Many anarchist authors use emotive rhetoric or appeal to reason, but Kevin Carson is a rigourous academic. He has covered much ground in politics and economics, and in this latest book his focus turns to the money system. It summarises the last 3 centuries of academic debate about the nature of money and reflects on the contemporary dominance of national fiat monies. Despite being fairly short and not attempting to say much original, it contains a surprising breadth, depth and a wealth of references.
It was refreshing to read on page 1, the dichotomy between the credit and commodity theories of money. The rest of the section then draws on a long line of classical economists, but especially Schumpeter, who grappled with the dichotomy, thrashing around arguing about the definitions of key concepts like labour, value, property and several others.
I was really surprised he decided to recount these arguments in such nerdy depth because this way of conducting economics seems to me merely a proxy for the class war. None of these political economist authors ever seems to be asking questions or conceding points or significantly changing their positions over their careers. On the contrary, they come across as Sophists interested only in winning the argument. If you believe as I do that the role of economists is to deflect criticism of government policy then an esteemed author can easily muddy the waters for a few years with a book of spurious arguments until the other side produces a riposte.
It seems to me that these arguments are about economic justice, because for me, justice requires that anyone who brings goods to market should be able to issue credit. But if these arguments were really moral, they wouldn't get so lost in the weeds. It would be enough to prove that the rich do not deserve their wealth nor the poor their poverty, and that the rules around accessing capital re-enforce the state of each, and the argument would be won. So these arguments more likely boil down to the timeless competition between the state and the banks for the right to issue. Banks of course issue credit money whose value is determined by interest, but they want you to think it is a commodity. States issue commodity money in the form of coins, whose value at this time, was declared by fiat.
In section 2 Carson develops a narrative, his own I suspect, in which self organised credit monies existed at various moments in history, especially moments lacking coinage or banks. These were all eventually displaced as the official money system grew and formalised. What makes that official system so problematic is that it always takes the commodity money narrative in which money is 'scarce' which has many pernicious effects on the economy and on society. He concludes by pointing to some modern attempts at complementary currencies which prove that there is still space in the world for alternatives.
Specific features of the money system are the direct cause of many of the problems and injustices that the alt-economists make their bread and butter, yet in most of alt-economics discourse, not to mention anarchist discourse, money remains a blind spot, just as in neoliberal economics. Kudos to Carson for putting the money system back in the arena!
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