Between a simple reform of financial capitalism following its collapse and the revival of metaphysical utopias brought about by the apocalyptic nature of the combination of crises, there is only one viable path: that of global regulation and local alternatives. This is perfectly illustrated by local currencies, even though money is so mysterious and difficult to comprehend in its two social and individualizing aspects, testifying to our cognitive limitations but also to a reality that is richer and more contradictory than all our theories.
It is important to understand that money is an entirely social instrument, a true fetish even more so than commodities, in that it embodies society as such and constitutes a way for a society to act on itself while increasing the degree of independence of individuals (but also their inequalities!).
This should encourage the political reappropriation of money, particularly at the local level through local currencies, but it will also be an opportunity to revisit commodity fetishism and value theory as a systemic theory and theory of representation rather than a theory of alienation.
- Society as a totality
The debate about the mode of existence of effective totalities is far from new. It already opposed nominalists and realists in the quarrel over universals, with nominalists claiming that there was no community of Benedictines, only individual Benedictines, just as Thatcher claimed that society did not exist. This is the reductionist point of view, for which there are only bodies (the foundation of democratic relativism according to Badiou). However, no matter how much methodological individualism contorts itself to account for group phenomena and systemic crises, we must admit that certain objects are social objects by nature and give substance to our effective community, in particular language, culture, religion, and everything related to communication, of which money is one of the most striking examples.
Without going so far as to say that it “forms the basis of social bonds,” as André Orléan and Michel Aglietta sought to persuade us in La Violence de la monnaie, money, which is more a foundation of individualism, nevertheless constitutes one of the best refutations of individualistic reductionism as a purely social and conventional object that is not material because its value depends directly on the totality (subject to inflation and devaluation). Indeed, money represents only a drawing right on a share of the wealth produced, a relative exchange value and not an objective use value.
Money is the best example of complete fetishism and abstraction (to the point of dematerialization!), the ideal commodity in that it has no use value. If wild thinking and a sense of the sacred are still very much present at the heart of postmodernity, it is indeed in the power of money, an invisible force that constrains even the strongest wills. Totality is effectively embodied in the circulation of money. This is not such a great mystery, nor is it a figment of the imagination; it is a value that is socially and materially imposed through institutions and means of payment. However, it is not money that creates debt or social bonds, but language, family, and gifts received. Money is what introduces society as a third party, socializes debt, and brings it into the circuit of value and exchange (with a coercive power that can drive people to suicide—savages, they say!).
Far from being that of an isolated individual, our existence is entirely social and dependent on others, on their recognition and solidarity, which does not prevent our endless divisions and rivalries. It is not only formal language that is internalized, but more profoundly, the moral law within us, in our relationship with others, the law of the language of reciprocity between interlocutors, as a possibility for communication, no doubt, but this moralism also introduces a competition of values. The question of value cannot be reduced to use value or exchange value, and if “moral values” claim to measure people more than things, this is not necessarily progress, but rather alienation and social hypocrisy...
- The system of production
The result we arrive at is not that production, distribution, exchange, and consumption are identical, but that they are all elements of a whole, differentiations within a unity. (Marx, 1857)
It was the Physiocrats who introduced the concept of system into economics, through Dr. Quesnay's analogy with the blood system, but Marx's “Capital” constitutes the first rigorous attempt to account for the effectiveness of the capitalist system of production as a system, where production is determined by circulation and surplus value, i.e., where money produces money through productive investment that improves the productivity of wage labor. It is an automatic system (a “process without a subject”) independent of the will of the actors. However, it is not only the theory of a particular system of production but also of its mode of existence as a system, in particular an ideological one, at the individual level as determined rather than determining. “Capital” does not begin with the population, nor with the individual whose experience has no consistency if it is not integrated into the general movement in which it is embedded. That is why it begins with commodity fetishism, whose systemic character transforms relations between people into relations between things.
