Gesell: The Revolution Still Waiting to Happen Taking Stock of an Anarchistic Dream After 30 Years of Militancy

ABSTRACT This paper reassesses the legacy of Silvio Gesell and the fate of the anarchistic monetary reform tradition inspired by Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon. It argues that Gesell's proposal of “perishable money” (demurrage) provides the missing theoretical key to the long‐standing problem of interest and rent, reframing them as institutional mechanisms of systemic rent extraction. The article reconstructs the intellectual genealogy leading from the Proudhon–Bastiat debate to Gesell's synthesis, and examines how Marxism, marginalism, Keynesianism, and libertarianism successively marginalized or neutralized this tradition. It contends that modern economics has obscured the political nature of money and the role of banking in sustaining oligarchic structures of power. The paper also reflects on the author's three decades of advocacy for Gesellian reform and the persistent institutional resistance encountered. Despite renewed interest in negative rates, complementary currencies, and cryptocurrencies, the essay concludes that the radical institutional implications of Gesell's project remain largely unacknowledged, leaving his “revolution” still waiting to happen.