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

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.