Biography

Michael A. McCarthy is an economic democracy activist and Associate Professor of Sociology at Marquette University. He holds a PhD and MA from New York University and a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Much of his work is on power and finance. He is the author of the award-winning book, Dismantling Solidarity: Capitalist Politics and American Pensions since the New Deal (Cornell University Press, 2017), which explains the marketization of old-age income in the US.  He is co-editor of the volume Rethinking Class and Social Difference(Emerald, 2020) through the Political Power and Social Theory book series and has written for several peer-reviewed journals, including Annual Review of Sociology, Critical Historical Studies, Labor Studies Journal, Mobilization, Politics & Society and Socio-Economic Review. He is also a regular contributor to Jacobin Magazine and has advanced public debates about economic democracy in venues such as The Washington Post, Boston Review, Renewal, and Tribune Magazine. He is currently undertaking several projects about economic justice, including a co-authored book on the social theory of Erik Olin Wright. As a Berggruen Fellow at USC, he will complete a manuscript on democratizing finance, tentatively titled The Master’s Tools: Using Finance Against Capitalism, which is under contract with Verso Books.