Historicizing the money of account: a critique of the nominalist ontology of money

Abstract

The article puts forward a case against the nominalist ontology of money, that is, the heterodox notion that moneyness – the quality of being money – is conferred by the money of account. From the nominalist perspective, money is essentially a balance-sheet phenomenon: a credit-debit bookkeeping entity whose origins can be traced back to ancient Near Eastern practices of accounting. This ontological position, which is often erroneously traced back to Keynes’ Treatise, mystifies and obscures the actual history of the money of account as a regime of monetary governance and a mode of speculation that only made sense in the European late medieval context of bimetallism. The article thus provides a critique of monetary nominalism based on Keynes’ reflection on the value of money in the Treatise and the General Theory. In turn, it proceeds to historicize the phenomenon of the money of account, building on the seminal contributions of Marc Bloch and Luigi Einaudi.