It seems like a good idea to start with what's real and concrete, with what we know for sure; so, in economics, with the population, which is the basis and subject of the social act of production as a whole. But if you look closely, this method is wrong. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes it's made up of. These classes are in turn meaningless words if I ignore the elements on which they are based, such as wage labor, capital, etc. These presuppose exchange, division of labor, price, etc. Capital, for example, is nothing without wage labor, without value, money, price, etc. If I were to start with the population, I would end up with a chaotic representation of the whole. (1857)
It is the system of production, social organization, and dominant ideologies that determine us and give meaning to our actions; the individual always depends on the social whole and the social relations in which he is caught up. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. Fetishism (of money, among other things) is only a consequence of this, and it is impossible to do without it in one way or another, whether savage or civilized. We can therefore challenge critical Marxist currents that spread the illusion that commodity fetishism is a veil that need only be torn away to reveal an original reality. Rather, fetishism is inherent in human societies; it is the existence of society as a system independent of the individual (like a road sign on a deserted road). There is no doubt that Marx is still interested in these systemic constraints, insisting that the individual has no hold over the system (any more than over money) outside of collective struggles, class struggles without which the proletariat is powerless to resist. It is at the level of the system that we must think, either to take power over it or to create a new one, and it is through its role in the system that money must be judged.
- The two sides of money
There is no need to spell out all the flaws of money, which deepens inequalities and feeds the most ridiculous arrogance; the picture has been painted for ages. There is a violence inherent in money, and money is, by definition, at the root of capitalism. It is natural to imagine that all we need to do is get rid of money (and fetishism!) and everything will be fine, but this is a somewhat naive and optimistic view of human relations. A more realistic and dialectical view of historical evolution is needed. If money is the materialization of society as a whole, just as language is the materialization of thought, it is all the more important to reclaim it by correcting its main flaws, notably through local currencies that melt away.
A highly controversial video has popularized the theme of money as debt, which is much better explained in The Double Face of Money, where we see that in a LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), money is created by recording a debt, with all debts and credits canceling each other out at the global level and the money disappearing if all debts were honored... Money is an intermediary; it is not a thing in itself but a relationship that presupposes a totality, a totality that can begin with two, between creditor and debtor, but which only really becomes money when it detaches itself from the person. To do this, all you need to do is create an association where money is recognized by all members, which is the principle of LETS. From there, you have created a social object, conventional but effective, a “fetish” where social relations are “reified” since they have become exchanges between things, without the need for words or bargaining.
The most difficult thing to understand about money is its conventional nature, created ex nihilo as debt, without being meaningless or purely arbitrary. This characteristic seems all the more mysterious (“great secret”) as the controversial video first shows us primitive versions of money where money is gold and not paper bills or smart cards. Nevertheless, the first currencies were more conventional (shells or symbolic objects) and, above all, the value of gold is not as material as we imagine. The influx of gold into Spain after the discovery of the Americas caused massive inflation, demonstrating that its value was not intrinsic but depended on its overall quantity in relation to production capacity. This is also the origin of political economy, which was initially mercantilist and struggled to understand this, seeking only to increase its share of precious metals. The great mystery of money is that it is a global object, the embodiment of the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; it is truly the spirit of the tribe (what we call “trust”)!
Hated and coveted since its inception, we cannot believe that money has only flaws, nor that it is the cause of all our vices. Rather, it is a contradictory object, a social object at the root of individuation, which seems to make us completely dependent while, on the contrary, giving us a certain independence from other people. This is where the work of anthropologist Louis Dumont in Homo aequalis is essential, rejecting the absurd myth of an individual independent of society, of a society that is not a condition of the individual it entirely shapes so that he can speak its language. Individualism is nothing more than a collective ideology, just as Robinson Crusoe is nothing more than a successful novel. The only choice, revealed by comparing the liberal system with the Indian castes studied in Homo Hierarchicus, is the exchange of people's independence for dependence on things. We sing the praises a little too much of human bonds, which are often suffocating, places of domination and constraint, the model for which is the family, but also the Mafia, which certainly provides a certain independence from things in the face of life's hard knocks, but at the price of total dependence on people! At the opposite end of the spectrum is the myth of personal independence through gold and work. This is Rimbaud in Africa with his gold belt that he carries everywhere with him, earning his living anywhere, even in the infamous arms trade.
