Money?

[Ballyfornia]

What exactly is money? How is a certain value given to a piece of paper and to non precious metal in coins? I remember reading that money's value comes from how much is backed up in gold. The gold standard but that was done away with?

[Dogs On Acid]

Read the first chapter of Capital: Volume 1

[ArrowLance]

It is important I think to say that money does not have value, it only has value in exchange. That money is backed up largely with a guarantee of that value in exchange. A government printing money not backed by precious metals is saying that those notes are good for the exchange of any product on its market of that value.

[Dogs On Acid]

Money is the physical representation of value, this can be exchanged for a commodity, but the value of money changes from one country to another, hence the same commodity might be more or less valuable in different places, this is then affected by the use-value and personal value. (correct me if I'm wrong)

[Hoipolloi Cassidy]

another extract from The Red Museum: Art, economics and the ends of capital (http://theorangepress.com/publications/theredmuseum.html):


[...]

The meaning of money was an uncomfortable issue in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: it was hard to justify the concept
of a pure, artless exchange-value when the Christian conception of commercial transactions was that both parties should and could come out ahead. If a coin was worth so much more when given to a peasant than taken by a prince its face value must be variable, also. [...] And if I got more from the coin than the coin was worth at the outset, where did the extra value come from? Perhaps it was the coin itself that decided its own value; it was the coin’s spontaneous ability to create value that was disturbing. As the alleged proto-capitalist Luther put it, “Money is the word of the Devil through which he creates all things, the way God created through the true word.” Talk of parallel economies: just as the Devil was, in some inexplicable way, the necessary, parallel antagonist of a just and godly world, so too, in the Medieval mind, the unexplained ability of the coin to create surplus value constituted its usury-value.

[...]

[thesadmafioso]

Precious metals really have no use value to the average citizen, so how would that be a better replacement for paper money and other items which represent exchange value? The gold standard and other similar concepts are incredibly dated concepts which serve no role in the modern economics of capitalism, let alone those of a socialistic society.

[Dogs On Acid]

Precious metals really have no use value to the average citizen, so how would that be a better replacement for paper money and other items which represent exchange value? The gold standard and other similar concepts are incredibly dated concepts which serve no role in the modern economics of capitalism, let alone those of a socialistic society.

In Socialism all of this control of value will be abolished (although it might be used for statistical purposes), and things will be so much easier.