Original scientific paper
ROLE OF MONEY IN THE METASTRUCTURAL CHANGE OF MARKET SOCIETY AND THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS
Bogomir Kovač
; Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
In this article, the author relates the role of money and finances with the basic
structuring of social relations. Money is the only universal form of social
wealth, its measure and its meaning. Up to the present, however, the economic
theory has been underestimating and overlooking money’s politico-economic
role. This is revealed most radically in periods of major financial and economic
crises. Consequently, the author points out that today’s economy of
depression often depresses the economists themselves and their science. Bidet’s
theory of modernity, along with Habermas’s, is the last large-scale attempt
at theoretical explanation of the social totality, but his theoretical reconstruction
of society by means of underlying “metastructures” is based on
non-financial and non-monetary forms of social mediation. In contrast, the
author of this article seeks to prove that precisely money and finances belong
to the central metastructure of market society. What is important here is
not only the subversive role of money as the monopoly-holding and political
good in the exchange, but also its financial form of debt, resulting from the
particular social role of debt accumulation. Society is connected with debt accumulation,
and the economic sovereignty of money is its political legitimacy
as debt. Therein lies its sociality, the foundation of underlying communication
and of cooperation as metastructure of market society development. The
present-day crisis has propelled the debt accumulation problem to absurd levels.
It has brought to light that the greatest contradictions of today’s market
society are based on the economic and social globalisation of finances. Contemporary
capitalism is a genuine financial capitalism, which is why there
can be no solution without a politico-economic and cultural reconstruction
of the monetary regime and of financial economy. Accordingly, the author
shows that the solution to the current economic crisis points precisely to the
“metastructure” of market society.
Keywords
financial crisis; money; finances; market society; financial capitalism; Marx; Bidet; Aglietta; Orléan
Hrčak ID:
50928
URI
Publication date:
12.3.2010.
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