Hospitality versus Exchange: The Limits of Monetary Economies

Abstract

This paper attempts to specify theoretically the origins of money. Rather than the exchange-based view of neoclassical economists where money is seen as a transaction cost-reducing instrument (and where exchange itself is asserted to be a universal phenomenon), we argue that money is a social relationship, specifically a debt relationship, that emerges with propertied, class society. "Primitive" (pre-class) society could not generate money, as the rule of hospitality, universally practiced among such organizations, precluded debt and the self-interested behavior that is consistent with debt. Adopting the Chartalist position on the matter, we show that money is symptomatic of privilege, of inequality, of economic and political power.Chartalism, Debt, Exchange, Hospitality, Money, Property,

La concepción del «dinero moderno» y su contribución a un nuevo marco político monetario-fiscal

“…Mientras que el mito del trueque no halla evidencia histórica alguna (Polanyi, 1976a), la TMM encuentra en las investigaciones de antropólogos, etnólogos, numismáticos y arqueólogos, entre otros científicos sociales, la base histórica y social que refuerza el planteamiento del dinero expuesto por el enfoque chartalista (Wray, 1998;Ingham, 2004a;Tymoigne y Wray, 2006). Apoyándose en el análisis del origen del dinero como un producto cultural e institucional, postula que el dinero es una unidad de cuenta designada por una autoridad pública, cumpliendo las siguientes premisas: primero, constituye una relación social, en la medida en que representa un crédito o una relación de deuda 4 ; segundo, surgió con la aparición de las clases sociales (Bell y Henry, 2001;Henry, 2004); tercero, el valor monetario de los productos básicos en dinero nunca ha estado determinado por el valor de cambio de los metales preciosos, sino por una promesa de pago construida socialmente, esto es, una unidad de cuenta abstracta que luego es utilizada como medio de pago y para la liquidación de deudas (Ingham, 2000;Papadopoulos, 2013), y cuarto, las relaciones sociales presentan una jerarquía o pirámide de aceptabilidad, en cuya parte superior se encuentra la deuda del Gobierno (Bell, 2001).…”

Introduction: Exploring Feminist Ecological Economics / Gender, Development, and Sustainability From a Latin American Perspective / African Peasants and Global Gendered Class Struggle for the Commons / Ecofeminist Political Economy: Integrating Feminist Economics and Ecological Economics / Habits of Thought, Agency, and Transformation: An Institutional Approach to Feminist Ecological Economics / the Network Vorsorgendes Wirtschaften / Engendering Organic Farming

“…17 For comparison of traditional principles of reciprocity and a monetized agricultural production, and their environmental aspects, see Matthew Forstater (2002). 18 For discussion on money as an institution of debtor-creditor relations and property relations, see Stephanie Bell and John Henry (2001). 19 Zein-Elabdin (1996: 941) points to the institutionally specific discussion of the role of the state in India that Bina Agarwal (1992) documents.…”

From Monetary Theory of Production to Culture-Nature Life Process: Feminist-Institutional Elaborations of Social Provisioning

“…Debt denominated in a money of account is a specific social arrangement of accounting for indebtedness 32 . Money itself is a social relationship -not only between a specific debtor and a creditor, but one signifying hierarchical arrangements in social provisioning 33 (Ingham 1996;Bell and Henry 2001;Tymoigne and Wray 2006). 32 As Gardiner (2004, p. 202) points out: "The essential monetary space for a genuinely impersonal sphere of exchange was eventually provided by states.…”