After the financial crisis: towards a human economy

An interview with the Social Anthropologist Keith Hart, where he elaborates on his ideas for a 'human economy'.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Unlike developed economies, which are exposed to the threat of the zombieing of the economy under the conditions of a financial crisis, this threat is even greater for the countries of post-Communist capitalism owing also to their exposure to necroeconomy. Homo transformaticus, therefore, is the carrier of a necroeconomy's routine who transforms economy and society in the direction of capitalist values and, at the same time, transforms his own self in the same direction, too. Unlike a necroeconomy, whose routine is carried by a human being which is "still-to-be-formed," a zombie-economy's routine is carried by the "gone and departed" man, the so-called zombie economicus. Under the conditions of the present financial crisis, the threat of a zombie-economy is also aggressively knocking on the doors of those developed economies which, until recently, seemed to have escaped the zombieing of their economies. The only effective mechanism to get rid of both a necroeconomy and a zombieeconomy is to adopt a sound bankruptcy law.

Market and Society (Cambridge University Press), 2009

We are living in another one-world moment like Magellan’s. I seek to throw light on this moment in history, first by examining Polanyi’s analysis of the part played by money in “the great transformation” of the nineteenth century and in the disaster that followed from it (1914–1945). My own version takes off from Polanyi’s emphasis, even as it differs from his – of “the long twentieth century” going back to the revolutions of the 1860s. From this I develop some general arguments concerning money’s role in a “human economy,” a concept that Polanyi sometimes referred to. I end with some remarks about the political lessons to be gained from revisiting The Great Transformation (1944) today.

In: "The Single Currency and European Citizenship, unveiling the Other Side of the Coin" Eited by Giovanni Moro, Bloomsbury, 2013

Since the first coin was minted some 2.600 years ago, in Lydia, then in the Greek republics, money has been considered by philosophs, layers and Prince's advisers (then 2.000 years later by economists), as an essential tool to serve the public good, too often identified to that of the Sovereign, then of the government, as well as a key element of soveignty. But, the other side of the coin, so to say, that is the interlinks between money and citizens, its psychological aspects, its role as an essential link and confidence building element between citizens and the issuer of the money they use, as a common language, is just like the dark face of the moon. We know it may exist but very few authors have analysed it. This paper tries to show the lack of analysis ot the "other side of the coin" in the economic litterature at large (including the pre-economist philosophers who dealt with money in their writings) and in the behaviour of the politicians and European Institutions (including the European Monetary Institute, then European central Bank) who designed the European Monetary Union (EMU) project and the change-over to the Euro. In a second part, it provides a synthetic analysis of these other dimensions of money, those which directly concern the citizens: psycological, sociological, political identity, social cohesion building,common language, scientific and technological, that is to say its human dimension. The paper argues that the insufficient attention that was given to this human dimension since the conception of the Euro project has been and remains an obstacle to its perception by the citizens as their money, as part of their citizen's identity. And that this lack of consideration of the human dimension of the Euro may be one of element explaining why the Euro is often considered as a foreign element and as a kind of scape-goat, since the beginning of the so-called "euro-crisis" opening the way to demaguogues and nationalists.

2020

This paper explores the fundamental importance of sociality to monetary sovereignty, investigating the apparent contrast between the state and the market in theories of money. Sociality deserves attention given the recent increase since the 1990s of denationalised, regional and, more recently, crypto currencies, which are different from legal tender. First, we examine the classification of metalism and chartalism, that is, the commodity theory of money on one hand and the chartal theory of money on the other (Section 2). The former has been dominant in the history of economic thought, focussing on catallactics, or the function of money as a medium of exchange, while the latter lays more importance on the function of money as a means of payment and relies on literature in history and anthropology. We then concentrate on the meaning of the institution of payment and debt, with which a person can participate in the society to which he/she belongs (Section 3). People’s belief in the per...

A discussion of what is a "human economy", what are "social currencies", comparing and contrasting theories of non-market economies.

2018

Suomen Antropologi, 2011

The author has always been sceptical about the use of value theory in anthropology. Here he considers its scope in relation to a project linked to the publication of The Human Economy: A Citizen's Guide in 2010. This international project, which aims to develop an alternative to free market economics, is outlined briefly. The main source for the present lecture is Marx's theory of the commodity as value-form. This leads to an examination of the concept of commoditization which is defined as a quasi-historical sequence, the progressive abstraction of social labour. The approaches of Marx and Mauss must be reconciled if we are to bring Marx's value theory up-to-date. Four main points are identified as showing how the human economy project might benefit from the previous discussion of value. The lecture concludes with some remarks on the significance of value theory for anthropologists.

