If I follow you here, what's being talked about is a kind of ordering of social relations in a symbolic form - rather like the way we can talk about the commodity being a fetishised form of a social relation, we can talk about this 'hierarchical ordering of psyche' being a set of social relations inscribed upon ourselves in a fetishised form?
Peter van Heusden -------
The way I think of it is that symbolic forms, social relations, and psyche are some what interchangible, even somewhat indistinguishable, or differing aspects of a general socio-cultural complex, like language, thought, and reality. We have to use some symbolic form in order to socialize with each other, we were in turn socialized through those forms, and there is a larger social context determined by the political economy. In turn the political economy rules so to speak the broad figurations of social relations and a large part of that rule is through symbolic forms in language, media, the rituals of work, school, marriage, certainly consumption, value schemes of behaviors and conducts. These as a totality regulate and order not just social relations, but psyche and thought. The entire system creates an envelop of social reality within which we function.
Money, its uses, all the proceedures and processes that attend to it compose a particular symbolic system among others, and certainly in this society a primal force of rule, command, and ordering.
```Beyond such negative subversion of money is the use of money by workers to finance their own creative forms of self-activity in which they pursue ways of being alternative to capital --from innovations in traditional cultural activities to the development of new forms of communist social patterns.'
Might this description similarly be applied to the symbolic realm?''
Yes, but notice that money constitutes a symbolic realm---a vast one--a primary one, given capitalism. In fact, it has an imperialism about it in which all other symbolic systems are subsumed, controlled, and directed.
So, among the points in the more extended quote, the main use of money is social control, and this is achieved by keeping its quantities limited to some mystical level where basic social reproduction can take place under a domineering austerity (thanks Allan you asshole). And most of what is left after reproducting necessities, is lured through mass marketing into extremely manipulative cultural forms of mass media and communication---tightly controled social relations---for profit. These mass forms are about the only kind of social relation available, beyond the absolute hierarchy of the work place.
The basic use of money is to structure all forms of social time, so that there is simply no existance outside work or some other socio-economically contrived prison-complex like marriage where you are free to torment each other in fealty, worship and bondage games. Gee what fun. When these get too boring, there is junk-food and a movie. And that's it. There is nothing else.
But I am skipping work today, since I should go in and was expecting a call, but I logged onto the internet so I theoretically can't get the call. Limp excuse, childish even. Going for a bike ride.
Chuck Grimes