ABSTRACT
My first venture into the theory of money reached the conclusion that ‘money is a social relation’; that is to say, all money regardless of its form and substance is constituted by debt-credit relations (Ingham 1996). To identify the nature of money as actual objects and symbols was, I later contended, a ‘category error’ which had led to serious misunderstanding of how money is produced and operates (Ingham 2004a). Around the same time, heterodox economic theorists were advancing similar claims – especially, Randall Wray in the USA and Andre Orléan and Michel Aglietta in France (Wray 1990, 2004; Aglietta and Orléan 1998). Asserting that money is ‘social relation’ was intended to challenge economics’ hegemony by showing the serious deficiency of its conception of money and its origins merely as a special commodity that was exchangeable for all other commodities. It was perhaps to be expected that mainstream economics would remain uninterested in (and largely unaware of) these restatements of the credit theory of money. Disciplinary separation in academia is as entrenched as ever it was. However, it is a little more surprising that the distinction between ‘money’ and ‘credit’ is still widely adhered to in sociology (for example, Carruthers and Ariovich 2010; Ganssmann 2011). As in everyday usage, money continues to be seen – implicitly at least – as ‘hard’ cash; whereas credit is taken to refer to other media of exchange and payment that involve deferred and intermediated (re)payment – for example, bank cheques, credit cards and so on. Here I wish first to revisit and reiterate my original conclusion that the absolute distinction between ‘money’ and ‘credit’ is misleading and, second, also briefly to consider the implications for the ideological discourse of modern credit money.
