Democratizing Finance: Restructuring Credit to Transform Society (The Real Utopias Project)

What if our financial system were organized to the benefit of the many rather than simply empowering the few?

Robert Hockett and Fred Block argue that an entirely different financial system is both desirable and possible. They outline concrete steps that could get us there. Financial systems move the worlds savings from investment to investment, chasing the highest rates of return. They run on profit. But what if investment went to the enterprises or institutions that provided things that the majority of people would prioritize?

Democratizing Finance includes six responses that seek to amend, elaborate, and challenge the arguments developed by Hockett and Block. Some of the core arguments put forward by other contributors include calls for the rapid elimination of private financial entities, the dilemmas of the politics associated with financial reforms, and the fate of parallel proposals advanced in the US in the 1930s.

Robert C. Hockett is the Edward Cornell Professor of Law and a professor of public policy at Cornell Law. Hockett also serves as senior counsel to a socially responsible investment bank in Manhattan and is a Fellow at the Century Foundation. Fred Block is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Davis where he teaches economic and political sociology and leads the Center for Engaged Scholarship. Block is the author of many books and articles, including Capitalism: The Future of An Illusion.