Sign systems of lust and slavery
Hardy Hanappi ()
Additional contact information
Hardy Hanappi: Technische Universitat Wien
Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, 2023, vol. 4, issue 3, 481-496
Abstract:
Abstract Money is real. Few other objects are perceived with comparable attention. At the same time, its content, its mystery, evaporates behind its physical form. For every commodity producing human society money has been a steady companion since it emerged. (Compare Hanappi 2013a) Money forms, the way in which money took on its material cloth, have changed a lot. Money forms, the blood running through almost all social interaction, have been a mirror, a reflection of the essence of a society’s working. This paper is an attempt to look behind the veil that money forms as sign systems for social value produce. Thus, two concepts are the starting point for the investigation: sign systems and social value. Sign systems are directly coupled to the perceptions of human individuals. More precisely, they are connected to a society’s communication processes, including self-communication, i.e., personal thought. The mystic force of money forms, its resemblance to sexual attraction, derives from its root in direct and blunt relevance for each human individual in a fully developed commodity producing society. It can be redemption, it can be disgust. “Money speaks, wealth whispers” expresses this interface between individual and society and distinguishes how the force of the money form is transmitted. (This part can build on important work done by Alfred Sohn-Rethel 1978, 1990, compare also Ausubel 1968) The first part of the paper will develop a sketch of a theory of this interface, of sign systems as social systems. The second part will then focus on the concept “social value.” The perspective will be changed: what is beneficial from the point of view of the species will be the starting point for a discussion on how it materializes in certain money forms. It turns out that money forms follow an evolutionary trajectory, (Compare Hanappi and Scholz-Wäckerle 2017) leading through alternating stages of contributing to the stabilization of a mode of production and then actively destroying it in revolutionary turning points—just to give birth to a new form of representation of social value. (It is, of course, only a question of naming if this new form should be called a new “money form.”.) Finally, a third part shall provide ideas on the connection between the first two parts: How is desire and pain injected in personal perceptions by the interference of social value loaded money forms and how are vice versa these passions and grievances shaping the potential constellation of social value regulating institutionalized forms in revolutionary times? In conclusion this part will also present some immediate consequences of the theoretical results on contemporary global economic policy.(Compare also Hanappi 2020).
Keywords: Sign systems; Lust; Slavery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43253-023-00103-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
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:spr:revepe:v:4:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s43253-023-00103-z
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43253
DOI: 10.1007/s43253-023-00103-z
Access Statistics for this article
Review of Evolutionary Political Economy is currently edited by Wolfram Elsner
More articles in Review of Evolutionary Political Economy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().