The Nature of Money

In this important new book, Geoffrey Ingham draws on neglected traditions in the social sciences to develop a theory of the ‘social relation’ of money. Genuinely multidisciplinary approach, based on a thorough knowledge of theories of money in the social sciences An original development of the neglected heterodox theories of money New histories of the origins and development of forms of money and their social relations of production in different monetary systems A radical interpretation of capitalism as a particular type of monetary system and the first sociological outline of the institutional structure of the social production of capitalist money A radical critique of recent writing on global e-money, the so-called ‘end of money’, and new monetary spaces such as the euro.

Preface. PART I. CONCEPTS AND THEORIES. Introduction. 1. Money as a Commodity and ‘Neural’ Symbol of Commodities. 2. Abstract Value, Credit and the State. 3. Money in Sociological Theory. 4. Fundamentals of a Theory of Money. PART II. HISTORY AND ANALYSIS. 5. The Historical Origins of Money and its Pre-capitalist Forms. 6. The Development of Capitalist Credit-Money. 7. The Production of Capitalist Crefit-Money. 8. Monetary Disorder. 9. New Monetary Spaces. Concluding Remarks. Notes. References. Index.