If you like Graeber then you will also like Alfred Mitchell-Innes, a British diplomat, who in 1913-14 wrote two papers about money as credit. The first called "

If you like Graeber then you will also like Alfred Mitchell-Innes, a British diplomat, who in 1913-14 wrote two papers about money as credit. The first called "what is money?" [1] and the second called "the credit theory of money" [2] Here are the opening paras from "what is money": > The fundamental theories on which the modern science of political economy is based are these: > That under primitive conditions men lived and live by barter; > That as life becomes more complex barter no longer suffices as a method of exchanging commodities, and by common consent one particular commodity is fixed on which is generally acceptable, and which therefore, everyone will take in exchange for the things he produces or the services he renders and which each in turn can equally pass on to others in exchange for whatever he may want; > That this commodity thus becomes a "medium of exchange and measure of value." > That a sale is the exchange of a commodity for this intermediate commodity which is called "money;" > That many different commodities have at various times and places served as this medium of exchange,—cattle, iron, salt, shells, dried cod, tobacco, sugar, nails, etc.; > That gradually the metals, gold, silver, copper, and more especially the first two, came to be regarded as being by their inherent qualities more suitable for this purpose than any other commodities and these metals early became by common consent the only medium of exchange; > That a certain fixed weight of one of these metals of a known fineness became a standard of value, and to guarantee this weight and quality it became incumbent on governments to issue pieces of metal stamped with their peculiar sign, the forging of which was punishable with severe penalties; > That Emperors, Kings, Princes and their advisers vied with each other in the middle ages in swindling the people by debasing their coins, so that those who thought that they were obtaining a certain weight of gold or silver for their produce were, in reality, getting less, and that this situation produced serious evils among which were a depreciation of the value of money and a consequent rise of prices in proportion as the coinage became more and more debased in quality or light in weight; > That to economize the use of the metals and to prevent their constant transport a machinery called "credit" has grown up in modern days, by means of which, instead of handing over a certain weight of metal at each transaction, a promise to do so is given, which under favorable circumstances has the same value as the metal itself. Credit is called a substitute for gold. > So universal is the belief in these theories among economists that they have grown to be considered almost as axioms which hardly require proof, and nothing is more noticeable in economic works than the scant historical evidence on which they rest, and the absence of critical examination of their worth. [1] https://www.newmoneyhub.com/www/money/mitchell-innes/what-is-money.html https://www.newmoneyhub.com/www/money/mitchell-innes/what-is... [2] https://www.newmoneyhub.com/www/money/mitchell-innes/the-credit-theory-of-money.html https://www.newmoneyhub.com/www/money/mitchell-innes/the-cre...