Re: on money

[Riccardo Bellofiore <riccardo.bellofiore@xxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: on money

Am I wrong in seeing in the underlined part of your mail a strong influence of the Mengerian tradition?

Looking at the Austrians (not as a current of thought, but as historical origin) I would very much prefer Schumpeter's idea of the essence of money first of all as claim ticket (rather than receipt voucher) and social accountancy. This seems to me something which may also resolve the issue about money existing before capitalism, in a way which is methodologically near to the Marx who says that the anatomy of the ape is explained by the anatomy of human beings: in the sense that the meaning of money is explained by the most developed form (an explict quote in this sense in Schumpeter's HEA, and also in Das Wesen des Geldes); and of course this fits quite well with Marx's comments on value too.

I agree however with Costas, first, that there is a problem in Marx relating to how it happens analytically how money emerges, and second that we have to assume the prior existence of capital if abstract labour is to be a real social substance (though probably my train of thought is different from Costas'). But again, these may be seen rather as strengths than weaknesses: because the first problem has to do with the inevitable "institutional" requisites (other than the market) to have the emergence of money proper, a point rightly stressed by many French schools in the 70s, and the second point to the fact that abstract labour has a dual definition in Marx, the more known one (from exchange as such) and the less known from capital.

riccardo

At 10:39 +0100 27-05-2004, Costas Lapavitsas wrote:

> A brief comment on Rakesh, Hans and other
> contributions on this strand.
>
> It seems to me that the dialectic of value (abstract labour) - use
> value
> (or even of social labour - private labour) can show that money is
> necessary in developed commodity exchange. But it cannot provide
> an
> analytical process through which money emerges. It is one thing to
> show
> that value needs to detach itself from use value and find an
> independent
> (and social) form in a money commodity, but quite another to show how
> this
> happens analytically. Nor can I find in Marx such an analytical
> process.
> Moreover, the need to assume the prior existence of capital (if
> abstract
> labour is to be a real social substance rather than merely an
> ideal
> abstraction) runs against the historical existence of money under
> non-capitalist conditions.
> I suggest that the dialectic of
> relative - equivalent in the simple form of
> value, which is not the same as the dialectic of value - use value, is
> a
> better place to look for the process of money's emergence in
> commodity
> exchange. Money can then be shown to emerge as absolute buying
> ability, or
> as the universal equivalent confronting particular relatives. This
> does not
> preclude money resolving the contradictions between value (abstract
> labour)
> and use value under capitalist
> conditions.
>
> Cheers
>
> Costas

--

Riccardo Bellofiore
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
"Hyman P. Minsky"
Università di Bergamo
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