INDEP online Talk with Solveig Degen and Janina Urban – Who Plans the Future? Democratising Investment in a Financialised Economy

This event will take place in partnership with the Centre for Social Critique at the Humboldt University Berlin.

This event will take place in English.

To participate, please register here.

Investment is a form of planning: it brings into existence what currently does not yet exist. Today, large-scale investment decisions are largely made either by states or by actors in the financial sector. But can finance – one of the central nodal points of contemporary capitalism – be transformed into a tool for democratically shaping the future?
In this talk, Janina Urban (University of Witten-Herdecke) and Solveig Degen (Humboldt University Berlin) explore the principles that currently structure financial investment and the profound challenges these logics pose for social and ecological relations. Building on this diagnosis, they examine how investment could be reorganised along democratic lines. They will discuss both historical and contemporary initiatives aimed at socialising investment and introduce two prominent approaches within current debates on democratic economic planning. Finally, the talk reflects on the political and practical limits of such projects, given that the financial system is often perceived as the domain of experts rather than an arena for democratic contestation.