What would Barthes make of our newly (macro)prudent money?

"Demystification" and "giving consumers more information to make ‘informed choices" are part of the government’s proposals for creating ‘micro-prudence’, complementing to our new ‘macro-prudential’ world. Aside from the growth in extreme sports around the vicinity of Canary Wharf as over-stimulated, over-sexed and over excited bankers try to let off steam in the world of "Prudence" (whether the FSA or BofE become the ‘minister of raised eyebrows’) we still seem to be living in a remarkably unreflective world when it comes to thinking about what money is and what it could be.

Barthes would recognize the reality of myth making and political discourse which underpins this narrative of ‘prudence’ – one that seeks to control the individual to protect the stability and security of the state which is being written into the myth of both the market and money. It is the narrative of money as housekeeping conjuring images of pickle jars full of pennies.

But where is the challenging critique? Why are money and markets treated as natural and not seen for its essential historical /cultural nature? Surely markets should not be treated like some natural phenomenon to be tamed or insured against like a hurricane; they are social and cultural things. In seeking to ‘demystify’, we mythologize; in seeking to make ‘transparent’, we merely jargonize (just read the KFI of your mortgage for example). Barthes’ acute critical pen unlocked the way everything from detergent (and "deep" cleaning) to wrestling were just mythologies – historical accounts masquerading as natural science – and boy could we do with his analysis now.

The dominant mythology of money is ‘money as utility’. We need money like we need water, energy and of course, now, like we need broadband (!!!). Water, energy and broadband are seen as too important and necessary for our ‘well-being’/’votes’ to completely hand over to the market to provide. Although we have lived with the (largely failed) attempts to put them in the domain of a ‘free market’, I don’t think that anyone would feel that it had been a success or that they even operate as ‘markets’. I am still flabbergasted by the tiny minority of people who realize a) that there is an energy market and b) can describe how it works. The best yet was a person who thought that her Scottish Power came south to her home by truck….

The problem with this narrative is that it places the control of ‘production’ not with individuals ‘making money’ from their entrepreneurial spirit or sheer physical labour, but in the hands of banks who have the status of nuclear power plants – prone to overheating and toxic spills, but it would make a real mess of everything if you let them fail!

These huge credit factories are seen as making our everyday lives possible channeling money around the grid as efficiently as possible. Of course the reality is very different with bottlenecks, overloads and meltdowns happening right and left. The result is that we no longer attach an individual moral or even social responsibility to our USAGE of money. Just as the idea of using energy sustainably leaves us feeling cynical and blaming others so our use of credit money has much the same issues.

Demystifying money would not involve giving me more information about its role as a utility (and how to wire myself into the grid without electrocuting myself), but instead would challenge the dominant politically derived mythology which sees money purely as an economic good transmitted around the economy creating health, wealth and happiness. It would establish ways to demonstrate how money can be created and used in less intensive forms – ‘organic capital’ if you like. Now I am not advocating the type of localist politics of the currency innovators (i.e. treating the only ‘real’ community as a geographically local one – another myth) but rather encouraging the growth of virtual communities (such as zopa.com) who allow individuals to use and control money outside of the national grid/macro economy. Just as with energy, these initiatives would make us less dependent on global insecurities affecting individual well being but perhaps more importantly would enable the next generation of entrepreneurs to emerge who would see money as an essential social good created not in the ‘dark satanic mills of Canary Wharf’ but out of the relations and exchanges of everyday life. As for what this could look like in reality? Watch this space!