Joseph A. Schumpeter’s “Soziologie des Geldes”

Several titles of publications by J. A. Schumpeter contain the word “sociology”, among others, the article to be discussed in the following that had been published posthumously in 1970 as the second chapter of the book “Das Wesen des Geldes”. The author’s main concern in this treatise was to express a specific view of economic issues contrary to the economic understanding of the marginalists as well as to the at this time dominating positivism. Schumpeter continued a tradition of economics close to social-science conceiving certain categories and perspectives as sociological. This is especially true for money that today almost exclusively is regarded as a quantitative issue without any attempt to explore its nature. In contrast, Schumpeter regards money as an element of the general social process (see p. 12) that means as a social-economic category and “social institution” (p. 206). Schumpeter’s sociological approach gains importance especially regarding the explanation of new research results. Such circumstances prevailed in the 1920’s (and today again). Schumpeter succeeds in integrating results of historic and ethnologic research that ostensibly contradict economic theory into the latter. In the first instance, he criticizes the common explanations for the emergence of money, e.g. the theory of convention, the theory of token money, Knapp’s theory of state money etc. In the following, Schumpeter shows that even the explanation of the genesis of money from exchange can not be satisfying since the function of money as a medium of exchange rests on the function as a store of value as the more original function. Accordingly, even the paradigm of exchange is finally misleading, since it cannot explain the true origin of money. Regarding the measure of value, Schumpeter distinguishes the function of money as a measure of value in the sense of a standard of price from measuring the value in the narrow sense, meaning a subjective valuation, a process determining quantitative magnitudes to describe subjective perceptions of value (preferences). The explanation of the related significance of money which exceeds the exchange of goods is supported by Bernhard Laum’s research results (1924), and considerations conceiving the means of payment (independent from the medium of exchange) as the most important function of money. Finally, he conceives means of payment as the historic origin of the function as a measure of value and medium of exchange, thus, giving a non-economic explanation of money. This argument is not only founded on results of empiric research but also on theoretic reflections, that represent the functions of money in new relations and define the conception of money in the context of social conditions and circumstances.