ABSTRACT
In Marxian theory, capital is understood as ‘money in perpetual motion’, facilitated through an expansion of the sphere of circulation as an integral moment in the expanded reproduction of total social capital. A category error in mainstream political economy derives from the naturalization of the capitalist money form, as a result of which the function of money as a general equivalent in commodity exchange and the historical specificity of capitalist credit money are obscured. In classical political economy, ‘quantity theory’ stressed the harmonious equilibration of the total output of commodities and the total quantity of commodity money. In contrast to modern money theory, Austrian economists criticize the concept of immaterial fiat money as conducive to economic and financial stability, and there remains a preference among economic libertarians for ‘stable’ monetary systems such as the gold standard which link the value of currencies to commodities.
