ABSTRACT
Capitalism characteristically uses “money” as the means of exchange in the market. Conservatives emphasize that the use of gold, tokens, or paper money is a great advance over barter, because the individual can spend a few dollars for one thing and a few dollars for another as he or she chooses. Pirenne argues that the great increase in international trade, in industry, and in the use of money led to the end of serfdom in Italy and Flanders by the thirteenth century. Radicals certainly agree that money is a useful tool, but they also believe that “money is the root of all evil.” On the one hand, that saying refers to the fact that the use of money and the competitive market system normally results in a dog-eat-dog kind of psychology and in robbery, both criminal and “legal”.
