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A New Meme for Money

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Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money

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

  1. 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.

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  2. The best place to start for a sociological approach to money is with Geoffrey Ingham, The Nature of Money. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004.

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  3. 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.

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  4. George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.

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  5. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme, and Jack Balin, Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

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  6. See Philip Grierson, The Origins of Money. London: The Athlone Press, 1977

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  7. also see L. Randall Wray, Understanding Modern Money: The Key to Full Employment and Price Stability. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998.

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  8. See, for example, Dudley Dillard, ‘A Monetary Theory of Production: Keynes and the Institutionalists’, Journal of Economic Issues, 14 (1980): 255–73.

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  9. Charles Goodhart, ‘Two Concepts of Money: Implications for the Analysis of Optimal Currency Areas’, European Journal of Political Economy, 14(1998): 407–32.

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  10. 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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Authors
  1. L. Randall Wray
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Macquarie University, Australia

    Jocelyn Pixley (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow) (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow)

  2. University of New South Wales, Australia

    Jocelyn Pixley (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow) & G. C. Harcourt (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus) (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow) &  (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus)

  3. Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, UK

    Jocelyn Pixley (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow) (Honorary Professor in Sociology, Senior Visiting Fellow, IRRC, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Professorial Research Fellow)

  4. Cambridge University, UK

    G. C. Harcourt (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus) (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus)

  5. University of Adelaide, Australia

    G. C. Harcourt (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus) (Visiting Professorial Fellow in the School of Economics, Faculty of the Australian School of Business, Emeritus Reader in the History of Economic Theory, Professor Emeritus)

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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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