Revolutionary Accounting? Methods and Possibilities in Critical Strategy

Abstract

ABSTRACTMoney markets, finance, credit instruments, and other markers of what Lenin called “the highest stage of capitalism” are the mechanism through which global inequalities are maintained, expanded, and determined. Accounting practices like double-entry bookkeeping and cost accounting have long determined what is thinkable within this realm. Scholars and political actors have also employed the term “authoritarian neoliberalism” to signal the particular ideological constellation and subsequent subjectivities that are salient in the present moment. This paper posits a theoretical framework for delineating accounting as a political tactic for changing the mode of production of knowledge and supporting revolutionary accounting subjects. Consulting the literature on critical accounting theory, this paper engages ideas such as “citizen public debt audits” and “emancipatory accounting” in order to investigate the dynamics of tactical resistance that have emerged around issues of finance and accounting within a radical democratic and Marxist tradition of theorizing political strategy.