Can't Pay, Won't Pay: The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition

Chances are, if you are reading this, you are in debt. Right now, your debt is someone else's asset, a source of speculative profit. The 1% has wealth and the 99% has debt. The time has come for a moral audit. Most people are not in debt because they live beyond their means; they are in debt because they have been denied the means to live. The creditor class forces us to default on our true obligations to one another. But who really owes what to whom? Tracing the ways debt has been used as a tool of wealth extraction and social control since before the Haitian Revolution, this book sheds new light on our financialized era. From recent sovereign debt crises to our corrupt education and criminal justice systems, debt exerts disciplinary power and forces the majority to mortgage their futures so that a few might profit. A militant debtors movement has the potential to rewrite the contract. As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new strategies to abolish predatory debts and help win universal public goods including education, housing, and healthcare. Indebtedness is an untapped source of leverage that can be wielded to help redress the United States' foundations in settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental destruction anddemand a radically different world.

• | Author: Collective Debt
• | Publisher: Haymarket Books
• | Publication Date: September 29, 2020
• | Number of Pages: 170 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1642592625
• | ISBN-13: 9781642592627