There seems to be a lot of interest in the idea of ‘living without money’, seemingly sparked off by the ITV journalist’s televised experiences over two weeks (as well as the well publicized twitter and "around the world in 80 trades" travel experiences. I have also been living without money for a few days – exploring the lives of people for whom the idea of "money" is entirely defined by the benefits system in the UK. What transpired was that ‘money’ did not really exist for many of them as anything more than a means of subsistence; and as such a very precarious and potentially uncertain ontology created by the constant threat of re-assessment, claw back and the seemingly arbitrary decision making by ‘professionals’ who are empowered by the state to take control of vulnerable peoples’ lives. While the middle class view (or Weberian spirit?) of money as a valuable commodity to be ‘stored’ and ‘invested’ for personal gain and consumption of goods for status, creation of meaning or more basic comfort and security reifies money as something with ‘objective’ value and existence – ‘solid money’ if you like – the view of those living beneath the ‘working classes’ (be it blue or white collar) is very different. Money in that context is essentially fluid and subjective – its value and purchasing power defined by a system of service valuation and distribution which operates not unlike a Soviet Supermarket. Not surprisingly such individuals find it hard to envisage taking control of such ‘money’ for their own benefit and control of their own life when they have become institutionally dependent on the ‘charity’ of the state and reliant on its gift – a gift which as Mauss would describe is not given without obligation or even transfer of ownership (hence the ‘claw back’ mentality). Of course, the middle class view (and the premise of ‘living without money’ – a bit like saying living without society or culture in my view) is equally in thrall of a different myth about money as a solid and tangible commodity with a defined ‘natural value’ rather the reality of the majority of its production in the creation of credit money and relations. While bankers and the bank of England form an easy political protest target for allowing one form of money to defy gravity before crashing back to reality – it is not the only form of money production in our economy. The state now ‘produces’ many different forms of credit and money in its own right – be it shared ownership of property for key workers, subsidy of low income families, provision of social services – all of which contribute to effects of supply, demand, price and inflation in the ‘real economy’. This aggregate demand stimulus (and hindrance) goes much further than Keynes envisaged with his hole diggers and its effects on the value of our economy as a whole (and on the value of ‘money’ in our economy) seem to be remarkably undocumented and overlooked. Weber and Schumpeter (and Keynes) sought to bring ‘money’ out of its state of neutrality and contextualize it within the social institutions of the economy, the reality of capitalism and the idea of the social state – each a response to what they perceived to be the ‘problems’ creating a successful economy and society. The failure of rational science and technology to tame money as a cultural thing suggests we need new approaches to understanding not just what money ‘is’ but what it could be. Rather than trying to live without money, surely we should allowing our next generation of entrepreneurs to invent new forms of money (with an intentionality that goes beyond reductive notions of profit and rational value)and reap the benefits of the entrepreneurial creative destruction of what went before?
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