ABSTRACT
Money’s emergence and functioning are phenomena that relate uniquely to the interaction of the economic with the non-economic in society. The Marxist treatment of the ‘riddle’ of money in Chapter 3 specified the economic relations and social norms that sustain the evolution of the form of value from the accidental to the money form. A process was outlined through which money comes to possess a monopoly of buying power over other commodities, and hence also to play a pervasive and contradictory social role. The present chapter discusses other theoretical treatments of money’s logical and historical origin. These are divided into two approaches, each having far-reaching implications for the analysis of monetary phenomena and non-economic relations in capitalist society. The first approach, typical of neoclassical economics, analyses the emergence of money as a process endogenous to markets, and focuses especially on money’s function as means of exchange. In brief, it is postulated that money emerges in the course of market trading as the function of means of exchange accrues spontaneously to a single commodity. The second approach accounts for the emergence of money by relying on factors outside the market, i.e. by denying that markets spontaneously give rise to money. The function of money most often stressed in this connection is unit of account, while the preferred non-market factor is usually state authority. This approach tends to be favoured by anthropologists and sociologists, but is also strongly represented within economics. Both approaches are selectively discussed below and are contrasted with the treatment of money in Chapter 3.1
The chapter concludes by considering some recent sociological research on the multiple social functioning of money.2 This work draws on the fragmented and varied functioning of money in capitalist society – means of exchange, means of hoarding, representative of wealth, symbol of iniquity, instrument of power, token of social bonding, and so on. It is then claimed that money lacks a unitary character, and indeed that capitalist society possesses several qualitatively different ‘monies’. Without ignoring the insights offered by this work, it is argued that money’s ability to function as medium, symbol and representative of a broad spectrum of
social relations derives precisely from its unitary character. Money is able to bear, reflect, and symbolise widely different social relations in capitalist society because it has a bland and uniform character as the monopolist of buying ability.
