Max Haiven is a propagandist for an impossible country. He uses writing, teaching, games, podcasts and other techniques for the radical imagination. He works as an associate professsor Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University.
His most recent books are Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire (2022), Revenge Capitalism: The Ghosts of Empire, the Demons of Capital, and the Settling of Unpayable Debts (2020) and Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization (2018).
His writing has been published widely for both academic and non-academic readers on topics including the imagination, (anti-)capitalism, social movements, art and financialization.
Max has produced several research-driven podcasts about themes including financialization and anxiety (2020-21), conspiracy theories and cultures (2021-22), Amazon and science fiction (2023-4), capitalism and play (2024), social movements and psychology (2024) and games and (anti)fascism (2025).
He also makes and thinks about games. He is currently working on a book for MIT Press tentatively titled The Player and the Played: Gamification, Financialization and (anti-)Fascism and a board game, Billionaires and Guillotines, to be published by Pluto Press in 2025..
He led the Worker as Futurist Project, which recently published The World After Amazon: Stories from Amazon Workers (2024) and a podcast, The Workers’ Speculative Society.
Haiven is editor of VAGABONDS, a series of short, radical books from Pluto Press whose latest titles include Nicholas Mirzoeff’s To See In the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 and Pirate Care: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak
He teaches in Lakehead University‘s English, Social Justice Studies and Media Studies programs and also directs the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL). As part of Sense & Solidarity, he offers strategy and communications workshops for social movements, produces podcasts and builds infrastructure for the next generation of transformative public intellectuals.
Recently...
Billionaires & Guillotines
In the board game Billionaires & Guillotines, players take on the role of 2-5 rival plutocrats vying to grab the wealth of the world before their actions trigger a revolution where they all lose… a lot more than their assets.
Books
Games
Podcasts
- What Do We Want?: A podcast about what brings movements for social, economic, and racial justice together... and drives them apart, produced in cooperation with Sense & Solidarity (2024 - 7 episodes)
- The Exploits of Play: Exploring the movement of games and play from the margins to the centre of ever-weirder capitalism, produced in cooperation with Weird Economies (2024 - 13 episodes))
- The Workers' Speculative Society: A podcast about the future Amazon is building and the workers and writers fighting back (2023 - 15 episodes))
- Conspiracy Games and Countergames: The rise of conspiracism in a gamified world (2021-2022 - 20 episodes)
- The Order of Unmanageable Risks: A Podcast about Capitalism and Its Anxieties (2020-2021 - 11 episodes)
Events
- Presentation, “Escape Velocities: From corporate storytelling to fascist worldbuilding,” Speculating the Future: Fictional Worlds and Financial Realities, Roskilde University (Denmark), 22-23 May 2025.
- Organizer, "The Truth? In This Economy?," symposium, Centre for Capitalism Studies, University College London (UK), 10 April 2025.
- Workshop, “Activist perspectives on the radical imagination,” Vienna University (Austria), 21 March 2025.
- Invited talk, “The uses and abuses of the radical imagination, Vienna University (Austria), 20 March 2025.
- Launch, Billionaires and Guillotines (game), Pelican House, London (UK), 11 March 2025.
- Invited talk, “Convoking the radical imagination: Games, workers’ SF and other participatory tactics for commoning research” Landscape Surgery research series, Royal Holloway University (London, UK) 4 March 2025.
- Invited talk, “Exploring agency and the radical imagination with games,” MSc Urban Studies, University College London (UK), 15 February 2025.
- Workshop, “The Word for Their World is Fortress,” DreamXchange (online), 9 February 2025.
- Keynote performance, “Speculative Methods with and Against Amazon,” Urban Speculations: Cities, Technologies, Futures, Leuphana University (Germany), 4 Feb 2025.
- Workshop, “Gaming theory: A board games making workshop,” Department of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University (UK), 22 Jan 2025.
- Invited talk, “Convoking the Radical Imagination: Several Practices,” PhD Advanced Practices, Goldsmiths University (UK), 16 Jan 2025.
- Workshop, Games Design Workshop (with Matteo Menapace), KAIROS Club London, 15 December 2024.
- Invited talk, “Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire,” Just Transition in the Palm Oil Sector, HEKS/EPER, 3-4 December 2024.
- Workshop, “Games against empire: a workshop on game-hacking for anti-fascist futures” (with Matteo Menapace), Historical Materialism annual conference, 7-10 November 2024.
