Skip to main content

Go For The Gold

By Saqib
I was interested by the description of money as laid out in Das Kapital. Marx seems to agree that setting a gold standard to back paper currency. He describes this as a way to ensure a stable and manageable supply of paper currency commensurable with the supply of gold. Marx mentions that gold seems to have a true internal value, probably conditioned by society. Surprisingly, I find myself agreeing with Marx on much of his monetary policy.

I would have liked him to further explain the problems on credit-based currency. This is the form of currency we currently have, and in my opinion, the cause of much the global economic problems. This is the result of the ending of the Bretton-Woods agreement in 1971, when the gold standard was abolished and the dollar was made the official default currency for the entire world. But the dollar doesn't have any internal value or use value of its own, its basically fiat paper currency created through loans that has been masked as a commodity. Make no mistake, the world seems to be due for a massive monetary crisis, as Marx himself foreshadowed.

The gold standard itself is not problem-free also. As Marx mentions, the hoarding of actual gold supplies leads can lead to imbalance in the market and wealth disparity. I'm not to sure of his solution though, having access to global trade may not necessarily stop the hoarding of gold if the gold dealers now work internationally rather than locally. The dollar is an international currency, so the gold hoarding problem still remains in my opinion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Purdue's Professional Revolutionary

By RK
In light of the discussion we had during our advisee meeting on Friday about being strategic in our means as critical scholars I was struck by the words of Lenin who emphasizes the role of the intellectual. He says, "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realize the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against the employers and for striving to compel the government to pass necessary labor legislation, etc. The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals." (pg. 74) This idea of the bourgeois socialist intelligentsia as an instrument of raising consciousness and fomenting dissent is an ideal one I am sure but in contemporary times we, the academics, forming a substantial part of the "intellectual elite", occupy a unique position which forces us into ...
6 comments
Read more

Whose means justifies their end?

By
I spend a lot of my time teaching and disciplining children now-a-days and through these experiences, I have found many similarities in the ways that Marx and Engel construct their arguments for communism and against capitalism, most of which are shaped around the concept of deflection. First, let me provide an example from which my conclusions are built, all of which are inducted from daily experiences. I know that my experience is nothing novel or new, especially if anyone reading this has had the pleasure of working with large groups of kids. In a classroom there is supposed to be only one goal, one guider, and one “law maker” and that lovely job title has been bestowed upon me, the teacher. In trying to achieve my one goal to teach multiplication, I tell every student to be quiet and do their work. While not paying attention, I hear several of the students talking. When I look up, I single out the first one that I see talking (lets call him Crandon). I tell Crandon, “If you continu...
7 comments
Read more

Is participation just a rhetoric?

By
Participation and participatory strategies are used in different spaces globally to involve communities and ensure their voices in the discursive space. The culture centered approach foregrounds active participation of community members in the construction of shared meanings and experience (Dutta, 2008). Basu and Dutta (2009) underline the importance of participation of community members in the enunciation of health problems as a step toward achieving meaningful change. My experience with participatory projects involving children and community members also bears testimony to the importance of participation in impacting society; effecting a sustainable social change. But at the same time, this question looms large in my reflexive spaces that "Is it all just a co-optive process as the structural issues have remain untouched?" Basu and Dutta (2009) discuss different approaches of participation, critique the top down participatory campaigns and provide an alternative theorizing o...
2 comments
Read more