Mary Mellor

Mary Mellor is Professor Emerita at Northumbria University in the UK and the founding Chair of the University’s Sustainable Cities Research Institute. Her work focuses on the development of alternative economies, combining environmental, socialist, and feminist ideas. She is the author of the recent books The Future of Money and Debt or Democracy and is working on a new book on the history of money.

Money for the People

Local initiatives can lead to modest gains in sustainability, but not the large-scale transformation we need. Meeting that challenge will require, among other critical factors, substantial changes in how we create and use money. As its history demonstrates, money is a social and political construct. It is the privatization of money—and not money itself—that has fueled social exploitation and environmental destruction.

August 24, 2017