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Book Review:

4  The Money Changers — currency reform from aristotle to e-cash

edited by David Boyle. Earthscan, 2002, £17.95. ISBN 1 85383 895 0

Zarlenga’s book (see review, page 31) is based on his research into the past use, misuse and myths about the nature of money, and his conclusion that money is essentially a construct based on law, with no intrinsic value. While Zarlenga concentrates almost entirely on national/state currencies, the emphasis here is on alternatives, mainly local, but including some international. I agree with Zarlenga that basic reform of the national system is vital, and that given this, local currencies would not be needed — especially, I would add, if other reforms complemented it, notably the issue of adequate Citizens’ Incomes. There should be no problem, however, in having them co-exist. Both authors, I believe, do not consider just how destructive is the exponentially growing level of debt due to the fact that virtually all our money now consists of interest-bearing debts owed to banks, and therefore what a fundamental difference elimination of all this debt would make to society and the ‘economy’.

I copy below another review of this book. While I agree almost entirely with the author’s view of it, I do have some fairly serious reservations, as above and below:

I found this book lacking any firm conclusions; rather, it is a wide-ranging sampling of different ideas, some of them shown by Zarlenga to be erroneous. It does, however, give much food for thought to anyone new to the study of the nature of money.

"Dedicated to people involved in time banks and time dollars all over the world — and their practical solution to some of the problems of money", it contains a very mixed selection of extracts from a wide variety of sources, each, and each section, prefaced with the editor’s thoughts and reasons for his choice.

The dedication reflects the editor’s apparent position: aware of the failings of ‘official’ money, he has idiosyncratically collected writings relating to it and the alternatives, and favours alternative currencies as a corrective or palliative for these failings, much as does Bernard Lietaer; but he is less analytical of the failings official money than is Lietaer. He even refers to ‘banks … lending people’s savings’.

While Lietaer, Zarlenga and others are clear that money does not and should not have any ‘commodity value’, and treating gold as a basis of its value is a damaging diversion, Boyle seems confused on this issue.

I find it strange that, in introducing his extract from Creating New Money he wonders ‘whether it is possible or desirable in the modern day to give the state a monopoly of official currency’, apparently unaware that the book’s proposal is to give a department of government responsibility simply to adjust the quantity of money in circulation; it would in no other sense ‘give the state a monopoly of official currency’! (Skepticism about the role of government is fully justified, given its sorry history of being dominated by powerful financial interests; but the record of the private banking interests who now control the money supply is far worse — despite any benefit incidental to their expansion of the money supply.)

Greens will have to question his choice, without comment, of a passage from Nicholas Kaldor’s writings in which the scheme he proposes would ‘tend to generate the maximum attainable rate of growth in the world economy…’!

His uncritical unawareness of the use of the dismissive term ‘conspiracy theorist’ as a convenient way of ignoring or diverting attention from the evidence of manipulation of the system for special privilege, wealth and power, so widely used for this purpose, is an example of the limitations of his thought on this subject, but he is to be congratulated, nevertheless, on the range of ideas sampled — though some of the samples are tantalisingly too brief, and some are mainstream, tweaking but not challenging the basic system.

Brian Leslie

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