Money by McCabe Conor;

Author:McCabe, Conor;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cork University Press
Published: 2018-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION

The 2008 banking crisis was not caused by an outbreak of moral failure or the result of individual weakness. The significant power of Irish banks to dictate economic and monetary policies, and to protect themselves against the negative consequences of such policies, had developed over decades and runs deep within Irish society. The decision by the government to guarantee the deposits and liabilities of the Irish banks was the money system acting as a system to protect itself from its own failure. The state apparatus was the legal and political structure that enabled it to do so.

Without the state the money system is nothing. Alternatives to money and the money system, therefore, are not just technical issues but political ones as well. ‘Monetary phenomena are always and everywhere political.’201 Genuine political power – that is, control over the state apparatus at a national and international level – is what facilitates the capitalist shaping of our money system to suit the ends of capitalist accumulation (capital begets capital).

If we want to challenge the current use of the money system and build a more progressive society, we need to factor in ways to shape the state apparatus to suit that end. The purpose is to build a money system, an economy and a society that ‘puts life and everything necessary to produce and maintain life on this planet at the centre of economic and political activity and not the never-ending accumulation of dead money’.202 This cannot be done in the absence of a political strategy and organisation, and possible ways to achieve these ends will be the topic of our final chapter, which looks at alternatives.

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.