ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to improve the Chartalist perspective on the origins of money by applying it to the socio-economic modes of organization of ancient Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium bc. It will be argued that the Chartalist account does not yet adequately address the prevalent institutions and transactional modes of ancient societies. To bring Chartalism into congruency with the institutional context of ancient societies, I apply Veblen’s theory of cumulative causation to the factual evidence of Mesopotamian clay tokens and their assemblages into clay cases known as “bullae.” After all, laying out cumulative causation (CC) theory in “Why is Economics Not An Evolutionary Science,” Veblen referred to the eminent anthropologist M. G. de Lapouge: “Anthropology is destined to revolutionize the political and the social sciences as radically as bacteriology has revolutionized the science of medicine” (Veblen 1898: 373). The Chartalist account considers the introduction of money as a means of forcing a population into a debt relationship to a central public authority. This is precisely the point where CC can enhance Chartalism. Payment obligations (or a debt relationship of a population to a central public authority) in the form of goods and services had been in place for a long time before monetization was introduced. Thus, CC perceives money as having cumulatively emerged to better control the fulfillment of payment obligations to a central public authority that were already in effect (or, equivalently, reducing their avoidance). This hypothesis is especially warranted given the absence of bureaucratic tools, such as writing,1 census systems and formal means of personal identification that would allow to detect those members of an ever-growing and impersonal community that had payment obligations to a central public authority.
