There's no such thing as 'the economy', stupid: using Utopia to imagine society 'after money'.

Abstract

This paper uses qualitative sociological modelling to assess the transformative potential of Modern Monetary Theory as set out in recent work by Stephanie Kelton and Mariana Mazzucato. The starting point is Ruth Levitas’s (2013) Utopia as Method. This defines and develops Utopia as an exploratory, speculative sociological method characterised by a holistic and ecologically embedded approach. This is then used to explore the potential of MMT for envisioning social transformation. The paper argues that the neglect of unpaid work and a commitment to economic growth undermines the radical potential of MMT, as does the abstraction of ‘the economy’ from a wider understanding of social structures and processes. It suggests also that the project to use MMT to reform capitalism is fundamentally flawed since there is a conflict between the compound growth on which capitalism depends and the environmental imperatives that both Kelton and Mazzucato acknowledge.