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Open Access
Article
Publication date: 13 December 2019

Guogang Wang

Marx’s monetary theory is an important part of Marxist economics and an irreplaceable milestone in the intellectual history of the monetary theory. The purpose of this paper is to…

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Abstract

Purpose

Marx’s monetary theory is an important part of Marxist economics and an irreplaceable milestone in the intellectual history of the monetary theory. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the main content of Marx’s monetary theory from three aspects: the source and nature of money, the function of money and the historical significance of money.

Design/methodology/approach

Moreover, this paper also gives an extended understanding of Marx’s monetary theory from four perspectives: the endogenous credit mechanism of money, the functions of money and demands for money, the financial function of money and the economic and social functions of money.

Findings

Lastly, the present paper discusses the practical significance of Marx’s monetary theory from three perspectives, namely, the inspection of “Bitcoin” from the nature and function of money, the definition of demands and the division of supplies at the monetary level, and the prevention of systemic financial risks and the focus of financial supervision.

Originality/value

Marx’s monetary theory is an important part of Marxist economics and an irreplaceable milestone in the intellectual history of the monetary theory. However, for a long time, the contribution of Marx has rarely been mentioned in the intellectual history of monetary theory. Even the book, Political Economy (On Capitalism), has been only summarily concerned with the source and function of money in Marx’s monetary theory, rather than revealing Marx’s outstanding contribution in the monetary theory and the financial connotation of Marx’s monetary theory, and expounding its practical significance.

Details

China Political Economy, vol. 2 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2516-1652

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 December 2022

Andrew B. Trigg

In The Accumulation of Capital (2015a), Rosa Luxemburg emphasises the importance of demand realisation in Marx's economics. First, by studying the history of political economy a…

Abstract

In The Accumulation of Capital (2015a), Rosa Luxemburg emphasises the importance of demand realisation in Marx's economics. First, by studying the history of political economy a refutation is provided of the suggested harmony between production and consumption (what came to be called Say's Law) first proposed by Say and J. Mill. Second, in her analysis of Marx's reproduction schemes, Luxemburg identifies the key role of demand constraints, set in the circulation of money. Central to this analysis is how the specific peculiarities of capitalism, such as constraints on the demand for commodities by wage labour, serve to intensify problems associated with Say's Law. The main purpose of this chapter is to consider how a refutation of Say's Law can be established in Luxemburg's treatment of the reproduction schemes that featured in Polish discussions of economic reproduction.

This analysis builds on the examination of Say's Law provided by Trigg (2020) under the confines of simple commodity circulation. Luxemburg's simple reproduction scheme provides a useful starting point for extending this refutation to the arena of capitalism. Core to this approach is how commodity money undergoes wear and tear as money circulates: a phenomenon that is considered by Luxemburg introducing a new department of production for the money commodity. By developing this system, and drawing on Marx's writings in Theories of Surplus Value, part 2 (Marx, 1968), the analysis will provide a systematic exploration of Marx's inevitability theory of crises under capitalism, as an extension of the more established possibility theory of crises under simple circulation.

Details

Polish Marxism after Luxemburg
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-890-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1983

Anghel N. Rugina

Whenever capitalism in the West appears to be dragging with unresolved problems, then quite a few people, including professional economists, begin to think that perhaps socialism…

Abstract

Whenever capitalism in the West appears to be dragging with unresolved problems, then quite a few people, including professional economists, begin to think that perhaps socialism is a better alternative. Conversely, in the East even a larger number of people, including economists (who are not activists), seriously believe that in view of their shortages and meagre incomes capitalism would be a better alternative.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 10 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Book part
Publication date: 8 May 2004

Andrew B. Trigg

The theory of the monetary circuit, as developed in its most powerful form by Graziani (1989), has made a significant contribution to the analysis of credit money in Marxian…

Abstract

The theory of the monetary circuit, as developed in its most powerful form by Graziani (1989), has made a significant contribution to the analysis of credit money in Marxian economics. A key issue is the extent to which circuit theory fails to take into account the relationship between sectors producing capital and consumption goods. In Marx’s reproduction schema, how much money do capitalists need to advance in order for exchange between sectors to balance, and for the circuit to be closed? The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by examining different models of the monetary circuit, each of which has a textual grounding in Marx’s often contradictory musings in Capital, Volume 2.

