Oakland Gets a Marxist Pop-Up: the 'Museum of Capitalism'

At the Museum of Capitalism, viewers will find a hand-cranked machine that spits out pennies at the same rate the U.S. minimum wage does. There’s a trading post for rare, allegedly collectable endophytes (fungi and other microorganisms that live inside plants). And there’s a series of miniatures and figurines based on the U.S. Treasury Department’s 2008 bailout of Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and the other banks deemed too big to fail.

Museumgoers can also browse a library with all the essential texts: Geoffrey Hodgson’s Conceptualizing Capitalism, J.K. Gibson-Graham’s The End of Capitalism as We Knew It, David Harvey’s Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism—early classics in this fan-favorite late-capitalist genre.