- Invited talk, “Convoking the Radical Imagination: Games, Walks, SF and Other Participatory Methods for Commoning Research,” Centre for Commons Organising, Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER), University of Essex, 6 November 2024.
- Workshop, “Playing Within, Against and Beyond the Gamed Economy: A Workshop,” Princeton University Department of English, 22 October 2024.
- Invited talk, “Amazon and the Alien: Corporate Storytelling and Workers’ Science Fiction,” Princeton University Department of English, 21 October 2024.
- Conference presentation, “Games and satire” at the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present 15th conference, New York, 17 October 2024.
- Conference presentation, “The player and the played: Gamification, financialization and the new fascism,” Finance and Society Conference, 12-13 September 2024.
- Keynote panel, Symposium on the Convergence of Gamification & Financialisation at Abertay University, Scotland, 31 May-1 June.
- Workshop, “What is an anti-fascist game?” Laboratório de Pesquisa em Mídia, Entretenimento e Sociedade (LENS) at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), Brazil, 21 March 2024.
- Keynote, “The Player and the Played” Laboratório de Pesquisa em Mídia, Entretenimento e Sociedade (LENS) at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), Brazil, 20 March 2024
- Invited talk, “Worker as futurist” at Figure it Out: Ghost Workers, Panke gallery, Berlin, 30 January 2024.
- Community talk, "The Player and the Played: Power and Resistance in Gamified Capitalism," Sofia, Bulgaria, November 2023.
- Invited talk, “Worker as Futurist,” Glasgow University Innovative Research Methodologies for a Digital Society, Glasgow (online), 1 December 2023.
- Workshop, "States of Pay and Play: Gamification and Capitalism,"American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, 27 November 2023.
- Invited talk, "Capitalism and the Radical Imagination: A Dialogue," American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad, 27 November 2023.
- Invited talk, "The Player and the Played: Power and Resistance in Gamified Capitalism" at the PLATFORM visiting lecture series, Abertay University, Dundee, 22 November 2023.
- Workshop, "Writing After Their Future: A Sci-fi Fictioning Workshop with Max Haiven" at SALT. CLAY. ROCK. (on nuclear pasts and radiant futures) research assembly, NGBK, Berlin, November 18 2023.
- Paper, "Worker as Futurist: Speculative Fiction Writing as Workers Inquiry" at Historical Materialism 2023, London, November 2023.
- Play/panel, GameChangers board game, Panke Gallery, Berlin, 28 Septermber 2023.
- Discussion, "Working Writers and Writing Workers," Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus, Berlin, September 2023.
- Launch event, "Entangled Legacies of Empire: Race, Finance and Inequality," online, June 2023.
- Presentation, "Worker-as-Futurist: Writing speculative fiction with Amazon workers." The Marxist Literary Group’s Institute on Culture and Society, Boston, June 2023
- Invited talk, "Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire." Drugo More cultural centre, Rijeka, Croatia, April 2023.
- Invited talk (with Cassie Thornton), "How to organise peer-to-peer healthcare support? / how to build the world after Amazon?" MaMa Multimedia Institute, Zagreb, Croatia, April 2023.
- Invited talk, “Palm oil and the capitalist mode of human sacrifice.” Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag, Netherlands, April 2023.
- Invited talk, “Four Ventures of the Radical Imagination: Experimental Projects about the Changing Faces of Capitalism,” Art Laboratory, Department of the Arts (DAR), Universita’ di Bologna, Italy, April 2023.
- Book launch, “The Entangled Legacies of Empire,” Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London, UK, March 2023.
- Workshop, “Board game design for social awareness,” Media and Journalism MA program, Macromedia Hochschule Berlin, Germany, March 2023.
- Workshop, “Board games for planetary pedagogy,” Performance Studies, University of Giessen, Germany, February 2023.
- Invited talk, “Palm oil and the empire of sacrifice,” Aesthetics of Empire Research Cluster annual lecture, Linnaeus University, Sweden, December 2022.
- Invited talk “Palm oil’s ghosts and money’s art,” School of Fine Art and Music Annual Lecture Series, University of Guelph, November 2022.
- Online lecture, “Palm oil and sacrificial capitalism,” Marxist Education Project, October 2022.
- Book event, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire, Lakehead University, October 2022.
- Conference track facilitation, “Disarming Resource Wars,” After Extractivism conference, Berliner Gazette, October 2022.
- Panel discussion, “Empire and Ecology,” After Extractivism conference, Berliner Gazette, October 2022.
