After the Crash, Beyond Liquidity

Simmel. Each found in him what he or she would. He is suspiciously Hegelian, no sociologist, conditioned by anti-Semitism, a stylist above all, an early proponent of creative destruction. The discussion was good; but perhaps the reading assignment was too long.

Prista and Geeta suggest we might go back to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and talk more about a labor theory of value and the accumulation of capital. And a number of other members reminded us that less is more. A lighter assignment and a review then.

For our next meeting let’s read the Introduction and Plan of the work, revisit Book I, chapters 5 – 7 (”Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in Labour, and their Price in Money,” “Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities,” and “Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities”), and Book II, Chapter 3 (”Of the Accumulation of Capital”).

The assigned reading might set up a reading in Marx or of a “no-bullshit” Marxist for our first meeting in October.

Next up, Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money. The money economy is a site of modernity.

Simone warns us not to read chapter 2 with care: Skim’s the word. In fact, the advice originates in Simmel, who instructs the reader to skim over chapter 2 (which is full of definitions and rather complex) and then start reading chapter 6, the last chapter of the ponderous book.

The links below lead to UVA Collab, where scans from Simmel’s books have been ordered by your reading group organizers.

https://uva.hosts.atlas-sys.com/illiad/pdf/944832.pdf
https://uva.hosts.atlas-sys.com/illiad/pdf/945011.pdf

At our previous meeting we treated Smith’s theory of money more closely, departing from his “violent metaphor” of a “waggon-way in the air,” to take up “Daedalian” questions about if and how a gold (or gold and silver) standard operates in The Wealth of Nations. We were  delighted to find Smith a proponent of regulation. We thought about trust, bills of exchange, and we briefly treated Innes’ abstraction of money as credit-debt. Innes, described a “money crank” by one of our participants, makes another appearance at our next meeting.

Reading Assignment
John Maynard Keynes and A. Mitchell Innes are paired here for as representatives of state and credit-centered critique.

• A. M. Innes, “The Credit Theory of Money”
• J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Money, Vol. I, chap. 1, “The Classification of Money”

At our last meeting we decided we wanted to read a little Smith before forging on. We’re taking up Smith’s theory of money more fully, his comments on paper money, and his thoughts on the colonies.

We’ve selected the following chapters from The Wealth of Nations: II.ii, II.iv, IV.i. Those who are interested in Smith’s description of commerce in a colonial system should read all of IV.vii. Those who are pressed for time or interested more narrowly in the American colonies should focus on part 3 of IV.vii.

In addition to the readings from Smith (about 100 pages in the U. of C. Press edition), A. Mitchell Innes offers a useful critique of Smith’s monetary theory. We’ll most likely revisit Innes when we take up Keynes, as Keynes wrote approvingly of Innes’s 1913 article “What is Money?” (We’ve found a copy of the article online but are still looking for a JSTOR or Muse pdf. See below)

Readings

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book II, chapters ii, iv, Book IV, chapters i, vii (esp. part iii)
• Strongly recommended: A. Mitchell Innes, “What is Money?” (1913). <Link to copy of the article on CES>