Alongside alternative conceptions of the circuit of money, different interpretations exist about the role of the multiplier, which can be nested in Marx’s reproduction schema. The problem, from a Marxian point of view, is that in the existing literature investment is usually confined to the capital goods sector. It can be argued that Marx, for the most part, viewed investment as involving accumulation in both departments of production. Using a multiplier framework, derived from input-output technology, this wider treatment of investment is considered as an alternative way of modelling the circulation of money. In addition to contributing to Marxian analysis of the money circuit, this approach could also be more accessible to a wider Post Keynesian audience, since a scalar Keynesian multiplier is employed.

Details

Neoliberalism in Crisis, Accumulation, and Rosa Luxemburg's Legacy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-098-2

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2003

Nick Potts

To many economists, not to mention all central bankers, inflation is considered to be public enemy number one. This paper seeks to understand why inflation should be so despised…

Abstract

To many economists, not to mention all central bankers, inflation is considered to be public enemy number one. This paper seeks to understand why inflation should be so despised. To escape from simultaneous restrictions a temporal single system (TSS) approach is employed. Firstly a simple illustration of the TSS approach is considered. In order to focus on distributional issues a positive wage and a class of rentiers are built in. Rentiers hold money stocks, past accumulated value in money terms. Rentiers are assumed to lend to productive capitalists, i.e. we have finance capital. Once we build in money stocks we find that appropriate price increases can potentially hide the effect of falling exploitation of labour, transferring the cost of reduced exploitation from productive capitalists to rentiers. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 30 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2003

Nick Potts

This article contends that Marxist economic analysis can shed more light on the likely effect of the euro on the EU economy, and the UK economy if the UK were to join, than…

1329

Abstract

This article contends that Marxist economic analysis can shed more light on the likely effect of the euro on the EU economy, and the UK economy if the UK were to join, than conventional neo‐classical macroeconomic analysis. Accumulated wealth/rentiers are incorporated into a model of the economy, in order to analyse how inflation affects the distribution of total social wealth between rentiers and business. The model suggests that rentiers gain, and business in general loses, from a state of price stability. Goes on to concentrate on inter‐firm issues by developing a multi‐sector model of the economy. The model is employed to illustrate how leading firms are also likely to benefit from price stability in the euro zone to the cost of business in the euro zone in general.

Details

European Business Review, vol. 15 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0955-534X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 April 2016

Farley Grubb

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose…

Abstract

The British North American colonies were the first western economies to rely on legislature-issued paper monies as an important internal media of exchange. This system arose piecemeal. In the absence of banks and treasuries that exchanged paper monies at face value for specie monies on demand, colonial governments experimented with other ways to anchor their paper monies to real values in the economy. These mechanisms included tax-redemption, land-backed loans, sinking funds, interest-bearing notes, and legal tender laws. I assess and explain the structure and performance of these mechanisms. This was monetary experimentation on a grand scale.

Details

Research in Economic History
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-276-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 March 2006

Allison Truitt

Reforms of the Vietnamese economy have been widely credited for stabilizing the value of the state-issued currency in the marketplace. Nevertheless, how people evaluate the…

Abstract

Reforms of the Vietnamese economy have been widely credited for stabilizing the value of the state-issued currency in the marketplace. Nevertheless, how people evaluate the Vietnamese dong as a symbolic form can be read as a symptom of shifting economic and political forces, above all in Ho Chi Minh City, a city associated with commerce. Through three ethnographic cases – the introduction of “big money,” the scarcity of “new money” in 2002, and the campaign to build Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), this paper analyzes the contentious politics around symbolic exchange that shape confidence in Vietnamese currency.

Details

Markets and Market Liberalization: Ethnographic Reflections
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-354-9

Book part
Publication date: 20 November 2023

Alfredo Saad-Filho

This chapter offers a Marxist analysis of forms of value in capitalist economies, and their implications for accumulation, (in)stability, and economic policy. The study focuses on…

Abstract

This chapter offers a Marxist analysis of forms of value in capitalist economies, and their implications for accumulation, (in)stability, and economic policy. The study focuses on seven key categories: money, capital, credit, interest-bearing capital, fictitious capital, the domestic public debt, and macroeconomic management through monetary and fiscal policy. It argues, first, that there is an intrinsic tendency toward the growing complexity of value forms in capitalism. Its examination helps to locate the contradictions of accumulation at increasingly complex levels, and the emergence of specifically financial forms of instability. Second, state management of accumulation through fiscal and monetary policy and the domestic public debt are essential for the stabilization of the economy, but their effectiveness remains limited. Third, monetary and financial structures, their relationship with production, and capacity to stretch, transform, and (de)stabilize accumulation are historically and institutionally specific. Fourth, public policy can influence the level and composition of output and employment, and the distributional and other outcomes of accumulation. Examination of the capital relation from this angle can shed light upon the drivers and modalities of accumulation of real and financial assets, and the imperatives, forms, and limitations of state regulation of accumulation.

