Whoa! This has been a busy thread. I think it important to understand monetary practices as hegemonic systems of control, because at their core they are predicated on trust and the ability of social institutions to lend credibility to money by guaranteeing that money (in whatever form) can be exchanged for its equivalent value in goods or services (or another "proper" money). In this way then, money as a measure of value (whether measured in gold or any other commodity or abstract phenomenon) must be predicated on similar social understandings of value: there must be a similar understanding of the measures and values among the users of money so they trust in it. If that trust is gone the money is bunk. Apparently gold was either a predominantly universal measure of value so as to ensure confidence among most major cultures involved in early trade, or, more likely, the spread of gold as a measure of value was spread by major cultures in conjunction with the global growth of trade, and perhaps even ahead of it.
Jayson Funke Graduate School of Geography Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610 -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Engels on "transition" >This was a "stick of squared hazel-wood, notched in a certain manner >to indicate the amount of the >purchase or debt," created when the "buyer" became a "debtor" by >accepting a good or >service from the "seller" who automatically became the "creditor" (ibid.). But surely this would have not gotten far in trade with India or China in the 17th century, right? I doubt that the Mughals would have had much use for a stick of squared hazel-wood.
