
[by boog highberger.  This originally appeared in *The Gentle Anarchist*
#15, Fall 1987]

        Thinking about money in this society is like being a fish wondering
about the nature of water.  We build our lives around money, we live money,
we breathe money, we swim in it like fish in the sea.
        Millions of people spend (so to speak) 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a
year doing nothing but playing with money--printing it, minting it,
counting it, recounting it, taking it from here, sending it there, juggling
it, smuggling it...sitting in offices in huge buildings making phone calls
and shuffling bits of paper, adding & re-adding endless columns of numbers
to make sure that they come out exactly the same...yeah, but...

 What is MONEY?

"I don't know what money is today, and I don't think anybody at the Fed
does either."
Richard Pratt,
Chairman of the Board of the
Federal Home Loan Bank,
 1982


Money is Inevitable

Money is not an accident. Neither was it the "invention" of some
particularly progressive culture or clever individual. Money in various
forms has arisen independently, in different ages and on every continent,
wherever the local economy has evolved beyond the level of subsistence.
Wherever there is surplus, trade inevitably follows, and primitive barter
economies progress almost inevitably to money economies, as certain
articles of recognized usefulness slowly come to symbolize wealth and are
accepted at a fixed value. In an area where cattle are the common form of
wealth, money is born when a cow comes to have the value of 1 cow,
regardless of its size, weight, health, or other physical  characteristics.
>From there the process of abstraction continues: cattle come [to] be
represented by tokens bearing pictures of cattle, the tokens evolve into
coins symbolizing value in general, and on down to our own day where value
is symbolized by marks on paper and the magnetic configurations of silicon
wafers.
And the inevitability of money is clear even in the present day. Wherever
national governments have attempted to impose worthless currencies as the
means of exchange, black markets dealing in "hard" currencies have arisen.
This phenomenon perhaps reached the peak of absurdity in the 1970s in
Communist Laos, where the official money of the country was the "kip", but
the only money accepted by the Laotian government was the US dollar.

*  The Soviet Union is the only country in the world where counterfeiting
is a capital offense (so to speak).

Money is Inequality

        John Locke thought that money arose before society, and that by its
use people have consented to class society:

"it is plain, that Men have agreed to disproportionate and unequal
Possession of the Earth, they haying by a tacit and voluntary consent found
out a way, how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use
the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus, Gold and Silver,
which may be hoarded up without injury to any one, these metalls not
spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things,
in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of
the bounds of  Societie, and without compact, only by putting a value on
gold and silver and tacitly agreeing in the use of Money
 [emphasis added]."

        Georg Simmel, writing two hundred years later, was not nearly so
naive about the nature of money and society. Simmel recognized that money
is "entirely a social institution", and said that "When barter is replaced
by money transactions, a third factor is introduced between the two
parties: the community as a whole, which provides a real value
corresponding to money."  Those who become "rich" are those who manage to
monopolize big chunks of the social wealth for their own ends. Far from
being a tacit agreement, this is done despite the sometimes violent
resistance of those whose share of the social wealth is being taken away.
        The division of labor in society depends on a money economy. And so
does capitalism. It's very hard to extract surplus value in a system based
on barter exchange. The growth of the state has gone hand in hand with the
growth of the money economy-- the emerging nation-states imposed taxes
payable only in money, replacing taxes payable in kind and driving more and
more people into alienated labor and the money economy. Like S. Herbert
Frankel says, "a trustworthy, disciplined monetary system is indispensable
for the free unfolding of the extended division of labor on which the
growth of world economies depends... A reliable standard in which
long-term debts can be expressed is indispensable for the growth of
capital."
        So capitalists didn't invent money... but perhaps we can say that
money invented capitalism. For once money  has been born into the world it
quickly begins to recreate the world in its own image.

*   Chrematophobia: Fear of Money.   *

Money Is Midas

        Like King Midas, money turns everything it touches to gold, or at
least into commodities that can be exchanged for gold.  Unique living
beings become standardized things.

"Trade is the reduction and quantification of the world to commodity
equivalents, the leveller of quality, skill, and concrete labor to
numerical units that can be measured by time and money, clocks and gold."
        Murray Bookchin

        And as money itself becomes more abstract and divorced from
concrete reality, so do the society and people that use it.  As Simmel puts
it, "The increasing replacement of metal money by paper money and the
various forms of credit unavoidably react upon the character of money--in
roughly the same way as in personal relations when somebody allows himself
to be represented by others, so that finally he receives no greater esteem
than is accorded his representatives...The idea that life is essentially
based on intellect, and that intellect is accepted in practical life as the
most valuable of our mental energies, goes hand in hand with the growth of
a money economy."

Money Is What Money Does

        Featured on the back of the Swiss 1000-franc note, the highest
valued item of currency in regular circulation in the world, is a figure of
the Grim Reaper.