Details

Value, Money, Profit, and Capital Today
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80455-751-8

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 February 2018

Masudul Alam Choudhury

The purpose of this paper is to explain the structure of Islamic monetary transformation into 100 percent reserve requirement monetary system in terms of the foundational…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explain the structure of Islamic monetary transformation into 100 percent reserve requirement monetary system in terms of the foundational epistemology of the unity of divine knowledge (tawhid). This approach is a scholarly originality in the field of epistemological formalism concerning Islamic theory and perspectives in economic reasoning in comparative perspectives.

Design/methodology/approach

The role of micro-money pursuing projects and real economic exchange relations is shown to arise by a natural causality in the ethical social economy (SE). This results in a microeconomic perspective of the quantity theory of money with ethical and social implications. A comparative study of endogenous money in the quantity theory of money points out significant differences between the theory of endogenous money in Islam and mainstream methodologies. A formal model of micro-money and its organismic endogenous relationship with the real economy is formulated with the goal of realizing social well-being, economic stabilization, and sustainability of development regimes.

Findings

This is a conceptual paper, though with the potential for continued work in applying the theory of micro-money in the Islamic methodological perspective of unity of knowledge. This is an original contribution of this paper. Islamic economists have not been able to produce a rigorous theory of micro-money. They have also not been able to situate the study of Islamic economics with its specific contribution to the field of the nature of money in project-specific financing of Islamic projects by the money-finance-real economy inter-causal relations. Thus, the findings of this paper, though of the conceptual nature, open doors to a vast field of methodological development and its application to the problem of micro-money modeling. Such a conceptual finding arising from the methodological theory of unity of knowledge and applied to the topic of micro-money along with some examples of potentiality of these approaches constitutes a vastly original field of findings as contribution. Thereby, an analytical model is established in the Islamic social economy (ISE) perspective. The model is used to explain monetary transmission and functioning of monetary policy with instruments that avoid interest rate and comply with Islamic financing requirements. The resulting model of money, finance, and real economy (MFE) systemic interrelationship in reference to the epistemology of unity of knowledge leads into the construction of a 100 percent reserve requirement monetary system with the gold-backed micro-money as currency complementing real economic transactions.

Research limitations/implications

The present paper is of a conceptual type based on the essential ontological and epistemological foundation of Islamic social and economic thought and bearing a deeply scientific implication. The conceptual part of this paper becomes a study in the foundations. The second part follows into the study of application in the real world of micro-money in terms of financing projects. Micro-money pursues projects in the Islamic economy due to its very nature of ethical and social choices. The paper shows that such a micro-money transmission is realized by the money-finance-real economy integrated model. Thereby, some real-world examples of such transformations are given. All these together substantiate the conceptual-analytical-empirical nature of the study conducted.

Practical implications

The development of the micro-money transmission system of generalized circular causation interrelations between MFE activities as a return to 100 percent reserve requirement monetary system with the gold standard is the profound theory that has been propounded. Its applied perspectives are implied through the MFE-model wherein micro-money pursues social projects. Furthermore, the possibility and practicality of such a conceptual model of micro-money and its transmission mechanism in the real economy are established by real-world examples of kinds of micro-money that are found to circulate or are recommended by some studies in the literature.

Social implications

The conceptual part of the paper presents a model of generalized epistemological model of unity of knowledge characterizing the MFE circular causal interrelations as the organismic meaning of social ethics and evolutionary learning. The social implications are the epistemic foundations of the derived model in the midst of choices of life-fulfillment projects that micro-money finances and the economy sustain.

Originality/value

This is an original paper premised on the general and the specific Islamic epistemological criterion of unity of knowledge as a generalized system theory. It is now particularized to the case of money and real economy by using the Islamic perspective of creating conditions to regenerate resources continuously in SE with ethical implications. The paper is equally informative to all who like to understand the social and ethical nature of endogenous relations between money and the real economy as two great institutions of the national economy. These together bestow well-being to the society at large in the construction of SE. Specific attention in this regard is given to ISE.

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