Money. Groundwork for a study of social relations, power and institutional change

Abstract

The intellectual debate on money is often portrayed as a rather Manichean diatribe between two opposing traditions: on the one hand the orthodox, grounded in a ‘real’ analysis, and championing the primacy of a commodity-money; on the other hand the heterodox, based on a ‘nominal’ analysis, and advocating the primacy of a credit-money. Both traditions claim to know better the nature of money: whereas the orthodox envisages in the medium of exchange the ultimate essence of money, the heterodox attributes ontological primacy to the measure of value – or else the ‘money of account’. And yet, neither of the two traditions is concerned with comprehending the significance of money: why it is important to us, why we recognise it first of all as value. This work therefore tries to outline a comprehensive discourse on the significance of money as value. In particular, the first part is dedicated to a critique of heterodox and alternative theories of money, including Geoffrey Ingham’s major sociological contribution, The nature of money (2004). The second part instead engages with an ontological and epistemological problematisation of the phenomenon, coupled with a brief phenomenology of money 'out of nothing' and a genealogy of the currency.