Tom Bottomore and David Frisby
from a first draft by Kaethe Mengelberg
LONDON AND NEW YORK
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Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com
Publication Information:Book Title: The Philosophy of Money. Contributors: David Frisby - editor, Georg Simmel - author. Publisher: Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2004. Page Number: iii.
First published in l978
by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Second edition published in 1990
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Reprinted 1991, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003
Third edition published in 2004
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Short Run Books, King's Lynn
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ISBN 0-415-34173-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-34172-8 (pbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements
xii
Note on the Translation
xiii
Preface to the Third Edition
xv
Preface to the Second Edition
xlvii
Introduction to the Translation
1
Preface
53
Chapter 1 Value and Money
59
I
59
Reality and value as mutually independent categories through which our conceptions become images of the world
59
The psychological fact of objective value
62
Objectivity in practice as standardization or as a guarantee for the totality of subjective values
64
Economic value as the objectification of subjective values, as a result of establishing distance between the consuming subject and the object
65
An analogy with aesthetic value
73
Economic activity establishes distances and overcomes them
II 79
Exchange as a means of overcoming the purely subjective value significance of an object 79
In exchange, objects express their value reciprocally 80
The value of an object becomes objectified by exchanging it for another object 81
Exchange as a form oflife and as the condition of economic value, as a primary economic fact 82
Analysis of the theories of utility and scarcity 90
Value and price: the socially fixed price as a preliminary stage of the objectively regulated price 94
III 101
Incorporation of economic value and a relativistic world view 101
The epistemology of a relativistic world view 102
The construction of proofs in infinite series and their reciprocal legitimation 104
The objectivity of truth as well as of value viewed as a relation between subjective elements 108
Money as the autonomous manifestation of the exchange relation which transforms desired objects into economic objects, and establishes the substitutability of objects 119
Analysis of the nature of money with reference to its value stability, its development and its objectivity 122
Money as a reification of the general form of existence according to which things derive their significance from their relationship to each other 128
Chapter 2 The Value of Money as a Substance 131
I 131
The intrinsic value of money and the measurement of value 131
Problems of measurement 133
The quantity of effective money 137
Does money possess an intrinsic value? 142
Thedevelopment of the purely symbolic character of money 146
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II 152
Renunciation of the non-monetary uses of monetary material 152
The first argument against money as merely a symbol: the relations of money and goods, which would make an intrinsic value for money superfluous, are not accurately determinable; intrinsic value remedies this deficiency 155
The second argument against money as merely a symbol: the unlimited augmentability of monetary symbols; relativistic indifference to the absolute limits of monetary quantity and the errors to which this indifference leads 159
The supply of money 161
The reciprocal nature of the limitation that reality places on pure concepts 165
III 168
The historical development of money from substance to function 168
Social interactions and their crystallization into separate structures; the common relations of buyer and seller to the social unit as the sociological premise of monetary intercourse 170
Monetary policy: largeness and smallness, diffuseness and concentration of the economic circle in their significance for the intrinsic character of money 172
Social interaction and exchange relations: money's functions: its facilitation of trade, its constancy as a measure of value, its mobilization and condensation of values 174
The nature of the economic circle and its significance for money 179
The qualitatively different consequences of quantitatively altered causes 262
The threshold of economic awareness 264
Differential sensitivity towards economic stimuli 265
Relations between external stimuli and emotional responses in the field of money 269
Significance of the personal unity of the owner 271
The material and cultural relation of form and amount 272
The relation between quantity and quality of things, and the significance of money for this relation 277
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SYNTHETIC PART
Chapter 4 Individual Freedom 283
I 283
Freedom exists in conjunction with duties 283
The gradations of this freedom depend on whether the duties are directly personal or apply only to the products of labour 284
Money payment as the form most congruent with personal freedom 285
The maximization of value through changes in ownership 292
Cultural development increases the number of persons on whom one is dependent and the simultaneous decrease in ties to persons viewed as individuals 295
Money is responsible for impersonal relations between people, and thus for individual freedom 297
The dissolving of this dependency by the possession of money 307
Lack of freedom as the interweaving of the mental series: this lack at a minimum when the interweaving of either is with the most general of the other series 312
Its application to limitations deriving from economic interests 314
Freedom as the articulation of the self in the medium of things, that is, freedom as possession 321
The possession of money and the self 326
III 331
Differentiation of person and possession 331
Spatial separation and technical objectification through money 332
The separation of the total personality from individual work activities and the results of this separation for the evaluation of these work activities 334
The development of the individual's independence from the group 342
New forms of association brought about by money; the association planned for a purpose 343
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General relations between a money economy and the principle of individualism 347
