Money Has No Value

Introduction

1 What is “Money”?

Money is not a thing – not an empirical object of any sort. If we insist on defining money as a singular concrete entity, we will consistently and repeatedly misidentify money, fail to grasp it as a worldly phenomenon, and ultimately produce only false theories of money. Rather, the concept “money” comprises a relation. Money is nothing less (or more) than this money relation. The tricky part consists in grasping the nature of that relation.

To carry out that task, this book starts with, and consistently calls for, a fundamental reversal of our everyday understandings of money. Most readers will naturally assume that “money” names stuff: things such as gold bars or silver coins; paper bank notes or digital ...