The Value of MoneyAnderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
General
The Value of Money
Anderson, Benjamin M. (Benjamin McAlester)
Money
Hence the curious phenomenon that very much of static theory has been
developed in abstraction from _money_ and _credit_. Mill's theory of
international values, for example, abstracts from money. "Since all
trade is in reality barter, money being a mere instrument for exchanging
things against one another, we will, for simplicity, begin by supposing
the international trade to be in form, what it is in reality, an actual
trucking of one commodity against another. So far as we have hitherto
proceeded, we have found the laws of interchange to be essentially the
same, whether money is used or not; money never governing, but always
obeying, those general laws."[299] Other writers have similarly held
that money is a mere cloak, covering up the reality of the economic
process. Schumpeter, for example, holds that money is, in the static
analysis, merely a "Schleier," and that "man nichts Wesentliches
uebersicht, wenn man davon abstrahiert."[300] _On the static
assumptions_, of the fluid market, with friction, etc., banished, money
is, indeed, anomalous and inexplicable. It is a cloak, a complication, a
vexatious "epi-phenomenon." There is nothing for it to do, and there can
be, consequently, no "functional theory" developed for it. Static theory
may be ungracious in ignoring its own foundation. But static theory is
grotesque when it seeks to support its own foundation! Static theory is
possible only on the assumption that the work of money and credit has
been done. What, then, shall we say of static theory which seeks to
explain the work of money and credit? Yet precisely this is what is
undertaken by the quantity theory, with its "normal" or "static" laws of
money and credit. A functional theory of money and credit must be a
dynamic theory. To talk about the laws of money, "after the transition
is completed" is to talk about the work money will do after it has
finished working. For a functional theory of money and credit, we must
study the obstacles that exist to prevent the fluid market. We must
study friction, transitions, dynamic phenomena.
To this problem we shall come in Part III. For the present, I am content
to have disproved the quantity theory contention that the volume of
trade is independent of the quantity of money and credit.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII
THE RELATION OF FOREIGN TO DOMESTIC TRADE IN THE UNITED STATES[301]
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