This 'Socialism vs MMT' debate is a false binary. Worse, some on the Left are in danger of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'. I'm definitely hard left, but I'm a strong supporter of Richard Murphy & Steve Keen's 'Reformed MMT', notwithstanding both Murphy and Keen are (probably) better described as Social Democrats. As Substacker Dougald Lamont says, "(Keen's) Description of the Economy Is a Must-Watch whether you're a Capitalist, Centrist, Liberal, Marxist, MAGA, Socialist or Social Democrat" dougaldlamont.substack.…?

While MMT is indeed a technocratic device, it is also a valuble 'Transitional Demand' for the Left- not least because it is a popular talking point across much of the political landscape. Financialised capitalism hates it because, if public finance is operated according to an MMT-informed understanding, it offers the possibility (though not the certainty) of private debt to financial institutions being paid down using newly created fiat money, ultimately resulting in 100% reserve banking, which returns 'The State' to its correct role as unchallenged monetary sovereign- a role that 'Founders' MMT' (Mosler, Mitchell etc) erroneously claims by convoluted argument it already has. It answers the question 'how can we have the things we need as a society' not with 'we can't' but with 'we can'. As such, it is a gateway out of 'There Is No Alternative (to capitalism)' despair, capitulation and collusion, to 'there are alternatives' expansiveness. This is what makes it a ‘transitional demand’.

Class consciousness is far more complex now than in Marx's time- full of contradictions bought about by aspiration or accession to home ownership, interest in shares-based pension funds and so on. A major concern is now 'how do we stop ourselves from falling' as well as 'how do we rise'- thus the notion of Precariat is now more useful than Proletariat- and arguably the downward-mobile 'middle' class are more intellectually and emotionally capable of forming a revolutionary cadre than the 'lumpen proletariat' (they always were tbh) who, as a result of 'anti-intellectualism', are more attracted to fascism and religious conservatism. MMT Murphy/Keen-style, because it 'works' across a range of ideological landscapes, has the capacity to be a starting point for a much broader array of political heterodoxy.