Money as the Site of the Political in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy

• In Event: Entanglements of Economics and Politics

Abstract

Marx’s account of money is riddled with apparent contradiction, and the history of interpretations of this account is layered with misunderstanding. This paper rereads Marx on money to show that his was not the “orthodox” account it has been taken to be by both Marxists and critics alike. Rather, Marx provides a critique of orthodoxy that does not easily line up with today’s understanding of the heterodox account of money. All of this matters because Marx understood what was wrong with utopian projects to remake the world by remaking money: his critique of 19th-century “time-chitters” applies nicely both to 21st-century libertarian dreams of non-state money and to anarchist projects to create a new money and with it a new society. I show that even when focusing narrowly on Marx’s understanding of the logic of capital and the value-form (i.e. “economics”) the money form of value can only be grasped as itself a social and political relation.

Author

• Samuel A. Chambers, Johns Hopkins University