Geoffrey Ingham’s Theory, Money’s Conflicts and Social Change

Abstract

1694 marks the beginning of a ‘memorable alliance’ — the state would rule and merchants would make money.¹ This old British deal, forged from conflict, deserves more attention. Although sociology’s recent indifference to inequality is somewhat less widespread now, one symptom of an older malaise is that few sociologists care to understand money-creation. Money’s central role in producing inequality and overwhelming the democratic aspects of modernity shows the persistence of old institutions with capacities that sociology rarely investigates. Money’s institutions are my theme in this chapter, a theme that leads me to ask whether ‘class’ is a useful sociological concept in this context of systemic control in money’s headquarters. I discuss this, first, by exploring the reception to Geoffrey Ingham’s Capitalism Divided (1984). That debate and his work generally show that money is fundamental to understanding capitalism. Its social relations are complex: dual sources of economic control lie in goods and service production, and in the production of modern money that necessarily relies on the state. Due perhaps to this complexity, it seems that money’s conflicts against democracy remain the great elephant in the room of social sciences.