Abstract
As my economics training began in the Institutionalist tradition, I was exposed from the start to the view that money is not a ‘thing’ but rather an institution. This meant more than the obvious fact that most of our ‘money supply’ is issued by private bank ‘institutions’. Institutionalists define institutions broadly to include socialized patterns of behaviour or even thought. Dudley Dillard was foremost among Institutionalists for emphasizing that money is an institution. However, I have to admit that exactly what is meant by the phrase ‘money is a social relation’ was left rather hazy.
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Notes
Geoffrey Ingham, ‘The Emergence of Capitalist Credit Money’, in Wray (ed.), Credit and State Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2004, pp. 173–222 (p. 179). This follows the argument he had previously made in his 1996 article ‘Money is a Social Relation’, Review of Social Economy, 54(4), 507–29, and ‘“Babylonian Madness”: On the Sociological and Historical “Origins” of Money’, in John Smithin (ed.), What is Money? London and New York: Routledge, 2000, pp 16–41. The latter chapter was the first piece that exposed me to Geoff’s work.
The best place to start for a sociological approach to money is with Geoffrey Ingham, The Nature of Money. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.
See also Wray (ed.), Credit and State Theories of Money: The Contributions of A. Mitchell Innes. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004 for a number of contributions that counter the story told by economists.
George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme, and Jack Balin, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
See Philip Grierson, The Origins of Money. London: The Athlone Press, 1977
also see L. Randall Wray, Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998.
See, for example, Dudley Dillard, ‘A Monetary Theory of Production: Keynes and the Institutionalists’, Journal of Economic Issues, 14 (1980): 255–73.
Charles Goodhart, ‘Two Concepts of Money: Implications for the Analysis of Optimal Currency Areas’, European Journal of Political Economy, 14(1998): 407–32.
J. Fagg Foster, ‘The Reality of the Present and the Challenge of the Future’, Journal of Economic Issues, 15(4) (1981): 1963.
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© 2013 L. Randall Wray
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Wray, L.R. (2013). A New Meme for Money. In: Pixley, J., Harcourt, G.C. (eds) Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302953_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302953_6
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