To despise the independence that money gives us, we would have to seriously overestimate the virtues of human relationships, which are nevertheless what make us most unhappy, and underestimate the violence of hierarchical systems such as dual relationships. We know that the intervention of a third party is essential in disputes and rivalries. Money has a pacifying effect on trade by giving value a material form, serving as proof by paying the price. Its anonymous and dehumanizing nature (money has no smell) has the virtue of universality and allows us not to reject strangers or even enemies from trade. We know that giving children pocket money gives them a little more independence, and that women without their own resources are at the mercy of their husbands. Anyone who has experienced the humiliation of poverty knows how much the lack of money makes us unbearably dependent on others. This is not to claim that freedom is not confiscated in the current system and that money does not reign supreme, but if there is a political divide between a socialism that denies the individual and a liberalism that denies society, what is needed is to preserve the balance between commercial and human relationships, to recognize the two sides of our human reality, which are the two sides of the coin, the social institution of individual independence.
Money is also criticized for quantifying everything in a generalized equivalence, but while this is indeed another side of the coin, it is also what allows money to play its role as a social energy, a means of mobilizing resources. This quantification deserves all kinds of criticism and must be put into perspective, but this does not prevent money from being an information system that is indispensable for managing economies beyond the family economy and for facilitating trade, in particular by reducing transaction costs (the counterpart of “dehumanization”).
While money gives us a certain independence, this does not mean that it is a neutral instrument, as the monetarists would have us believe, and therefore that it should be managed by independent agencies. On the contrary, its management must once again become a political issue, without underestimating the excesses to which this can lead. Insisting on the conventional and social nature of money, since it is sufficient to form an association to create an internal currency, does not mean that we can do whatever we want with it, nor that it has any autonomy from the production capacities and power of the entity that issues it. It is clear to everyone that the power of the dollar is backed by the power of the US, which is now in decline, both militarily and economically. This political reappropriation of currency, particularly at the European level, should also be effective at the local level, where face-to-face democracy can be adjusted to local conditions, with a local currency that cannot be hoarded, does not allow for capitalization or increased inequality, but only makes sense when integrated into an alternative system (guaranteed income, municipal cooperatives, and local currencies).
- The deception of commodities
Reified relations of dependence reveal that social relations—and therefore the conditions of production—are autonomous in relation to individuals. The social character of activity and the product, as well as the individual's participation in production, are here alienated and reified in relation to the individual. The relations they maintain between themselves are, in fact, a subordination to relations that exist independently of them and arise from the clash between individuals who are indifferent to one another. Grundrisse, I, 100
“Money is directly the real community of all individuals... but... community is, in money, only a pure abstraction, something absolutely accidental and external to the individual.” Grundrisse, I, 164
By highlighting the systemic nature of production, of phenomena in which we participate without having any control over them, Marx certainly maintains the illusion that we could leave the system behind and rediscover authentic human relationships in which people would never again be reduced to mere means to our ends. This would assume that other systems of production were not also systems and will not necessarily be so in the future! It would assume that we are not constantly being used by others and caught up in conflicts that are beyond our control. It would assume that we are not content with simply leaving capitalism behind, but that we are abolishing the market itself. On the contrary, if we admit that we are still savages and that we still participate in a system of production, a culture, a society that determines us, instead of imagining that we can get rid of them, we can try to transform and regulate them collectively, democratically, take power over the whole and build other systems in order to gain autonomy.
It is understandable that Marx, Lukàcs, and Debord saw commodity fetishism as a mystification, a repression, a lie that constitutes our alienation and is of the same order as religion, but this is a somewhat idealistic view, as if we could do without all fetishism that materializes society as such, as if determination were not much more material and the domination of capitalism were not linked to its capacity for alienation but to its productivity and the cheapness of commodities, which is the heavy artillery that brings down all the walls of China (Manifesto 1848)! It would be convenient, indeed, if awareness of alienation and the simple act of replacing false beliefs with true ones were the key to happiness and a purified new man; but there is no new man, and things never turn out the way we would like them to. We can only hope that there will be a new collective intelligence, and work towards it. It is striking that, as soon as we embark on these prophetic paths and dogmatic theories that are so convincing, we fall into the most complete delusion of an ideal harmony and an absurd “total man,” when we are divided and so clumsy! It's all just show, and more deceitful than the most boastful advertising, seeking to replace market value with a much more dubious individual value, that is, with even fiercer competition.
