Talk of encouraging “patient” rather than impatient capital through public investment banks is also on the rise. Nations have long relied on such banks to fund public infrastructures, but they can be reoriented toward financing technological innovation whose benefits accrue to society without the shackles of draconian rent-seeking intellectual property regimes.

Re-regulating the financial industry is also a priority. Ms. Warren has advocated a “21st century Glass-Steagall Act.” It would separate commercial from investment banking (as the original act did until its repeal in the late 1990s), thereby reducing the risk of banks being too big to fail.

Common Wealth in Britain and the Roosevelt Institute in the United States, two progressive think tanks close to camps of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, have broken new ground by suggesting that employees could receive small stakes in the corporate dividends that normally only go to executives and stockholders. They have floated the idea of national “social wealth funds” similar to what exists in Alaska, Norway, and the Cherokee Nation. Both ideas are designed to undercut the core principle that has guided the world of finance for the last half-century: that shareholder value is the lodestar of human action.

These plans take aim at economic globalization and the power of finance, opening them to the charge of nationalism. But politically, they are far from simply appealing to narrow interests. Played correctly, the left-wing version of nationalism looks two ways at once: inward, to renationalize control of finance, and outward, to make sure the benefits of domestic innovation are shared globally.

John McDonnell, the British Labour Party’s shadow chancellor, recently called for a new global architecture underpinned by democracy, solidarity and equality. His plans include scaling up funding for green investment and making British-led innovations freely or cheaply available to developing countries.

Such plans strike at the heart of global finance: They aim to bring it back under sovereign control, and make it serve national goals and local priorities. This would benefit those left behind in the past decades of financial boom and corporate excess. Without such reforms, working people will continue to suffer.

For decades, it has been common sense that states have no choice but to don “golden handcuffs” and clear the way for borderless finance . Finance has not delivered the promised rewards. The United Nations recently reported that despite a massive recent expansion of global debt, investment in developing countries has only marginally increased, and that in rich countries has actually decreased.