A find it pretty staggering that economists would have the nerve to call money a "veil" or "insignificant".
First, tell the Argentines. Then tell the Indonesians. Tell all the people who have suddenly lost half their savings because of a currency crisis.
Money is insignificant? Huh?
I find it equally staggering that economists can't tell us how much money there is. Milton Friedman developed the quantity thoery of money, but of course he could never tell us how much that quantity really was. Economists quote the money prices and aggregates of this and that they can tell us how many billions of dollars of coal or oil are produced but not how many dollars there are. Doug's answer seems to be that because we don't know which "M" to use, we shouldn't look at money at all.
Well, maybe we shouldn't read economics at all.
Fiat money is a hard thing to get one's head around. Hey, Economists, sorry for your troubles, but that's what you signed up for. Make up some new equations. What do you want from me? And for Marxists who want to contend that money is a "veil" but "surplus value" is real. Okay, go get me something - anything - with "surplus value" WITHOUT using money. Good luck.
Money is an agreement to come to market and trade on the most broadly comparable terms. Specie coin assumed that everyone had a pretty good idea what gold and silver were worth to them and so trade in those metals presented terms that were broadly comparable across many societies. Now we use fiat money. It's an amazing acheivement. A U.S. bank note is the most trusted document in the history of the world. One can trade those intrinsically worthless pieces of green paper for goods and services basically anywhere on the globe, simply because they are legal tender in one country. That's just an incredible level of agreement among people.
I'd be the first to agree that the American empire is not the most desirable world system and I am no apologist for capitalism. But I really don't see how socialists - who desire worldwide political and economic consensus - can ignore a system which has achieved such broad consensus as the money system.
It amazed Karl Marx and it's even more amazing today.
Maybe it's because by attitude has always been that people are generally pretty good, it's just that their social systems allow them not to follow the Golden Rule. But I've always looked at the positive aspects of cultures even thought they may have been (or may be) unacceptably brutal and stupid. I don't accept capitalism, but I think there are interesting and positive aspects to it, in contrast to what came before and contrasting older and modern capitalism. Even old Noam Chomsky reminds us that things are better now than they were before. Progress is being made.
It's not yet a morally acceptable world, but....well, what's new?
Peace,
boddi