How and when to seize the present moment to redeem past injustices?

In Justice is an Option: A Democratic Theory of Finance for the 21st century (2021), Robert Meister presents capitalism as an injustice-compounding machine that we can only hope to reprogram if we start conceiving of justice as a financial option. Liquidity is the medium of absolute power in contemporary capitalism. Global wealth, Meister suggests, cannot indeed be accumulated in financial form without remaining liquid. Beyond direct political action aiming at generating events of (forced) disaccumulation, can we imagine otherwise liquidity-making practices that wouldn’t end up reinforcing the prevailing power relations? Robert Meister generously discussed some of these issues with us in this initial encounter of the Cosmo-Financial Study Group. 

For a playful introduction to Meister’s core thesis, see this video; for some fragments of an executive summary, see here.