Goldsmiths, University of London, 2007

I will talk today about people, machines, and money. This, in a reduced form, is the project that I take from Marx. He found that under Victorian capitalism, working people were tied to machines in the new factories and subordinated to the power of big money. He and Engels thought that this order of social organization—giving priority to money which bought the machines and thereby controlling the workers—ought to be reversed. In a broad sense, this is my political project and my writing project too. My lecture has three sections: first on machines, then on money and finally on the emergent world society that humanity is now making.

2020

As the recent financial crisis has revealed, the state is central to the stability of the money system, while the chaotic privately-owned banks reap the benefits without shouldering the risks. This book argues that money is a public resource that has been hijacked by capitalism. Mary Mellor explores the history of money and modern banking, showing how finance capital has captured bank-created money to enhance speculative ‘leveraged’ profits as well as destroying collective approaches to economic life. Meanwhile, most individuals, and the public economy, have been mired in debt. To correct this obvious injustice, Mellor proposes a public and democratic future for money. Ways are put forward for structuring the money and banking system to provision societies on an equitable, ecologically sustainable ‘sufficiency’ basis. This fascinating study of money should be read by all economics students looking for an original analysis of the economy during the current crisis

Annual Review of Anthropology, 2014

We review here recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its achievements, shortcomings, and prospects, while referring back to the discipline's founders a century ago. We take our departure from the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, both of whom combined openness to ethnographic research with a vision of world history as a whole. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and marginal debates. The anthropological study of money and ethnographies of finance, in particular, have been the focus of much research since the 1980s. Despite taking on new objects and directions, anthropologists still find it difficult to connect their situated analyses with global processes and world history. We propose some conceptual and empirical directions for research that would seek to overcome these limitations by integrating ethnography more closely with human history, while stressing the importance of money in shaping world society and attempts to reform it.

PERSPECTIVES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE AND HEALTH – GLOBALLY AND LOCALLY – Thematic Compendium , 2021

Certain economists have finally begun to understand the crucial points of the so-called hypothesis of financial instability and the necessity to focus on financial leverage: the relationship between a long-term company credit and its claims, income or assets. The debt-deflation theory of the Great Depression is used to undermine the substance of contemporary, global world: the more debtors pay, the more indebted they are. In the situation of enormous debts and unstable economy, defaulters are forced to reduce leverage, creating thus the so-called deflationary spiral. The combination of the apparent liquidity and the burden of debts leads to a situation in which saving seems to be absurd. The savings paradox does not imply that the increase of savings means an increase of investments that contribute to an increase of future well-being. However, during depression, those who save do not spend. The result is a new downward trend – a continuous collapse of economy. The economy paradox causes the leverage reduction paradox and the labour market flexibility paradox. The financial sector of the global economy has imposed the idea that the market in itself leads to an efficient and stable outcome. Stressing that monetary policy must focus on inflation, not on job creation, including hard focus on fiscal deficits. And the deficit cannot always be a problem; not if the money is spent on investments and especially if this is done while the economy is weak. In this research we also look at the controversy between monetarists and Keynesians Monetarists, unlike Keynesians, usually consider that expenditures are determined by an excessive supply, or by demand in the real amount of money. The stated differences in attitudes and actualizations of such controversies are relevant to the problem of research in our work encouraged by current economic actuality triggered by global human health crises. Key words: global finance, global economy, economic growth, human crises.

Money in a human economy, 2017

In the last half-century humanity has begun to form a world society. Its engine (and possibly its means of destruction) is widely believed to be capitalism. But the history of money is much more than capitalism. We must look to that history for ways of repairing the damage that modern money has done before it is too late. So where are we in the history of money? Is capitalism nearing its end ('late capitalism') or just beginning as a multi-sited global phenomenon ('one-world capitalism')? Has the bourgeois revolution been replaced in our time by a reversion to the Old Regime that it once conquered? The origins of our times According to writers as varied as John Locke and Karl Marx, ours is an age of money, a transitional phase in the history of humanity. Capitalism is the organization of society by and