Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is
printed? Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and
demand, believing the latter depends on the total value of the
commodities it circulates. According to Prabhat Patnaik, this logic
is flawed. In his view, in any nonbarter economy, the value we
assign to money is determined independently of its supply and
demand.
Through an original and provocative critique of monetarism,
Patnaik advances a revolutionary understanding of macroeconomics
that highlights the "propertyist" position of Karl Marx and John
Maynard Keynes. Unlike the usual division between "classical"
economists (e.g., David Ricardo and Marx) and the "marginalists"
(e.g., Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and L?on Walras),
Patnaik places "monetarists," including Ricardo, on one side, while
grouping propertyist writers like Marx, Keynes, and Rosa Luxemburg
on the other. This second group subscribes to the idea that the
value of money is given from outside the realm of supply and
demand, therefore making money a form in which wealth is held. The
fact that money is held as wealth in turn gives rise to the
possibility of deficiency of aggregate demand under capitalism.
It is no accident that this possibility was highlighted by Marx
and Keynes while going largely unrecognized by Ricardo and
contemporary monetarists. At the same time, Patnaik points to a
weakness in the Marx-Keynes tradition--namely, its lack of any
satisfactory explanation of why the value of money, determined from
outside the realm of supply and demand, remains relatively stable
over long stretches of time. The answer to this question lies in
the fact that capitalism is not a self-contained system but is born
from a precapitalist setting with which it interacts and where it
creates massive labor reserves that, in turn, impart stability to
the value of money. Patnaik's theory of money, then, is also a
theory of imperialism, and he concludes with a discussion of the
contemporary international monetary system, which he terms the
"oil-dollar" standard.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!