Catherine Comyn

Catherine is a PhD candidate in International Political Economy at King's College London. Grounded in historical materialism, her work is centrally interested in intersections of finance and colonisation, and possibilities for their overcoming. She is the author of The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa (ESRA, 2023).

Research interests

Finance, financialisation, colonialism, value theory, cryptocurrency, socialism, socialisation

PhD research

My PhD project critically analyses the historical relationship between finance and the social with the aim of advancing debates on the financing of socialism. Grounded in a Marxist understanding of the historical capacity of finance to 'socialise' capital, I seek to critically engage with contemporary proposals for – and experiments in – the 'socialisation' or 'democratisation' of finance. Such proposals are increasingly advocated by the social democratic left and have informed the manifestos of political leaders such as Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and others. Experiments in cryptocurrency as a means of realising the 'commons' or expressing post-capitalist value forms represent another frontier in contemporary leftist engagement with 'social' forms of finance. In both expressions, this engagement tends to focus on the (re)distribution of socially produced wealth while leaving intact labour and production. My project aims to move beyond the limitations of this one-sided approach. Against the socialisation of finance – which is shown to be a tautology – I advocate a politics premised upon the 'socialism of finance' that is grounded in the immanent historical relation between finance and the social. It does this in part by revisiting anthropological accounts of the role of credit in indigenous societies, particularly that of Māori in pre-colonial Aotearoa. Māori and other indigenous peoples realised credit as an extension of the social (social relations and reproduction). My project draws from such knowledge in order to highlight the historically specific character of the division of social and private, reciprocity and exchange, (re)production and distribution.

PhD supervisor

Dr Thomas F Purcell

Latest publications

Comyn, C. (2023). The Financial Colonisation of Aotearoa. Auckland: Economic and Social Research Aotearoa.

Comyn, C. (2022). ‘Te Peeke o Aotearoa: Colonial and Decolonial Finance in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1860s–1890s’. In C. Bourne, P. Gilbert, M. Haiven, J. Montgomerie (eds.) The Entangled Legacies of Empire. Manchester: Manchester University Press.