Making Capital Democratic

A Reconstruction of State, Credit, and Finance

Robert C. Hockett

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Hardback

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English

Polity Press
16 July 2025

Finance

The “software” that structures our financial systems and, through them, the broader economy, is made up of certain basic concepts that guide how we think. These concepts include money, finance, investment, credit, and – above all – capital. This conceptual software manifests itself in our current “operating system” of institutions and practices. But our concepts and the system itself are radically out of date as representations of monetary, financial, productive and distributive reality. Robert Hockett shows that this mismatch has serious consequences and argues that it’s time for a complete overhaul of our economic understanding.

The underlying conceptual problem, Hockett contends, is that we miss the extent to which our financial systems are deeply and ineradicably public. Money is an inherent emanation of our basic social contract; capital in turn emerges as almost entirely publicly generated. Our systems of finance and investment must therefore be publicly and democratically determined. Leaving them in the hands of private powers means resigning ourselves to current health and income inequalities, ever-more-frequent financial crises, and economic stagnation and decline – to say nothing of social and political deterioration across the developed world.

Lucid and passionately argued, Making Capital Democratic is a seamless blend of philosophy and economics that calls for profound intellectual and institutional changes that would befit a democracy that is democratic in more than just name.

By: Robert C. Hockett
Imprint: Polity Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781509570058
ISBN 10: 1509570055
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 16 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Robert C. Hockett is Edward Cornell Professor of Law at Cornell Law School.