Local currencies in their praxis have many shortcomings when it comes to economic applications. Issues of supply chains and the adequacy of developed economies of scale are lacking in many local currency systems. However, such an economistic view ignores the actual political ramifications of local currencies. Certainly local currencies have issues when it comes their active efficacy, but this takes the view that economies, and currencies in particular, are defined by capitalist discourses and practices rather than different conceptions of what constitutes the economic realm. Such ideas constitute an idea of economy determined by capitalist definitions of efficiency and take a view of money as a neutral veil, part and parcel of a market economy. This “absolutization of the market”[1] ignores much of what an economy is actually constituted of. Thus in looking at local currencies, we see many political statements and social practices that while not economically practical do show a different type of money, one more embedded in social structures of local communities and actors. Continue reading →

To attribute to money a concept of bestowing freedom upon an individual owner may well exist as a theoretical possibility. Yet ownership is itself a contested concept. As is freedom. By bestowing freedom on the owner, it effectively prompts the dominance of certain types of power to come to the fore of monetary and economic relations. We can see this in Weber’s concept of a struggle for economic existence[1], whereby the formation of prices is a struggle for dominance, with money as the main weapon for such a struggle. Thus the use of money and with it the creation of prices for commodities is brought out of a struggle for who determines this, and who can win the best deal from such a battle. In this sense, capitalistic markets are the battleground for the domination of certain winners and losers, with the codification of power and dominance written into those who enter either of these two classifications. Continue reading →

Capitalism’s relation to spiritual attitudes and ideologies has been historically hostile. The use of magic and the holding of pagan beliefs in peasant communities in the transition from feudalism to capitalism was mercilessly crushed, as it was seen as a belief system that removed control from the mercantile elites and prevented the mechanistic control needed to create a class of wage labourers[1]. Along with the enclosure of the commons, and the warping of gender relations to fit new roles created for the purpose of capital accumulation, this is an attempt to engender new relations into the socio-economic sphere.

The minimum wage is held up as an example of a social reform that has maintained the legitimacy of wage labour while not allowing the excesses of capitalism to extract all of worker’s surplus value. This is just not the case. By putting an arbitrary price on labour, the state maintains a form of exploitation. Groups of labourers find it more difficult to organise into collectivised worker-owners who can exploit their innate human capital due to unitary employment laws that effectively engender the concept of a wage, and thus the worker-boss paradigm.

Its generally conceived that the entrepreneur is the lone economic wolf in the economy, bringing together the morass of labour, capital and resources and placing it under his/her will. This picture of rugged individualism usually serves little purpose than to justify large expansions of wealth by corporate CEOs and ignores the actual picture of entrepreneurs, that of hard-working, small-scale individuals within networks and communities where wealth and knowledge are shared. To take the entrepreneur outside of the societal context, where they gain their education and skills, is to simply assert the false idea that entrepreneurs are the Ubermensch, the lone individual walking on the tide of the masses. However, the reality is that the ability to be an entrepreneur is limited due to capital constraints and entry barriers, which limit entrepreneurialism to those who have capital[1], which usually means control of the economy by venture capitalists or the established rich, and thus the expropriation of wealth away from both the individual and the community.

Being a major area of Austrian economics, the idea of subjective value is regularly used by libertarians to disprove labour theory of value and subsequently believe they’ve refuted anti-capitalist arguments[1]. Frankly it’s all fanciful word games. Little evidence is really produced out of this, outside a thin justification for modern capitalist economies (which is ironic coming from supposed anarchist capitalists). However, the LTV crowd don’t exactly help their cause, holding to Marxian arguments that provide little evidence themselves. Rather, subjective theory of value is simply a lens to understand multiplicitous decisions in heterogeneous circumstances, thus subsuming different forms of valuation made by autonomous individuals and institutions. Further, empirical evidence shows continued increases in profits and capital gains and the continued stagnation of wages (particularly in the United States). In the end, taking subjective theory of value to its ultimate conclusion, we see the ability for price arrangements to develop in a multitude of different institutional settings, including planned economic relations, moral economies and markets.

Thatcher’s deconstruction of British industry is one of her lasting legacies. On the right, you’ll hear how it was necessary and beneficial toward moving Britain in the direction of a free market economy, a concept that Thatcher never truly believed in. On the left, you’ll hear how the government should have continued propping up the mining and manufacturing industries despite chronic problems and a reliance on stolen funds i.e. taxation. However, neither answer is satisfactory in understanding what has happened since the deconstruction of industry by Thatcher. Continue reading →

Nietzsche’s famous invocation “God is dead” was meant to hail in the idea that the one truth of Christianity no longer made sense. That the order of society would be reborn into many different conceptions, with the Ubermensch leading toward different ideas and orders. While Nietzsche saw this as breaking away from the herd, I see it rather as resilience against a domineering power structure that aims to denigrate and suppress the urges of individualism and voluntary collectivism, and instead move toward the reformation of old ideas with the creation of new ones. Continue reading →

The continuing destruction of the steel industry in the UK has been a major news topic. And as usual we see the typical narrative of either statist leftists who parrot nationalisation and subsidisation as a solution, or the supposed market supporters, who take Ricardian economic arguments of specialisation and butcher them. What neither of these arguments understand is that the modern economy is constrained via government monopoly and artificial economies of scale which favour large scale international trade in heavy industry markets. Continue reading →

An institutional approach in monetary political economy means understanding that money and its antecedents are shaped by institutional arrangements. Looking back, we see the Fei of Yapp and Sumerian credit systems, where money was not known, and instead claims were made via credit. Social relations were a significant element of these monetary systems, making institutional characteristics the lynchpin of credit and money. Continue reading →