- Online lecture, “Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire,” Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project: The Environment and Climate Change, June 2022.
- Workshop, “Clue-Anon: Exploring conspiracy thinking through game design in a moment of gamified capitalism” Games, Inc. conference organized by ephemera journal, June 2022.
- Invited panel talk, NFTs as Revenge Capitalism, Y-Lab of the National Gallery of Singapore (online), May 2022.
- Invited talk, “Capitalist Sacrifice” At the No Linear Fucking Time workshop, BAK (Basis voor Actuele Kunst), Utrecht, May 2022.
- Invited talk and workshop, “Should we play games with conspiracies?” Athens School of Fine Arts, March 2022.
- Invited talk, “Financialization’s culture of revenge” Volatility Cultures series, Goldsmiths University London, February 2022.
- Panel facilitator, “Debt, money and compromise” transmediale: for refusal symposium, January 2022.
- Invited talk, “Revenge Capitalism” The Marxist Education Project, November 2021.
- Invited talk, “Risk management as human sacrifice and vice-versa” Schemas of Uncertainty series, Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam) (online), November 2021.
- Invited talk, "The ghosts of Occupy: Notes on a haunted decade, in the spirit of David Graeber?" Art of Assembly, Volksbühne Theatre (Berlin), September 2021.
- Invited talk, “Revenge capitalism and money's utopia" at &Utopia. University of Copenhagen and California Institute of the Arts (online), September 2021.
- Invited talk, “Art, opium and anaesthetics now” at Opium Wars – Opium Cultures workshop, online. Universität Bielefeld (Germany), June 2021.
- Panel talk, Debt After Graeber, Red May, Seattle (online), May 2021.
- Panel talk, The Vengeance of Unpayable Debts, RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab (online), April 2021.
- Invited talk, "The struggle for the post-pandemic imagination," part of the Third Age Learning Lakehead speaker series Pivot(al): Possibilities for a Post-pandemic World (online: Thunder Bay, Canada), March 2021.
- Invited panel talk, Radical Imagination: Storytelling and Ways of Connection, part of University of British Columbia's Communities of Care Speakers' Series (online: Vancouver, Canada), March 2021.
- Invited talk, "From the radical imagination to revenge capitalism (and back)" hosted by the Royal Institute of Art's Post-Masters Collective Practice Research Course (online: Stockholm, Sweden), March 2021.
- Invited panel talk, "Economic disobedience and the avenging imaginary in the age of never-ending culture wars" hosted by Contemporary Art and Social Transformation and the School of Art at RMIT University (online: Melbourne, Australia), October 2020.
- Panel talk, "What is revenge capitalism?" at Revenge Capitalism and Revenge Communism, hosted by Common Notions, Pluto Press and RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab (online), October 2020.
- Public talk, "Revenge capitalism." Hosted by Anitcapitalist Resistance (online: London, UK). October 2020.
- Invited talk, “Money=social magic” at Moneylab 8 conference (Ljubljana, Slovenia), June 2020
- Invited talk, "Art, debt, capitalism and revenge" at the Slade School of Fine Art (London), May 2020.
- Invited talk, “Is ours an age of revenge capitalism?” at the University College of London Institute for Advanced Study Talking Points Seminar, online, May 2020.
- Invited talk, “‘Revenge is a human dream” at Radical May online bookfair, online , May 2020.
- Keynote, “Revenge cultures and dead zones” at Economies of Dispossession conference, OCAD University (Toronto, Canada), March 2020.
- Invited talk, “The Radical Imagination” at Al-Quds Bard College (East Jerusalem, Palestine), February 2020.
- Invited talk, “Art after money, money after art” at the Al Qattan Foundation (Ramallah, Palestine), February 2020.
Editing
007 – PIRATE CARE: Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity by Valeria Graziano, Marcell Mars & Tomislav Medak – 2025
006 – TO SEE IN THE DARK: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 by Nicholas Mirzoeff – 2025
005 – ON CUDDLING: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace by Phanuel Antwi – 2023
004 – PALM OIL: The Grease of Empire by Max Haiven – 2022
003 – WE ARE ‘NATURE’ DEFENDING ITSELF: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones by Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan – 2021
002 – THE HOLOGRAM: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future by Cassie Thornton – 2020
001 – PANDEMONIUM: Proliferating Borders of Capital and the Pandemic Swerve by Angela Mitropoulos – 2020
