Money and the constitution of value: a contribution to the Chartalist critique of Menger’s theories of value and money

Bruno Höfig, Leonardo Paes Müller and Iderley Colombini

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2025, vol. 49, issue 4, 609-624

Abstract: The paper assesses Carl Menger’s theories of value and money and the Chartalist critique of the latter from a materialist standpoint. Menger posits that agents have always compared goods and services as one-dimensional values. Yet, the notion of value on which he relies cannot be properly developed in the absence of money. Drawing on historical, anthropological and etymological research, the paper shows that, in non-monetised economies, agents typically do not view diverse goods as quantitatively comparable values. While acknowledging the merits of the Chartalist account, which attributes the origins of monetary exchange to non-economic fiscal authority, the article contends that it overlooks how dynamically unstable monetary exchange tends to be in societies where wage labour has not become the norm. By stressing the need to distinguish pre-capitalist from capitalist forms of money, the paper contributes to a nuanced understanding of money’s historical and societal foundations.

Keywords: Value; Prices; Money; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/beaf019 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:49:y:2025:i:4:p:609-624.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().