[PEN-L:1502] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: hey asshole

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>>
>>      Well it was Marx (or was it Engels?) who noted that
>> the gold standard was popular in Catholic countries with
>> salvation by works, whereas credit money emerged in
>> Protestant, especially Calvinist like Scotland, countries
>> where one got salvation by faith.
>
>1st vol. of capital.

"The monetary system is essentially Catholic, the credit system essentially
Protestant. 'The Scotch hate gold.' As paper, the monetary existence of
commodities has a purely social existence. It is faith that brings
salvation. Faith in money value as the immanent spirit of commodities,
faith in the mode of production and its predestined disposition, faith in
the individual agents of production as mere personifications of
self-valorizing capital. But the credit system is no more emancipated from
the monetary system as its basis than Protestantism is from the foundations
of Catholicism."
   - Capital, vol. 3, p. 727 of the Vintage edition