The politics of money : towards sustainability and economic democracy / Frances Hutchinson, Mary Mellor and Wendy Olsen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hutchinson, Frances, 1941-

Contributor:

Mellor, Mary.

Olsen, Wendy Kay.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Monetary policy.

Capitalism.

Money.

Physical Description:

viii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, 2002.

Summary:

On the whole, classical and radical economists have marginalised the role of money, most particularly the role of credit, in driving the machinery of accumulation and exclusion. Although critiques of capitalism from Marxist, feminist, ecological and many other perspectives abound, The Politics of Money is unique in gathering the strengths of these differing critiques into a coherent whole. The authors have drawn upon their varied expertise in economics and the social sciences to produce the foundations of a new political economy that will enable communities to reconstruct their socio-economic fabric through social and political control of money systems.

The book opens with a review of the role of money in current society, an overview of the history of money creation and a critique of the main theoretical developments in economic thought. Alternative perspectives on money are then presented through a review of a number of radical perspectives but focusing mainly on the work of Marx, Veblen and the social credit perspective of Douglas and the guild socialists. In the final part of the book contemporary monetary theories and experiments are analysed within the theoretical and historical perspectives provided in the earlier chapters. The main argument of the book is that it is necessary to understand the crucial role of finance in driving the 'free market' economy if a democratic and sustainable economy is to be achieved.

Contents:

1 The money society 1

Money and society 2

Globalisation and finance 5

The limits of money 7

Money and economics 10

Vogon economic theory 13

Wide solutions for specific problems 16

Mapping a way forward 17

2 Why is there no alternative? 21

Economics as normal science 22

Classical and neo-classical schools of economic thought 25

Basic assumptions of orthodox economics 28

The abstraction of economic systems 30

The role of money in the circular flow 31

The elimination of time in the circular flow model 33

Capital's non-existence in the circular flow 34

Alternatives and variants 35

The flawed logic of orthodox approaches 39

The problem of growth 40

Chrematistics or oikonomics? Production or provisioning? 41

There is an alternative 43

3 Money, banking and credit 47

Money in history 47

Does money have a natural value? 51

Origins of banking and credit 55

John Law and banking as money creation 57

The evolution of the debt-based money economy 60

Money as debt/credit 61

Credit and the velocity of money 62

How banks multiply money 63

Fractional reserve banking 64

The evolution of the money creation process 67

4 Capitalism - the elimination of alternatives 70

Characteristics of capitalism 71

Property as enclosure 74

Enclosing knowledge and skills 80

The capitalist market 81

Marx, money and value 84

The political construction of the capitalist market 90

Enforcing the free market on a global scale 94

Challenging the market 96

5 Marx, Veblen and the critique of the money/market system 98

Marx's legacy 100

Thorstein Veblen's institutional perspective 104

Class, work and waged labour 114

Work as transformation 121

6 Guild socialism and social credit 123

From labourism to social credit 124

The origins of social credit 126

Douglas and social credit 127

The Draft Mining Scheme 130

The case for socialisation of credit 134

Douglas' A+B theorem and the flawed circular flow model 138

7 Institutional critiques of capitalist finance 142

The credit basis of capitalism 142

The headquarters of the capitalist system 144

National dividend 146

Reclaiming the common cultural inheritance 147

The utility of work versus the disutility of labour 149

Personal income and the utility of labour 151

Sufficiency and economic democracy 153

8 New critiques: green economics and feminist economics 157

Ecology and economics 157

Environmental or ecological economics? 160

Ecology and food provisioning: from soil cultivation to soil mining 166

Socially responsible finance 172

Women and economics: the marginalisation of women 173

Rethinking the economy 178

9 New ways of thinking about money and income 184

Local currency and exchange systems 184

Local money 185

Mutual credit systems 188

LETS schemes 189

Basic (or citizen's) income 192

Producer banks - the example of Mondragon 195

Sufficiency and financial independence 197

Jubilee 2000 201

Micro-credit 202

Linking practice with theory 206

10 Towards sustainability and economic democracy 208

Money as a social phenomenon 211

Monetary reform 214

From waged labour to social credit 219

Sufficiency and subsistence 222

The good ship TINA 226

A new vision 228.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 230-241) and index.

ISBN:

0745317219

0745317200

OCLC:

59468311