Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Bibliography on Marx’s Monetary Theory

I’ve been reviewing Marx’s monetary theory as developed in part 1 of volume 1 of Capital, but there are also a number of interesting studies of this topic, as follows:
Arnon, Arie. 1984. “Marx’s Theory of Money: The Formative Years,” History of Political Economy 16: 311–326.

Arnon, Arie. 2012. Monetary Theory and Policy from Hume and Smith to Wicksell: Money, Credit, and the Economy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. Chapter 15, pp. 309–329.

de Brunhoff, Suzanne. 1976. Marx on Money. Urizen, New York.

de Brunhoff, Suzanne and Duncan K. Foley. 2006. “Karl Marx’s Theory of Money and Credit,” in Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (eds.), A Handbook of Alternative Monetary Economics. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA. 188–204.

Foley, Duncan K. 2005. “Marx’s Theory of Money in Historical Perspective,” in Fred Moseley (ed.), Marx’s Theory of Money: Modern Appraisals. Palgrave Macmillan, London. 36–49.

Germer, Claus. 2005. “The Commodity Nature of Money in Marx’s Theory,” in Fred Moseley (ed.), Marx’s Theory of Money: Modern Appraisals. Palgrave, London. 21–35.

Graziani, Augusto and Michel Vale. 1997. “The Marxist Theory of Money,” International Journal of Political Economy 27.2: 26–50.

Lapavitsas, C. 1994. “The Banking School and the Monetary Thought of Karl Marx,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 18: 447–461.

Lavoie, Don. 1986. “Marx, the Quantity Theory, and the Theory of Value,” History of Political Economy 18:1, 155–170.

Messori, Marcello and Michael Vale. 1997. “The Theory of Value without Commodity Money?: Preliminary Considerations on Marx's Analysis of Money,” International Journal of Political Economy 27.2: 51–96.

Moseley, Fred. “The ‘Monetary Expression of Labor’ in the Case of Non-Commodity Money,” November 2004
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~fmoseley/Working_Papers_PDF/melt.pdf

Nelson, Anitra. 1999. Marx’s Concept of Money: The God of Commodities. Routledge, London and New York.

Nelson, Anitra. 2001. “Marx’s Theory of the Money Commodity,” History of Economic Review 33: 44–63.

Smith, Matthew. 2004. “Thomas Tooke’s Legacy to Monetary Economics,” in Tony Aspromourgos and John Lodewijks (eds.), History and Political Economy: Essays in Honour of P.D. Groenewegen. Routledge, London. 57–75, especially 62–65.

Wolfson, Murray. 1988. “Comment: Marx, the Quantity Theory, and the Theory of Value,” History of Political Economy 20: 137–140.
No doubt I have missed some important works, but I will update the bibliography as necessary.

An important point is that Marx seems to have had a type of quantity theory, albeit a highly idiosyncratic one based on the labour theory of value.

Furthermore, Marx took over and incorporated fundamental ideas on endogenous money right from the Banking School economist Thomas Tooke’s work as follows:
Tooke, Thomas. 1844. An Inquiry into the Currency Principle: The Connection of the Currency with Prices and the Expediency of a Separation of Issue from Banking. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London.
https://archive.org/details/inquiryintocurre00tookuoft

6 comments:

  1. The two papers I linked under your last post would also be at home in this list. Might be able to dig up a few more suggestions when I get home, too.

    An important point is that Marx seems to have had a type of quantity theory, albeit a highly idiosyncratic one based on the labour theory of value.

    This is a heck of a claim. As Lapavitsas notes in the paper you cite above, "The argument (against the Quantity Theory) that monetary phenomena are subsidiary to the circulation of cornmodities, (e.g. Marx, 1970, p. 103) was consistently applied throughout Marx's work." (See, e.g., pp. 454-455 in said paper.) I know Moseley makes a clumsy "QT-esque" claim somewhere, but even there it's in reference specifically to state-issued money, rather than credit or commodity money — i.e., it's making the same sort of distinction MMT makes, and that school is also quite vociferously against the quantity theory. So, if Marx can be said to hold a quantity theory in any meaningful sense (rather than the "anti-quantity theory" more commonly referenced in the literature), you'd need to spell out how.

    Furthermore, Marx took over and incorporated fundamental ideas on endogenous money right from the Banking School economist Thomas Tooke’s work

    "The last English economist of any value," he called him. The Smith article you highlight is very good; it examines the great extent to which he incorporated Tooke, while still taking care to indicate points of minor disagreement he articulated.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It seems clear to me from a reading of Chapter 3 that Marx has a weird - or, as I said, highly idiosyncratic -- version of QE in which the value of the money commodity is derived from the quantity of SNLT taken to produce some unit of it:

      “… although the money that performs the functions of a measure of value is only ideal money, price depends entirely upon the actual substance that is money. The value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron. According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very different prices, or will be represented by very different quantities of those metals respectively.

      If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices—one a gold-price, the other a silver-price. These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15:1.”
      (Marx 1906: 108).

      I don't mean Marx endorses the orthodox version of the QE.

      Delete
    2. Well yes, he does say that, but that describes something very different than what people refer to by QTM. QTM says causality runs from MV -> PT. I mean, I know SNLT is quantitative, but the mere existence of a quantity of something does not a QTM make.

      I'd argue it goes beyond a mere idiosyncrasy; it's a whole other theory.

      Delete
    3. Of course it is not the classical/orthodox QTM.

      I have already made this quite clear, even in the original post. Nevertheless, Marx thinks the value of money is ultimately determined by the quantity of SNLT needed to produce it. This is a strange mutation of QTM.

      If you want to call this a "whole other theory", I don't agree: Marx is still saying a quantity of something -- in this case SNLT-- ultimately determines the value of money.

      Also, when I wrote QE I meant QTM. Unfortunate mistake there..

      Delete
    4. I can see how you might get that impression, but think about it: It is precisely separating money from any intrinsic value of its own that enables one to hold "the absurd hypothesis" (as Marx calls it in ch 3) "that commodities are without a price, and money without a value ... and that, once in the circulation, an aliquot part of the medley of commodities is exchanged for an aliquot part of the heap of precious metals."

      Or, to take a different angle, if this is also a QTM, then what in your opinion would constitute a "non-QTM"? After all, all theories of money involve quantities of *something,* so by this reasoning would they not all deserve the "quantity" descriptor?

      (Also, no prob on the QE; I knew what you meant.)

      Delete
  2. When are you going to evaluate the Real Bills Doctrine, LK?

    ReplyDelete