Making Money: The Philosophy of Crisis Capitalism

by Ole Bjerg

What is money? Where does it come from? Who makes our money today? And how can we understand the current state of our economy as a crisis of money itself?

In Making Money, Ole Bjerg turns these questions into a matter of philosophical rather than economic analysis. Using the thinking of Slavoj Žižek, while still engaging with mainstream economic literature, the book provides a genuinely philosophical theory of money. This theory is unfolded in reflections on the nature of monetary phenomenon such as financial markets, banks, debt, credit, derivatives, gold, risk, value, price, interests, and arbitrage. The analysis of money is put into an historical context by suggesting that the current financial turbulence and debt crisis are symptoms that we live in the age of post-credit capitalism. By bridging the fields of economics and contemporary philosophy, Bjerg's work engages in a productive form of intellectual arbitrage.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Economics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Finance, Business, Money

305 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

While both much ink and much blood have been spilled over questions about the distribution of money, Ole Bjerg's investigation brings us to the question of inequality that lies within the institution of money itself, revealing the particular interests that lie within the form of capitalism's most universal commodity. By taking Heidegger as his starting point then using Zizek's interpretation of the Lacanian triad, Bjerg delves into the fundamental question of money's ontology, refusing the banal answers of economists and politicians that only probe the ontic realm. While the ultimate proposition Bjerg reaches is rather modest, the lesson we must take from Bjerg is that the realm of the political is far more expansive than we initially take it to be. Political conflict wages on endlessly over the distribution of money, but what this conflict always takes for given is the a priori existence of money itself. What we see here is ultimately a form of displacement where the political struggle over money prevents us from seeing the political struggle within money, and we have Bjerg to thank for correcting our displaced view.