Exposing the false merchandise of fetishism critics and value theories that seek to deliver us from markets and money does not prevent us from taking up the critical charge again, on the one hand by creating our own markets and currencies on a human and local scale, but also by criticizing excessive commodification and the contamination of use value by exchange value, sold more than used, the dictatorship of appearance, and “deceptive” seductions. We must never forget that a negation is always partial and only limits the scope of the previous negation. We cannot deny that there is indeed commercial alienation, particularly through advertising and passive consumption, but we will not be saved from it by a purely theoretical critique of fetishism and value.
Everything depends on the starting point, which is certainly very degraded today, but it is not certain that it is always preferable to have “more ties,” as if everything were going so well at home, at the office, in the party, etc. Of course, we must develop close relationships, and there is nothing more important than our family and friendship ties. It is equally certain that at times of revolution, hearts are united, but this is not really lasting and is no reason to deny the misunderstanding, dependence, jealousy, aggression, and silent oppression that have always plagued human relationships and from which we must also free ourselves as much as possible. We cannot so easily get rid of a whole part of our reality. We must keep a sense of proportion: those who want to be angels end up being beasts! Neither the state nor communitarianism are better than the market, and the negation of market relations must also remain partial in order to preserve a degree of anonymity and universality, and therefore fetishism, and to keep our double face. In any case, for the time being, the main thing is to get out of capitalism as a system, not to get out of the market as a mode of exchange, but rather to build an alternative system within a plural economy. The deceptive nature of critiques of fetishism only really becomes apparent in these alternative systems (with local currencies and municipal cooperatives), where they lose much of their relevance.
On another level, too, we need to take up and extend the critique of commodities: on the incompatibility between the spectacle of commerce and truth, as well as with art. There are several discourses, several systems, several institutions whose functions must not be confused. The values of soldiers, merchants, producers, artists, and intellectuals are not the same. The logic of honor is incompatible with the logic of interest. The worst thing is not when commodities advertise themselves to everyone, but when truth is sold and art parades on the stock market. The scandal that already distinguished the sophist from the philosopher, who monetized his knowledge, is not new. Criticism is also directed at art as seduction and falsehood, when it should reveal what is hidden and express what is unspoken. All beauty is meaningless and empty if it is nothing but form without content. The art market is a market of fools. It is a confusion of genres that must be fought and ridiculed, but which in no way eliminates the fetishism of money or the theory of value that are constitutive of society and the system of production.
In a way, one might think that the critique of spectacle and commodity fetishism was merely anticipating digital gratuity and creative work becoming the norm. We will therefore eventually overcome commodity fetishism in the immaterial economy, even if this does not open the gates of paradise for us, but only those of a new system of production. It was also right that Situationist criticism focused primarily on artists, whose imposture it denounced. The end of work meant the end of forced labor, but above all the end of forced labor, the end of intellectual and artistic “work” as such, incompatible with both truth and the market. The correction that can be made to the critique of commodity fetishism may ultimately seem rather thin, merely setting a few limits. However, this is not the same thing, because we cannot afford to take overly simplistic and dogmatic positions in these areas. We must return to reality, reestablish the truth, and not feed illusions.
I do not underestimate Marx or Debord for relativizing the critique of fetishism or denouncing insufficient reflection on direct democracy and the power of councils, whose Stalinist drift and the dissolution of the IS marked their failure. It is simply a matter of taking into account the lessons of history in order to better realize philosophy and move out of capitalism into the information age, adapting social relations to new productive forces and ecological constraints, and accessing a new stage of cognition, not an ideal society. Realizing philosophy is not about restoring an original human essence or fulfilling fantasies, but about confronting the truth in all its disappointing and contradictory forms, without giving in to dogmatism or skepticism, and without renouncing the most innovative possibilities of the era in order to pursue the emancipation of the individual in a society based on solidarity.