Money Is
the Secret Name of All Things

        In many ancient cultures, to know the name of something was to
control it, to have power over it.  In the Christian Bible, Adam is given
authority over the animals of the world when God allows him to name them.
In the underworld of the ancient Egyptians, the dead had to pass through a
series of gates to reach the Kingdom of Osiris, the Land of the Blessed.
The key to passing through each gate was to know the secret name of the
gate and the secret name of the gatekeeper.  Today everyone and everything
has the same secret name:  MONEY.

Money Is White Sugar

"What we call the primitive is a mature system with deep capacities for
stability and protection built into it. In fact it seems to be able to
withstand everything except white sugar and the money economy trading
relationship; and alcohol, kerosene, nails, and matches."
              Gary Snyder

        Money is electricity: power stripped from its context and refined
to its purest form. We have created elaborate networks for its circulation.
We have devised ingenious instruments and mechanisms to let it do our work
for us. It jumps through hoops at our command but it is no longer clear who
is the master...

Money Is A Pyramid Scheme

        It's highly appropriate that there's a picture of a pyramid on the
back of the US dollar bill, because money is the original pyramid scheme.
        Here's how it works: You go to work to help make something for the
boss. At the end of the week you get a few pieces of paper that are a
promise that somebody else will give you some stuff you want. So you worked
all week for the promise of a promise.
        But where did the boss get the money to pay you? Well, either he
sold the stuff that you had already made for him (and pocketed his share),
or he "borrowed" it. And where did this "borrowed" money come from? From a
bank. And where did the bank get it? From somebody like you, who had some
money to save, who wanted to wait a while to cash in their promises. So the
bank gives the money to the boss, who gives it back to you. And all this
works just fine, most of the time. The only problem is when everyone wants
to cash in their promises all at once and they find out there are more
promises than stuff. Every pyramid scheme eventually crashes, and when a
pyramid scheme crashes somebody always gets burned. Guess who?

Money Is Shit

Freudian psychoanalysts equate money and feces. Ernest Bornemann says that
"according to ancient Babylonian doctrine, gold was referred to as the
'feces of hell', and Theodor Reik mentions that the Aztecs used to call
gold the 'feces of the gods'." Freudians also make a connection between
money and guilt. Again according to Bornemann, "capital accumulation and
indebtedness are as closely related as feces accumulation and feelings of
guilt." Unfortunately Bornemann uses this sound base of symbolic insight as
a jumping off point for some painfully goofy flights of imagination, as
when he speculates that  "there is no reason to assume that a desire for
the private ownership of the means of production would have to persist in a
socialist society with appropriate weaning and toilet training."

"Money is like muck, not good except it be spread."
              Francis Bacon

The phrase "money doesn't smell" was coined by the Roman Emperor Vespasian
who had taxed the collection of urine because the ammonia it contained was
used by the Romans to do their laundry. The Roman Emperor Tiberius feared
that he was made of feces, and forbade Romans to enter public toilets with
rings or gold coins showing his portrait.

Money Is A Disease

A 1972 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found 21
different disease-causing microorganisms living on samples of paper money.
42% of the bills tested carried one or more of the pathogens.

In medieval Russia, there existed silver coins so small that it was
impossible to take them by hand from a table. When transactions took place,
the buyer emptied his purse on the table, the amount to be paid was
separated out, and both parties then picked up their share of the coins
with their tongues and spat them into their respective purses.

Money Is Freedom,
Money Is Slavery;
Money Is Community,
Money Is Alienation

        Yeah, and money is a paradox...What money gives on one level it
takes away on another. Money frees us to realize our wildest desires--money
is pure choice--but at the same time it binds us to a system of wage
slavery in which we have to sell our time to survive. Money strengthens our
connections to our fellow human by tying us into a system of production
that makes us all mutually dependent... but at the same time it cheapens
and destroys even the most intimate of our interpersonal relations by
reducing them to the level of commodity exchanges.
        Locke celebrated the fact that "money... replaced the utter
dependence on nature by a new dependence, a dependence on other individuals
and on society." Locke looked forward to the promise of such freedom with
an optimism that seems naive from our jaded 20th century perspective. As
Frankel explains it: "Today we have more freedom but are unable to enjoy it
properly; money makes it possible to buy ourselves not only out of bonds
with others but even out of bonds with our possessions. We develop a
rootless search for ever new things because money is our only nexus with
them. Money's abstract power to command anything ultimately seems to
command nothing."
        And again with the paradoxes: while money as an institution may
threaten our freedom and our sanity, in the short run certain forms of
money work greatly in our favor. In particular, banknotes and metal money
are a protection against the people who want to monitor our every motion.
Consider this serious proposal from a lawyer who had a friend whose wallet
had just been ripped off:


 ABOLISH PAPER MONEY AND ELIMINATE MOST CRIME

        Paper currency is the lifeblood of crime and corruption in the
United States. Without paper money it would be virtually impossible for
criminals and corrupt officials to profit from illegal activities. If all
substantial transfers of money were recorded in bank transactions, nobody
could conduct profitable illegal activities without creating highly visible
permanent evidence of the illegal activities or of income tax evasion or
both. With the chances of profit from illegal activities so slim, it is
difficult to visualize large numbers of persons running the risks of
imprisonment. Crime would be reduced dramatically to the point where
today's police forces could effectively control it. Fortunately, technology
has advanced to the point that today there is a substitute for paper money:
a 'payment card' system keyed to bank accounts.
        Each person wishing to spend money other than coins, which would
remain in circulation, would be required to have a bank account. The bank
or federal government would issue to each depositor a U.S. payment card
similar to plastic credit cards. In addition to the necessary codings, each
card would contain the photograph and fingerprint of the depositor...Every
business establishment, including taxicabs, would be equipped with a
terminal in which the payment card could be inserted...(and) make a visual
display of the charge so that the customer could see the exact amount being
deducted from his bank account. . . In the event the customer did not have
the amount in his account the terminal would so indicate...


    O Brave New World that has such people in it!

Money Is Faith, Money is Power

        Non aes sed fides:  not by iron but by faith.  This inscription
formerly found on Maltese coins sums up a very important truth about money:
that the value of every kind of money, including metal money, rests on
trust.  Money cannot be enforced, and money is accepted only when people
exchange it for a certain amount of real stuff at some point in the future.
        This is perhaps an important point to remember in times of
impending economic crises.  In the face of short term economic upheaval,
conservatives are correct to insist on accepting only gold and silve as
"real" money, since they are relatively rare and can't be manufactured out
of common materials by the government.  But ultimately the value of gold
and silver as money rests on faith and trust in the future, just like paper
currency does.  When the real crunch finally comes, it may be useful to
remember that there are more calories in paper than in silver or gold.
        And here we come to yet another of the paradoxes of money: while
money depends on trust at the personal level, that trust ultimately depends
on the power of the issuing authority. Our currency is backed not by the
gold in Fort Knox but by the guns in Fort Knox.  The value of money,
whether gold or paper, ultimately rests on faith, and the value of the US
dollar rests on the faith that the US domination of the world economy is
backed by the US Army, Air Force, and Marines.
        For several hundred years economists have recognized that our money
has value "to the extent of our faith in a viable tomorrow."  Thus it seems
surprising that no economist has drawn a connection between the dawn of the
nuclear era and the chronic inflation that has characterized the post-war
economies of the industrial nations. Perhaps this can also help explain the
willingness of both liberals and conservatives in this country to rack up
huge federal deficits--what's so bad about stealing from tomorrow when
there's not going to be a tomorrow?

*********************************************
MONEY
Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay and your O.K.
Money it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a footbal team

Money get back
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off my stack
Money it's a hit
Don't give me that do goody bullshit
I'm in the hi-fidelity first class travelling set
And I think I need a Lear jet

Money it's a crime
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie
Money so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away
********************************************

Money Is Information

        Money is information--the only problem is that it's not very much
information.  Money talks, but it doesn't say much.  In the wonderful world
of capitalism, everything--and everyone--has a price, and that price is the
only information that matters in the marketplace.  For the marketplace to
work, reality has to be simplified and standardized.  As our everyday life
becomes more and more characterized by exchnages, by buying and selling,
many of the facts and observations about the objects in our lives become
irrelevant and are no longer valued.  Commodities have no history.  There
are no tenses in the lenguage of money--prices are always now.
        Interest rates, stock prices, and commodity index futures all
provide information about the economy and provide clues as to how to most
efficiently organize society's resources. But as with prices, lots of
information is lost in the translation of daily life into economic
indicators. Countless facts about millions of people doing millions of
different things get reduced to a few bits of data which are interpreted by
economists like Chinese mystics prophesying from the pattern of I Ching
sticks--all economics is voodoo economics. Through their interpretation of
the magic signs, the best allocation of economic resources is
determined--but best for who? Priests who prophesy against their masters
usually don't have much job security...
        This development is an inevitable consequence of the increasing
abstraction of money. When money becomes intellectualized, intellectuals
control money and the economy. And, as always, the intellectuals are
controlled by the governments and corporations that sign their paychecks.
        And thus the productive forces of a society are organized to
maintain the existing power relations of that society. Simmel again: "Money
is thus one of the great cultural elements whose function it is to assemble
great forces at a single point and so to overcome the passive and active
opposition...by this concentration of energies. We should think of the
machine in this context."
        Welcome to the machine...

