witheford, Meghna Jayanth, and Jamie Woodcock.
Sense & Solidarity
This autumn, Sense & Solidarity is once again offering our Fighting Fascist Feelings 6-part series of workshops, this time online on Sundays and Wednesdays from September 23-October 7. Registration will open soon.
We are also hosting a two-day workshop in London for emerging and established critical theorists who want to communicate with broader publics, October 17 and 18. Registration will open soon.
Games Transformed
The Games Transformed festival for radical games and game culture is back for 2026, this year from October 30-November 1 in central London. I’m on the organizing committee.
On October 30 I am co-organizing the Games Against Borders day-long symposium for game-makers, -players, -thinkers and -tricksters. The call of participants is now open. Join us!
If you might be interested in presenting a game, a panel, a talk, a workshop or something else for the festival, our call of proposals is now open. We’re also in search of volunteers!
Solidarity AI and Platform Coops
This November, I plan to be in Bankok for the Solidarity AI conference, hosted by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium. As a warm-up for that, I’m collaborating on a series of online “Stories from Cooperative Tech Futures” workshops (September 11 and 25), and registration is open now.
Recent publications
“Unwriting Amazon” in Research and Teaching with Speculative Fiction: Transdisciplinary Readings and Methods, edited by Sarah E. Truman and available open-access from Bloomsbury. This short chapter is based on the Worker as Futurist project.
“From financialization to 21st century fascisms” in For Magazine. This short article is based on my work in The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to Twenty-First Century Fascism.
A final technical note
Going forward this newsletter is being split into two sections. Right now, you’re reading the monthly(ish) newsletter section. There will also be intermittent posts in the Essays and Ideas section.
By default, you are subscribed to both. If you’d prefer to unsubscribe from one or the other, you can do so by closing your eyes, spinning counter clockwise three times and spitting over your right shoulder… or by somehow using Substack.
Also, for those of you interested in my other projects there are now standalone substacks for the Sense & Solidarity initiative that I run with Sarah Stein Lubrano, and for the VAGABONDS publishing platform mentioned above.
