A review by Grace Blakeley of The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It) by Michael A. McCarthy (Verso Books, 2025).
Michael A McCarthy also participated in our recent online workshop on democratizing investment, the recording of which you can find here.
Source: Jacobin Magazine
Michael McCarthy’s The Master’s Tools opens with an evocative description of life under a new social order.
“It’s a sunny Friday morning in 2045, and you’re running late for a meeting to deliberate over and agree on the priorities of the city.” You ride to the meeting on a public railway network and step off into the Public Finance District, “where the streets were converted into pedestrian zones after huge investments in transportation eliminated the need for cars.” When you arrive at the People’s Bank of Los Angeles, you join an assembly made up of your fellow workers, and together you set about deciding how to spend the city’s budget.
This vignette works because it is based on democratic innovations that already exist. McCarthy’s vision is not some unrealistic socialist utopia; it’s based on proposals — from community wealth building to participatory budgeting — that exist right now, if you know where to look.