ABSTRACT
Capital operates globally, shifting goods, services, investments and credit from place to place with little concern for 'local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency'. Control over money is both an essentially political function and prerogative of national sovereignty. The relative autonomy of the international sphere, and the corresponding freedom from the constraints imposed on domestic capital by interventionist and most especially reformist social democratic governments, has given the transnational corporations a decisive advantage in the competitive struggle. Money is essentially a form of credit which serves to separate the sale of any commodity from a subsequent purchase, thus eliminating the need for, and inefficiencies of barter. K. Marx argued that a token money could only exist if it had 'its own objective social validity' acquired by 'its forced currency' guaranteed by 'the state's compulsion'. The new system did create an international institution with the power to limit national economic policy choices, particularly for deficit countries looking for official sources of credit.
