Attempts to protest against the logic of the monetary sovereign fails without embracing MMT.

A range of actors continue to reproduce the liberal monetary ontology in a form almost identical to the Lockean logic, even if they update the vocabulary. When politicians claim that large numbers of Black people in the United States are “welfare state dependent,” they echo the Lockean idea that these people do not add to societal wealth. When charitable foundations propose to teach “financial literacy” and “better money habits” to disadvantaged people, they echo the Lockean idea that they are not (yet) monetary individuals characterized by rationality and industriousness. When politicians claim that inequality is due to a lack of personal responsibility and discipline, they echo the Lockean idea that some populations are less economically rational than others. When “developers” “improve” neighborhoods by gentrifying them, and replace current inhabitants with people who have more money, they echo the Lockean idea that there is nothing to be destroyed because the previous inhabitants could not make economic use of the space. Such statements are not just racially charged: they constitute monetary individuals as they constitute race.

And if the racially excluded protest against income and wealth disparities or point to political-economic power relations, the Lockean logic takes their objections as proof that they are not yet monetary individuals. Whoever fails to accept money’s verdict places themselves outside of the group of monetary individuals. Placing oneself outside of this group means a loss of stature, belonging, and becoming inconsequential. From a Lockean perspective, questioning money’s verdict means questioning money itself because acceptance of this verdict is inherent in money. And refusing money’s verdict seems to cause a tear in the fabric of the social order.