As the recent financial crisis has revealed, the state is central to the stability of the money system, while the chaotic privately-owned banks reap the benefits without shouldering the risks. This ...book argues that money is a public resource that has been hijacked by capitalism. Mary Mellor explores the history of money and modern banking, showing how finance capital has captured bank-created money to enhance speculative ‘leveraged’ profits as well as destroying collective approaches to economic life. Meanwhile, most individuals, and the public economy, have been mired in debt. To correct this obvious injustice, Mellor proposes a public and democratic future for money. Ways are put forward for structuring the money and banking system to provision societies on an equitable, ecologically sustainable ‘sufficiency’ basis. This fascinating study of money should be read by all economics students looking for an original analysis of the economy during the current crisis.
This article extends the critique of finance to money itself. It argues that our understanding of money has been distorted by a series of myths about its origin and nature, in particular, the claim ...that money emerged from the adoption of precious metal coinage in market systems. These myths obscure the social and political history of money and the role of states in money creation and circulation. Neoliberal ideology, by contrast, adopts a “handbag economics” that treats the state as a dependent household rather than an economic actor in its own right. An alternative view of money is put forward that sees money as a social and political construct and not just a passive reflection of market activity. It is argued that the sovereign power to create money should be recognized, reclaimed, and democratized as a public resource.
The political danger of starving the public sector of money is that it will undermine the political legitimacy of the system. Disaffection with poor public services and conspicuous private wealth ...breeds cynicism and discontent. Democratising the public currency would provide the framework for an ecologically sustainable and socially just means of provisioning human communities.
This is a challenge to conventional thinking around money and the 'debt crisis'. By re-evaluating the source of money, Mary Mellor presents a radical alternative to austerity and privatisation: ...public wealth, or, money used for sustainability, sufficiency and social justice. *BR**BR*Debt or Democracy debunks the received lessons of the financial crisis of 2007. Political elites shout about a house whose finances are in disarray; a 'yawning deficit' created by reckless spending in a bloated public sector. The answer to this 'debt crisis' has been harsh austerity measures - but this is a dangerously deceptive discourse.*BR**BR*Turning against the prevalent narrative, with its language of 'debt' and 'deficit', Mellor takes on the familiar question - 'where does money come from?'. The real solution is a return to the notion of public wealth and the public economy; of a monetary system owned by, and operated in the interests of, the majority.
In the UK, many low-income communities have seen the withdrawal of'mainstream', high-street-based financial service infrastructure from their local areas since the mid to late 1980s, whilst more ...costly sub-prime lenders have flourished, often in their place. There has been a developing search for 'alternative', welfare-oriented rather than profitdriven solutions to the problem of social and spatial segregation in financial service provision. This paper explores an initiative to create such an alternative, affordable and locally embedded form of personal financial service in a socially disadvantaged urban neighbourhood in the North East of England, Financial Inclusion Newcastle (FIN). This paper reflects on FIN's successes and failures, the potential limitations of such alternative area-based solutions and the lessons that can be learnt from these, through a focus on three key issues surrounding FIN's demise— the FIN model, its internal functioning and, perhaps most important of all, its relationship with the local community.
Contemporary economies are dominated by a capitalist market whose aim is not to provision human societies, but to create a profit. Production cannot respond to human need on a democratic and equal ...basis, because it can only respond to effective demand -- that is, people who have the financial means to purchase goods and services at a price that will generate a profit. There is no mechanism for society as a whole to express its needs on an egalitarian basis.
The Politics of Money Frances Hutchinson, Mary Mellor, Wendy Olsen
2002, 2003, 2002-11-20, 20020101
eBook
Classical and radical economists have marginalised the role of money, most particularly the role of credit, in driving the machinery of accumulation and exclusion. Although critiques of capitalism ...from Marxist, feminist and ecological perspectives abound, The Politics of Money is unique in gathering the strengths of these differing critiques into a coherent whole. The book reviews the role of money in current society through an overview of the history of money creation and a critique of the main theoretical developments in economic thought. Alternative perspectives on money are then presented through a review of a number of radical perspectives but focusing mainly on the work of Marx, Veblen and the social credit perspective of Douglas and the guild socialists. The authors have drawn upon their varied expertise in economics and the social sciences to produce the foundations of a new political economy that will enable communities to reconstruct their socio- economic fabric through social and political control of money systems.
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