[lbo-talk] Why no world currency?

[Tayssir John Gabbour]

On 2/21/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> On Feb 21, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Sean Andrews wrote:
> > Anyway, I was hoping someone on the list could shed some light on this
> > question: why can we not have a world currency?
>
> Money, as every Marxist schoolchild knows, is the reflection of a
> dense network of social relations - trade, capital-labor, state, etc.
> "Man carries his bond with society in his pocket," as the Old Man
> once said. So give that the world lives under an enormous variety of
> social networks - which intersect of course, but are far from
> identical - it makes sense that there are a whole lot of moneys. Look
> at the trouble Europe had creating the euro - and that was 50 years
> in the making, on a single continent, with a long history of
> economic, political, and cultural ties. We do have a "world" money of
> sorts, the US dollar, but that reflects the enormous power of the US.
> But it only works for certain kinds of transactions; people are long
> way from having only dollars in their pockets.

Reminds me of Greider's argument in his book on the Fed, where he claimed that:

   "The Federal Reserve, quite literally, protected money's

   illusions. The complex bundle of psychological meanings, the social

   consent, the fantastic implications attached to money -- all were

   sustained by concealment, an austere distance from popular

   examination. The Fed provided that, with its secrecy and obscure

   language, with its tradition of mystery and unknowable

   processes."

   [...]

   "To demystify the Federal Reserve, one first had to understand that

   money did not require religious faith or buried fantasies or

   impenetrable technicalities. Money was, above all, a political

   question -- a matter of deliberate choices made by the state. Money

   was like all political questions decided by fallible human beings,

   subject to he usual variables of political action -- understanding

   and intent, influence and error. Money was an everyday argument

   among competing interests, in which some would benefit and some

   would lose, depending on the outcome. Money was a social plan that

   rewarded or punished, stimulated or restrained. Money might

   encourage democratic aspirations or thwart them.

   "Strangely enough, there was a time when millions of ordinary

   Americans understood this, even humble citizens with little or no

   education. When the money question was alive in American politics,

   before its meaning was repressed, before there was a temple called

   the Federal Reserve, people knew that money was politics and that

   democracy depended on it."

(_Secrets of the Temple_, chapter 7.)

I guess that helps explain why there's so much conspiracy theorizing
about the financial industry. You know, with Rothschilds convening
Jekyll Island in order to discuss the control of money and where best
to put JP Morgan's cryogenically frozen body before he dies...

Tayssir