| This question <81|101> overall <86|88> Hans: <80|90>. |
| Question 77: What does Marx understand to be the riddle of money? |
| [87] Hans: How “light” is the dollar? In message [81], with which I fully agree, Gunther brought up the question of the marines again. What do the marines, or more generally, US government policy, have to do with the acceptance of the dollar as world money, and what does this have to do with our assigned reading in “Capital”? |
| In this week's reading (which is longer than that part of it digested in the study guide), Marx says that the exchange relationship with the money commodity, i.e., the price, is the best social form in which a commodity can express its value. In other words, Marx derives the power of money to purchase everything not from some social contract, that everybody agrees to accept money in such a role, but from the inner correspondence between the price form and that which the price represents. The price represents the fact that the commodity is created in a social context in which all labors count as equal, and its magnitude indicates how much of that social labor is represented in it. Value is not derived from the consumer's utility but from the objective fact that the commodity has used up part of society's limited number of labor hours. In Marx's view, only a real value, another commodity (gold) could represent this fact; paper money could play that role only to the extent that it was redeemable for gold. |
| Nowadays the dollar is not gold and it is also not redeemable for gold. But this does not mean, as Gunther wrote in message [81], that the dollar is “light”. It has behind it the wealthiest nation of the world, fully committed to maintaining capitalism and to allow the dollar to play its role as money world wide: i.e., making sure that the dollar is accepted everywhere, that there are no trade barriers, and seeing to it that the value of the dollar is preserved (even at the expense of unemployment and misery among their own population), abstaining from confiscating dollars or from using dollars for social welfare programs not benefiting the capitalists. The dollar is not gold, but this is not the right question to ask. The question is: can the dollar play the role described in the current readings of being the expression of the value of the other commodities? It can, since it is backed by the commitment of the US government to maintain capitalism. |
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