Re: Putting Chartalism In Its Place?

["Barkley Rosser" <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

     I think there is an important element of
this involved, especially in dealing with the
spontaneously evolved commodity monies
(or near monies for the chartalists out there).
The books I cited by Einzig and others say
that the most common apparent origin of
a commodity emerging in "primitive"
economies to become a more general
medium of exchange involves use in religious
ceremonies, especially those relating to
marriage.  What one pays a shaman/priest
to sanctify a marriage is often the leading
candidate to become the general medium
of exchange.  Not surprising that fertility
cult symbols are often these candidates.
Barkley Rosser
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: Putting Chartalism In Its Place?


>
> On Monday, September 15, 2003, at 05:48  PM, Barkley Rosser wrote:
>
> >  Here is what Marina and I had to say about
> > cowries in the first edition of our _Comparative
> > Economics in a Transforming World Economy_,
> > 1996, Irwin [second edition, in press, MIT Press],
> > p. 96:
> >
> >     "Cowrie shells (Cypraea moneta) were used by groups
> > ranging from West Africa to Hawaii and even to some North
> > American Indian tribes [Hagedorn and Johnson].  These
> > small but very hard shells come from the Maldive Islands
> > in the Indian Ocean and were originally used as fertility
> > talismans, being thought to resemble female sexual organs.
> > Their use as money dates from the eighth century, B.C., in
> > China and India.  They originally entered West Africa carried
> > across the Sahara to Timbuktu by Muslim traders around the
> > 800s, and were thoroughly entrenched as money by the 1200s.
> > They were brought by ship by the Portuguese after the 1400s
> > to purchase slaves.  The slave-trading kings of Dahomey
> > controlled their importation, an early form of monetary policy,
> > and distributed them in annual festivals."
>
>
> In Keynes the ultimate basis of the use of money as a store of wealth
> is psychological.  He identifies "the love of money as a possession" as
> an essential characteristic of capitalism and associates it with a
> "conventional or instinctive" "feeling about money" that "operates, so
> to speak, at a deeper level of our motivation" and "takes charge at the
> moments when the higher, more precarious conventions have weakened."
>
> The meaning of this feeling is more obvious in the conditions in which
> money originates.  That cowrie shells "were originally used as
> fertility talismans, being thought to resemble female sexual organs"
> would, if true, be consistent with the psychological theory that most
> likely underpins Keynes's claims about the psychology of money.
>
> Ted
>
>