Journal Articles

The Democratic and Transformative Potential of Public Banks

Author:

Thomas Marois and Susan Spronk

Year:

2025

Publisher:

Socialist Registrar

Number of pages:

Available languages:

Available Formats:

PDF (EN)

Abstract

We are living in a time of multiple crises. The latest calculations from science agencies reveal 2023 as the warmest year for the planet as measured by average temperature since global record-keeping began, and 22 July 2024 as the hottest single day on earth ever recorded. Current predictions suggest that global warming will only accelerate.1 We are still reeling from the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic delayed progress towards closing the overall global gender gap by more than 30 years.2 Much of the global South has been immersed in a debt crisis of a breadth and depth not seen since the early 1980s.

Addressing these crises, and making progress toward a more egalitarian, equalizing and green global development model, will entail mobilizing a huge mass of capital to convert and transform existing infrastructure and manufacturing plants and to build new ecologically responsible productive capacities. To date, the financialized world market has responded primarily by market ecology measures of price and tax incentives and subsidies. This approach has failed at the pace, scale, or on the terms required for the necessary reshaping of the circuits of capital, a failure well-documented by socialist and ecological researchers and activists, and further underscored by the United Nations.