by From Asad Zaman Somebody aptly quipped that ‘Trying to understand the economy without understanding money and finance is like trying to understand how birds fly, without taking the wings into account”. The Hegelian anti-thesis of the orthodox economic position that money is neutral, is the idea that “money is everything”. Economics is just the analysis of monetary flows, both within a society, and globally. Karl Marx describes the change in perspective via the formulae C-M-C’ versus M-C-M’. In the first paradigm, commodities C are sold to get money M, in order to buy another set of commodities C’. This picture of a barter economy, in which money just facilitates exchange, is at the heart of modern economics; this is why money does not matter. However, in a capitalist economy, M(oney)
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from Asad Zaman
Somebody aptly quipped that ‘Trying to understand the economy without understanding money and finance is like trying to understand how birds fly, without taking the wings into account”.
The Hegelian anti-thesis of the orthodox economic position that money is neutral, is the idea that “money is everything”. Economics is just the analysis of monetary flows, both within a society, and globally. Karl Marx describes the change in perspective via the formulae C-M-C’ versus M-C-M’. In the first paradigm, commodities C are sold to get money M, in order to buy another set of commodities C’. This picture of a barter economy, in which money just facilitates exchange, is at the heart of modern economics; this is why money does not matter. However, in a capitalist economy, M(oney) is used to produce commodities C, and these are sold for more money M’. Money is the goal of production and sales, not an instrument for exchange of commodities. An economy where the drive for profits is the main motivation for productions and purchases, requires an entirely different analysis.
In his classic work on “The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times”, Giovanni (1994) describes how the accumulation of capital (wealth, money) has been the central driver of history over the past several centuries. Giovanni provides a wealth of historical details and a global context to support this thesis, based on a world-systems perspective. Many other authors, writing from many different perspectives, have documented how “money makes the world go around”.
In particular, Minsky’s (1986) analyses of this phenomena are of special importance from the economic point of view. read more