December brought the publication of The Return of Inflation: Money and Capital in the Twenty-First Century (London: Reaktion, 2023), by Paul Mattick, who is—full disclosure—the Field Notes editor. Members of the Berlin collective Friends of the Classless Society thought that a conversation about issues raised by the book would be helpful because of the obfuscation and difficulty normally associated with discussion of money.

The days when anti-war agitation by radicals like Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, or, for that matter, Lenin resonated with millions of workers tired of being cannon fodder for their rulers are clearly long gone, and so is the period of turmoil around 1968, when rebellious GIs subverted America’s military adventure in Vietnam. A world order marked by imperial tensions ready to spill over into full-out war, however, is still very much with us, arguably more so than in recent decades.

The Berlin expropriation initiative is seen by many as one of the rare left-wing success stories of recent times, and its strategies and tools for “organizing” are being studied with great interest. We do not share this euphoria.