On Jan 16, 2012, at 2:14 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> On Sun, 15 Jan 2012, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> Since we live under capitalist society, and credit has become more important than it was in the 19th century, it's pretty important to focus on what's different about capitalist credit.
>
>>>> (Money itself is a form for suspending the unevenness of the times required in different branches of production, to the extent that this obstructs exchange.)
>>>
>>> I read that as a parenthetical refer by Marx to an age of barter that precedes the use of money. Which, as Graeber shows definitely, never existed.
>>
>> No. Credit is a way of providing funds to entities that might not have them now but could well have them in the future. Loans to companies to fund working capital or major investments, to consumers to buy houses and cars, etc.
>
> And that bears on the story of how money arises how?
It's a story of credit-money's function under capitalism, not its historical origin.
Doug