Money Never Sleeps

The speed of electricity approaches that of the speed of light, and today
the speed of money is the speed of electricity. Every day billions of
"dollars" race the sun around the globe. As one financial market closes,
the dollars rush on to the next so that not a moment is wasted.

        "Knowledge - Zzzzzp!  Money - Zzzzzp! - Power!
    That's the cycle democracy is built on!"
               Tennessee Williams

What Can I Do?

        Raoul Vaneigem says that "a truly new reality can only be based on
the principle of the gift." And many anarchists have argued the need for
the abolition of money. But history has shown that money cannot be
abolished before people's need for money has been abolished. Until we have
created a society of the gift that is no longer built on a system of
commodity exchanges, money will be necessary or perhaps even desirable. So
what we need are some practical short term strategies that will move us in
the direction of the type of society we want to see, and at the same time
we need to create new monetary institutions that will reduce some of the
more destructive effects of money in the meantime.
        Burning money is always good theater, but until we have provided
ourselves with a permanent non-money means of sustenance, doing very much
of it will be counterproductive. Removing as much of our daily lives from
the arena of commodity exchange seems important, since that's how the new
reality will be created-- by individuals consciously removing themselves
from the old, destructive system. So freely giving and receiving as much as
possible seems like a step in the right direction.
        And while money is still with us, we need to place limits on the
money we use. Instead of passively accepting ever expanding and
accelerating forms of money like they were divinely commanded by some
all-powerful god, we need to raise the awareness that money is essentially
a social relationship  and as such we have the right to collectively
determine the nature of that relationship.
        Some anarchists in the past have argued for placing time limits on
money, such as issuing money that expires and has no value after a certain
date. What seems more practical is to create new forms of money that are
spatially limited-- regional, decentralized currencies only good in a
specified area. This may seem impractical, too, but experiments like this
have worked in the past, and one such project is in progress right now in
the United States.
        Part of the benefit of regional or local currency comes from the
fact that a banknote essentially represents an interest-free loan to the
central government. In the Isle of Man in the early 1800's, citizens there
replaced all the English money on the island with their own local currency,
invested the English money, and in a few years had earned enough interest
to finance the construction of a new public hall.
        In the Berkshires area of Massachusetts, the SHARE (Self Help
Association for a Regional Economy) program is currently making loans that
encourage greater regional self-sufficiency in the production of basic
necessities, and plans to soon issue a regional currency called
"Berkshares", with a value based on the value of cordwood. Berkshares are
designed to meet the criteria for an appropriately scaled currency proposed
by Robert Swann of the E.F. Schumacher Society.  Swann says that the new
local currencies should be: 1) consistent with customary practices (i.e.
taking the form of cash and checks and being compatible with common
accounting systems); 2) redeemable in some form of real everyday value; 3)
based on local production but tied to a universal measure of value; and 4)
controlled by the community, perhaps through a non-profit bank. It's too
early to evaluate the success of the Berkshares program, but in its first
stages it seems to be a short but firm step in the direction of local
autonomy.

Closing Benediction and Words of Inspiration

        Capitalists understand far better than the rest of us what money
does, but with rare exceptions they seem to have little idea about what
money is. It's the same with computers--often the best programmers have
little idea of how their machines are built.  And Beethoven didn't know how
to make pianos.
        But here is where our opportunity lies.  Only those who understand
their tools can really control them (what happens to Beethoven when his
piano is broken?), and only if we understand the tools that are used to
control us can we fight back effectively.  So, by coming to understand the
reality behind the shell game & light show of the current world economic
system, perhaps we can learn to build the hardware for a new way of
organizing our productive activities that will build community instead of
destroying it and will empower us as individuals rather than enslaving us
and reducing us to cogs in an incomprehensible and uncontrollable machine.

        boog

        "Go out and fight so life shouldn't be printed on dollar bills."
                Clifford Odets


And So, For Further Reading
Regional Currencies
        For a packet of information on the SHARE program, write to SHARE,
PO Box 125, Great Barrington, MA 01230 [editor note: this address has
probably changed since this article was first published]. For a copy of the
Robert Swann paper "Community Survival in the Age of Inflation" (which lays
out the ideas behind the Bershares program) send a buck or two to the E.F>
Schumacher Society, Box 76, RD 3, Great Barrington, MA 01230.

Some Books About Money

The Brotherhood of Money, Murray Teigh Bloom, BNR Press, 1983
The Psychoanalysis of Money, Ernest Bornemann, Urizen Books, 1976
Money and Liberty, S. Herbert Frankel, American Enterprise Institute, 1980
The Phenomenon Money, Money and How It Gets That Way, Henry Miller

And For The Intellectual Masochists Among Us

The Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978



