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Duncan, are you saying that Marx agreed with the chartalist view on money?
"Duncan K. Foley" wrote:
>
> 1) It doesn't seem plausible that the market price of gold is
> currently regulating the values of national currencies. (I think
> Claus and Suzanne are not convinced of this.)
>
> 2) The form of money in contemporary capitalist economies is state
> credit, the debt of the state. (I think Chai-on has some doubts about
> this.)
>
> 3) This suggests that money is basically valued as the debt of the
> state, which, in Marxist terms, is a "fictitious capital", the
> capitalized value of that part of tax revenues devoted to paying
> interest on the state debt. (The hard part here is to recognize that
> currency and reserves, though they seem not to pay interest, actually
> do pay interest in the form of their convenience, privacy, and
> liquidity services. If, for example, the U.S. Treasury issued small
> denomination interest-bearing debt ($20 treasury bills instead of
> $10000 T-bills) the Fed could not circulate $20 Fed notes.)
>
> 4) This further suggests that the determinants of the value of money
> in contemporary capitalism lie in the speculative valuation of the
> government debt on asset markets. (Everybody I've tried this on has
> doubts about this idea.) It requires one to believe that, for
> example, workers, in bargaining over the money wage, are implicitly
> valuing the state debt as well as their own labor-power.
>
> The only thing that makes me tentatively hang onto this implausible
> chain of ideas is that I haven't heard any coherent alternative
> theory...
>
> Duncan
>
> --
> Duncan K. Foley
> Leo Model Professor
> Department of Economics
> Graduate Faculty
> New School University
> 65 Fifth Avenue
> New York, NY 10003
> (212)-229-5906
> messages: (212)-229-5717
> fax: (212)-229-5724
> e-mail: foleyd@cepa.newschool.edu
> alternate: foleyd@newschool.edu
> webpage: http://cepa.newschool.edu/~foleyd
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael@ecst.csuchico.edu
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