Why will people do things for you in exchange for money?
I’ve read a lot of that book. I know about the power theory of money. But the very concept of money is about power changing hands. A person who receives money now has power over someone else. Exploitation occurs when that exchanged power is less than the power the laborer put in. But there’s no way money can exist as power in a purely top down command economy. In that case, power takes a different form, like direct police action. Money as power can only exist when it can be exchanged for goods and services. That’s its gimmick as a medium of power. Other power mediums have other gimmicks.
And under that gimmick, capitalists actually do have a dialectical relationship to workers, and therefore to their means of living, their means of social reproduction, their environment. That’s Marxism.
So all money is power, but not all power is money.
Why will people do things for you in exchange for money?
I’ve read a lot of that book. I know about the power theory of money. But the very concept of money is about power changing hands. A person who receives money now has power over someone else. Exploitation occurs when that exchanged power is less than the power the laborer put in. But there’s no way money can exist as power in a purely top down command economy. In that case, power takes a different form, like direct police action. Money as power can only exist when it can be exchanged for goods and services. That’s its gimmick as a medium of power. Other power mediums have other gimmicks.
And under that gimmick, capitalists actually do have a dialectical relationship to workers, and therefore to their means of living, their means of social reproduction, their environment. That’s Marxism.
So all money is power, but not all power is money.