Forewords

Just as fish do not see the water that they swim in, so we exist every day in a world where money is shaping and controlling our lives and yet we take it entirely for granted. We do not ask who created that money; or why some people come by it so easily whereas others are always running to catch up. That is a shame, because the design and issue of money is one of the keys to understanding economic injustice, and emancipating ourselves from the debt-based money system is an essential step towards creating a just and sustainable world.

This is why I am delighted by the publication of People Powered Money, a book by some of the leading experts in the field of community currency design and implementation. With support from the European Union, Community Currencies in Action (CCIA) is the biggest transnational coalition working towards building a stronger theoretical and practice base for the development of local currency initiatives.

This book draws on the experience of these key pilot projects in community currencies and the broader currency innovation movement, providing policymakers and practitioners with the information and advice they need to successfully implement a currency project in their communities. The idea of a community currency is no longer a marginal one and the time is right for these initiatives to move into the mainstream.

As I know from experience, creating a locally bound currency gives you an unparalleled insight into the way your local economy works and the way money shapes economic power. I am proud to have one of the most successful local currencies – the Bristol Pound – in my political patch. This book will help to share the understanding of that and the other currencies that are liberating many from economic oppression and helping them build vibrant and resilient economies.

Molly Scott Cato Member of the European Parliament for South West England and former Professor of Economics at Roehampton University.

This is an important and timely book. For some years now, we have been witnessing something of a monetary revolution, which consists of an explosion of new forms of money. These vary considerably, and include digital currency technologies such as Bitcoin, new modes of social lending such as Zopa, innovative mobile payment systems such as the M-Pesa, and community currencies such as the SoNantes in France, the Makkie in the Netherlands and the Brixton Pound in the UK.

Alongside this growth in monetary innovation, there has been a surge of interest in the nature of money itself, as people from all walks of life wake up to the fact that the era when there was just one dominant form of money – state fiat money – is over, while others are still catching up on how the old system actually worked. In many ways this is a return to the past: multiple monies were a fact of life until the late 19th century, and have remained so outside the global north, although in terms of scale, diversity and technology, what we are seeing now is also quite new.

The authors argue that there has never before been a movement of this scale and significance in studying and innovating monetary designs from the bottom up. But as exciting and intriguing as these developments are, they also pose urgent questions: how best to understand the nature of money in an era of monetary pluralism; how to evaluate the efficacy of new monetary forms; what kind of regulation (if any) might be called for by their emergence; and what their implications will be for our everyday lives.

Bringing together experts from six European countries, Community Currencies in Action (CCIA) has undertaken invaluable research into one major form of monetary innovation, namely, community currencies. The findings of this collaborative project are presented in this book, drawing important lessons from schemes that are already underway and offering useful advice to people who might be considering launching new initiatives in their own communities.

Besides offering practical advice, the central message of this book is that money really can make a positive difference to our lives and genuinely can enrich the communities in which we live and work. Money is a tool: it’s time we used it to our advantage.

Nigel Dodd, Professor in Sociology, London School of Economics and author of The Social Life of Money (Princeton University Press, 2014)