How Will Capitalism End? by Wolfgang Streeck

Author:Wolfgang Streeck [Streeck, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2016-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Why the Euro Divides Europe

To understand the conflicts that have erupted in and around the Eurozone over the past five years, it may be helpful to begin by revisiting the concept of money.1 It is one that figures prominently in Chapter 2 of Max Weber’s monumental Economy and Society, ‘Sociological Categories of Economic Action’. Money becomes money by virtue of a ‘regulated organization’, a ‘monetary system’, Weber thought.2 And following G. F. Knapp’s The State Theory of Money [1905], he insisted that under modern conditions, this system would necessarily be monopolized by the state. Money is a politico-economic institution inserted into, and made effective by, a ‘ruling organization’ – another crucial Weberian concept; like all institutions, it privileges certain interests and disadvantages others. This makes it an object of social ‘conflict’ – or, better, a resource in what Weber refers to as a ‘market struggle’:

Money is not a ‘mere voucher for unspecified utilities’, which could be altered at will without any fundamental effect on the character of the price system as a struggle of man against man. ‘Money’ is, rather, primarily a weapon in this struggle, and prices are expressions of the struggle; they are instruments of calculation only as estimated quantifications of relative chances in this struggle of interests.3

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.