I’ve been reading Jacques Maritain’s A Society Without Money, and found it very amusing. On the very first page, Maritain writes:
In the country of my dreams there would be neither a gold standard nor a standard based on dollars; the State would assure for the use of its citizens, without any assignable limit and in whatever amounts would be necessary, tokens to replace money.
My first thought, and the thought of several other persons to whom I showed this text, was that it might seem that Maritain hasn’t really gotten rid of money at all by substituting gold/dollars with State-printed tokens. He’s merely offered a different description of money but called it by another name.
The rest of the text is, in my opinion, uninteresting. However, amusingly, Maritain published this text in 1972, the year immediately following the United States’ momentous decision to abandon the gold standard. So the first part of Maritain’s wish had already become true! But dollars reigned supreme, and still do today. The irony, which my friends online quickly recognized, is that dollars themselves are state-printed tokens. But whereas my friends take this to mean that Maritain hasn’t successfully described a world without money, I take it to mean that in fact we already do live in a world without money. That is the world of the dollar. I claim that the dollar, after the abandonment of the gold standard, no longer functions as real money. True money must be tied to a physical commodity, like gold, or else it would fail to be an accurate measure of value. Failing to measure value, it can no longer be money. This is the predicament of the dollar, which only appears to measure value anymore — and I maintain that this appearance is deliberate, and a genius act of deception.
Measurement as such is in the mind; therefore the choice of a unit of measure is something rather arbitrary, a form bestowed upon matter by mind. But the physical thing which is chosen as a unit must thereby become a fixed and concrete quantity in order to really function as a measure. To be sure, its ability to function as a measure is “given” to it by the mind; but it is a real and fixed quantity, not a mere abstraction, even if its character as measure originates in abstraction. Hence, we can know what five ounces is, what five inches is, what five hours is, but five dollars is five … what? Just “five.” Five nothings. “Dollar” is just a name. How can it measure anything reliably, in that case? How can you make a ratio between one thing that is a real concrete quantity and another that is purely abstract?
To be sure, because money is nothing more than a measure, it has a very abstract and therefore almost non-existent character. That is, money doesn’t really exist until it used. In this, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Karl Marx are all in agreement. As Marx would put it, money has no “use value” except to be a medium of exchange (and as such a measure of exchangeability and “exchange value”); without exchange, there is no money. But Marx would insist, despite the abstract and ghostly character of this thing we call money, that it must be a physical commodity like any other. It just happens to be a very unique commodity, because its only use value is to be exchanged. (As an aside, usury is absurd because it treats the original loan as if it were something other than money, as if it were a commodity some other use value; and so it pretends that the principal must be paid for with more money. This is absurd, because money represents its own value, so in fact it can only be paid for with… itself… by the return of the loan in the payment of debt. Interest is nothing but a superfluous price added unjustly to the actual cost of the commodity sold.)
Relatedly, I don’t think we can talk very sensibly about just price or commutative justice if we are talking about ratios between concrete and abstract quantities. If a dollar doesn’t represent a real concrete quantity, such as gold, then we don’t have a truly reliable way of knowing certain types of information, such as its purchasing power over time, inflation, etc.
Let’s take an example, which I’ve really borrowed from one of the internet’s greatest Marxists, the immortal Jehu. If you measured the purchasing power of a $7.25 minimum wage in 2024 vs. $1.50 in 1970, in relation to a Consumer Price Index, you’ll certainly get some valuable information. The standard answer, beloved of many Left-wing writers and activists, is that the purchasing power of minimum wage has fallen by about 40%. To fix this, and when adjusted for inflation, minimum wage today should be more like $13/hour. If we’re feeling really generous, we can push it up to $15.00/hour.
But you will get a very different answer if you measure these things in gold. A dollar in 1970 was 1/39th of an ounce of gold, but today in 2024 the dollar has reached 1/2265th an ounce of gold. If my math is correct, this means that the purchasing power of the minimum wage has fallen by something more like 90%. Minimum wage today should actually be something closer to $80/hour! — if we measure in gold.
All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that we don’t actually know what “value” our dollars represent if they aren’t tethered to a physical commodity like gold. Which means our dollars today aren’t really functioning like money anymore. I think this is by design. Currency has a different function than it used to. We already live in a world without money. Furthermore, because it is no longer a reliable tool of measurement, it is more easily manipulated, and we are more easily duped into thinking we are better off than we really are. It’s the most brilliant method ever invented to conceal an absolutely systemic and universal plague of unjust prices!