Bringing money to the market — The ambiguity in Polanyi’s third ‘fictitious commodity'

Derpmann, Simon

Abstract

The article examines Karl Polanyi’s critique of what he refers to as the commodity description of money, as well as the systematic yield of this critique for the analysis of the commodification of money. The characterization of money as a ‘fictitious commodity’ contributes to two distinct debates that are concerned with different meanings of the occurrence of money as a commodity: the institutional system that is making some commodity money and the commercial practice of making money a commodity. Polanyi’s argument must be reformulated in order to form a component of a comprehensive critique of the commodification of money, rather than the monetization of some type of commodity. The proposed reformulation focuses on the essential contributions of public organization and social convention in the constitution of money.