Will Beaman

Love this angle and thank you!!!

@greenbackbetter.bsky.social is on a Du Bois roll!

I'll add that we ought to tease out Du Bois’s theory of the public and its bearing on what we call public money. There’s something to be said for the fuller formulation, which is almost never quoted—whiteness as a “public and psychological wage.”

"If the psychological wage was always currency, Trumpism was its dramatic foreclosure notice. Not a new issuance, but a desperate demand for back pay."

moneyontheleft.org/2025/08/05/j...

Jim Crow to Trump: Reconsidering the Psychological Wage by Will Beaman W.E.B. Du Bois’s “psychological wage” has long been treated as a metaphor. In Black Reconstruction, he describes how white workers, denied meaningful economic uplift, found compensat…

"Beyond shelter, homeownership staged stability, future orientation, and civic belonging. It made whiteness appear prudent, deserving, and low-risk."

"What Du Bois observed was not just a compensatory self-image, but a system of provisioning: a choreography of credit that names, elevates, and withholds."

Good time to revisit @tcraggs22.bsky.social on this very topic at @flaminghydra.com

flaminghydra.com/who-made-cai...

“The infrastructure of whiteness has helped determine which expenditures are seen as investment and which as waste, which lives are worthy of public guarantees and which are overdrawn by default”

Finding the Money film title surrounded by red and black lines evoking both the sectoral balances diagram and the US capitol building

Coming soon to @teessideuni.bsky.social: #FindingtheMoney, the story of an intrepid group of economists on a mission to flip our understanding of money upside down. How could reimagining money transform Middlesbrough and revolutionise our ability to tackle the climate crisis? Find out in October 💷

Today for @moneyontheleft.bsky.social ✨

What if Du Bois’s “psychological wage” refers not to a psychological/immaterial bribe, but to a rogue currency in its own right? Can this help us reconsider American political economy from then to now?

📝Jim Crow to Trump: Reconsidering the Psychological Wage

Buckle up. The latest Superstructure essay by @greenbackbetter.bsky.social is a tour-de-force reconceptualization of Du Bois's oft-cited notion of the "psychological wage."

Boston Children's Hospital says it won't be bullied into abandoning trans youth - LGBTQ Nation The hospital has faced bomb threats, hate campaigns, and threats to funding over the years but has never wavered in supporting gender-affirming care.

"We are here to affirm, uplift, and advocate for transgender and gender diverse youth...and we remain committed to doing all we can to support their care and well-being.”

Boston Children’s Hospital says it won’t be bullied into abandoning trans youth www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/07/bost...

Humanities scholarship is great because instead of participating in infrastructures that are ambivalent we are all struggling against regimes of visibility and disciplinary apparatuses with no way out except being ourselves

A scholarly consensus dismisses consumer financial protection as a rearguard effort to sustain neoliberalism. Raghavan, by contrast, reconceptualizes consumer financial protection as a vital counterweight to legally structured domination in financial markets.

moneyontheleft.org/2025/08/01/t...

‘Alligator Alcatraz' detainees on hunger strike for 10th day, protesting conditions One of the detainees, Pedro Hernández, was hospitalized during the strike but continued to refuse food, he said on Thursday.

A hunger strike at a South Florida immigration detention center state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” enters its tenth day, as detainees protest what they call inhumane and dangerous living conditions.

It’s Time for Complementary Currencies By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Introduction Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win was not just a local upset—it was a turning point. It proved that member-led, volunteer-powered campaigns c…

"We need infrastructures that enact the same solidarity and flexibility we already extend to each other, honoring diverse valuations of what work is important, and agreeing to receive what others provision—even when it comes in unfamiliar forms."

…We interpret his response as shaped by a moral position grounded in historical experience—one that can, and should, be reincorporated into a renewed, critical monetary populism.”

Read, share and follow @moneyontheleft.bsky.social for the urgent renewal of monetary populism against Fascism.

… the possibilities of credit as enfranchisement. Rather than dismiss his letter or take it at face value, we offer a reparative reading: one that holds Du Bois’s skepticism in tension with the deeper political insight his reply also contains. …

A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois: Monetary Populism and the Scapegoating of Black Political Life by Will Beaman In July 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois received a letter from an Atlanta resident named Gus Reich. We are excited to share both Reich’s letter and Du Bois’s short reply below.  A lay theo…

✍️ A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois✨

“Du Bois, as always, is careful. But his reply reveals how even the most perceptive critics can find themselves caught between traditions—rejecting the burden of credit for an oppressor’s redemption without fully seeing…

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/31/a...

Lots for historians and abolitionists in here ❤️

Read and share if you like!!!

It’s Time for Complementary Currencies By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Introduction Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win was not just a local upset—it was a turning point. It proved that member-led, volunteer-powered campaigns c…

"Instead of treating money as a scarce resource to be unlocked from the top down, complementary currencies reveal money to be a flexible and inscribable record of solidarity and coordination."

It’s Time for Complementary Currencies By the Money on the Left Editorial Collective Introduction Zohran Mamdani’s landslide win was not just a local upset—it was a turning point. It proved that member-led, volunteer-powered campaigns c…

At the end of May at the Money Talks (llc.ed.ac.uk/english-and-...) conference at U of Edinburgh I made a similar call: Alt currencies as democratic praxis.
moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/28/i...

A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois: Monetary Populism and the Scapegoating of Black Political Life by Will Beaman In July 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois received a letter from an Atlanta resident named Gus Reich. We are excited to share both Reich’s letter and Du Bois’s short reply below.  A lay theo…

“We need credit infrastructures that are open, democratic, and resilient. Not credit as a judgment, but credit as a commitment. Not a test of worthiness, but a project of shared responsibility.” Yes! Well done Will Beaman!

moneyontheleft.org/2025/07/31/a...

Also, come for the Du Bois, stay for the parting wisdom on sound money as a gateway to fascism.

“… sound money did not save the Weimar Republic. It helped to end it.”

“All money is already issued endogenously before it is moralized as scarce commodities or white tax-dollars. The question is what kind of world it is made to sustain. Who is trusted to issue? Who is seen as creditworthy? Who gets invited in? And who gets blamed when the system cracks?”

Thrilled to see this exchange published alongside some brilliantly generative analysis.

So much of the worldmaking vision of the Black radical tradition dances implicitly around a framework of public credit or endogenous money creation. The challenge, it seems, is to tease that out more explicitly.

A Forgotten Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois: Monetary Populism and the Scapegoating of Black Political Life by Will Beaman In July 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois received a letter from an Atlanta resident named Gus Reich. We are excited to share both Reich’s letter and Du Bois’s short reply below.  A lay theo…

✨New essay by @greenbackbetter.bsky.social !✨

Who who designs money systems? Who is responsible when systems break down?

A 1934 exchange between W.E.B. Du Bois & a Christian monetary reformer offers a powerful lesson about money politics & the burdens placed on Black communities.

Please share!

Below, @greenbackbetter.bsky.social shares a forgotten correspondence between W.E.B. Du Bois & Christian monetary reformer Gus Reich in order to reflect on the racial complexities of monetary politics in U.S. history. The result is a brilliant meditation on some truly fascinating artifacts.

I’m in MOTL again (I know a guy there) writing about an amazing artifact of correspondence between W.E.B. Du Bois & a Christian monetary reformer.

I tried to unpack the historical context behind the eccentric letter of Du Bois’s dismissive response, but I am sure there’s so much more to say.

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