Sandwichman wrote: > By the same token (and I use the word 'token' advisedly), you should > discount exchanges other than barter because money is a _symbol_ of value > and thus a kind of quantitative 'mere' talk.
I disagree with the common institutionalist idea that money is only a symbol of value. There's an important reason why people latch on to the (currently-established) money. It's not just a matter of the state's fiat: it's scarce and there's an agency of the state (the central bank) which has the job of maintaining its scarcity. That is, the positive value of money is based on _state power_ (to collect taxes, etc.) It's true that the state's power is helped a lot by its authority (legitimacy). But in the end that authority is based on its coercive power: not only does the state threaten to use power against deviants, trouble-makers, and assorted riffraff who threaten the state's existence and that of the capitalist system it maintains, but it regularly lives up to that threat. If it did not do so, its authority and power would fade: suddenly more and more of the non-deviants, non-trouble-makers, and non-riffraff would see that it's okay to break the laws, leading to progressive undermining of law and order. In short, some people are killed or jailed to maintain the state's power, the persistence of capitalism, and with it, fiat money. Money might be seen as a "symbol of state power," but that power is real. "Symptom" seems a more apt word than "symbol" here. > If you say "the check is in the > mail" when it isn't, that's fraud, which is an action. Of course, it's an action when one says "the check is in the mail" when it isn't, it's usually interpreted as fraud. However, I was using that cliché phrase as most people do, i.e., to represent the large number of promises that people make that they do not keep. Many of these broken promises are simply ignored or quickly forgotten, seen as minor social _faux pas_. Whether or not such promises are counted as "fraud" depends on the legal system, which is a human-made institution that is based on the coercive power of the state (see above). At least in the US but likely everywhere else, the legal system ignores many types of fraud. Whether or not one's failure to actually send the check _really_ counts as fraud depends on the official law, how it's interpreted by the courts, and how it's enforced by the police. If it's not enforced by the police, it's not _really_ fraud. That is, actual action by people is needed to make it fraud, not just the absence of action by the person who promised to send the check. By the way, institutions are not just "habits of thought" (as Veblen put it). These habits of thought must be put into action -- or at least actions must be > Anyway, my point was that Kenneth Burke -- who some might want to call a > literary critic because he discusses literature -- could better be thought > of as a social philosopher, more akin to Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen or > Karl Marx. Attitudes towards History situates "naive capitalism" within a > progression of "frames" for motivating collective behavior. > > On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> there's a difference between pure talk and talk mixed with action. If >> I say "the check is in the mail," that's just talk. If I actually send >> you a check (and it actually has a bank account to back it up), that's >> not just talk, it also involves action. > > > -- > Sandwichman > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
