ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an analysis of money and credit; the following chapter extends the analysis to consider the role of banking and financial institutions in a capitalist economy. Our approach is informed by the information-theoretic concerns that lie at the core of this book. Our emphasis is therefore on money as an information structure and on the supporting technologies that permit this information structure to operate. We relate this to the historical process whereby labour came to be represented as money issued by the state. Our discussion starts out from Marx’s conception of the form of value but the conclusions we reach regarding money differ somewhat from those of Marx, being influenced by the modern chartalist theorists (see section 11.2).1
