Money as social power: The economics of scarcity and working class reproduction

Abstract

This article suggests that commodity exchange mediated through the money-form is a fundamental moment in the process of forming the capitalist relations of exploitation and domination. Money is re-examined as a moment of social power to command living labour, enforcing the moment of alienation that gives rise to the fundamental commodity within capitalism – labour-power. This article argues that this power is not intrinsic to money, but exists via a socially constructed scarcity mediated through the dynamics of working class reproduction. The article finally suggests that this understanding of money as the power to command labour can be identified in economic theory from mercantilism to the marginal revolution and beyond.