Any discussion of money must begin with a definition of the term and with what aspect of it one intends to examine, for money is a remarkably complex phenomenon. We can talk about it as a physical object, an economic concept, an ideology, a symbol, or a discursive construct. We can also debate its historical, psychological, sociological, cultural, and political significance. I remember one time as a child talking with a friend about whether it would be possible to get rid of money, as both of us felt that it can do terrible things to people. I’ve since concluded that abolishing money is a nonstarter since at its core money is just a representation of value, and value judgments seem irreducible.
The more important question isn’t whether we can live in a utopia without money, but whether the practices—indeed the whole economics—surrounding money can be used to eradicate social ills like poverty. In addition, we must think about how we can align our understanding of money with ideals like freedom, happiness, and justice. In an age where new forms of value (e.g. bitcoin) and economic practices (e.g. derivatives trading) are fundamentally altering the concept of money we’ve inherited from the past, it’s worth thinking about what role we want it to play in the future. Here are a couple articles that do just that.
- Mark Rathbone, “Love, money and madness: Money in the economic philosophies of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” South African Journal of Philosophy, September 2015.
- Daniel Carey, “Locke’s Species: Money and Philosophy in the 1690s,” Annals of Science, July 2013.
- Nigel Dodd, “Simmel’s Perfect Money: Fiction, Socialism and Utopia in The Philosophy of Money,” Theory, Culture & Society, December 2012.
- Garry Jacobs, “Foundations of Economic Theory: Money, Markets and Social Power,” Air & Space Power Journal: Afrique et Francophonie, Spring 2018.
- Thomas Noutsopoulos, “The Role of Money in Plato’s Republic, Book I,” Historical Materialism, 2015.
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