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Marx on Money
The republication of Suzanne de Brunhoff’s classic investigation into Karl Marx’s conception of “the money commodity” shines light on commodities and their fetishism. The investigation of money as the crystallization of value in its material sense is central to how we understand capitalism and how it can be abolished. Marx on Money is an elegant analysis of how money, credit, debt and value fit into the “logic of capital” that characterizes commodity society.
139 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 23, 2021
The bits I understood were very useful. Lots I didn't understand. Need to get through Capital volumes 2 and 3 and then come back to this.
March 10, 2021
Highest marks to this great intro. De Brunhoff, economist at the French Communist Party, elucidates the uses and meaning of money in the three volumes of Capital. I'll have to summarize it for myself before I can apply it, but at least this slim work (120 pages + afterword and index) makes that task very easy.
De Brunhoff goes through each theme meticulously, gathering up everything Marx wrote and juxtaposing it to earlier theories and later interpretations. It for the first time made credit and national currencies (little discussed in Vol 1, and I've still got some way to go before 3) make sense to me, as well as nesting the different origins of crisis within each other like russian dolls.
In the afterword, she offers a little perspective on the development of marxian economy since and apologizes for the limitations of her work. I'll have to judge for myself whether it's really so dated (her colleague Paul Boccara, likewise deceased since a few years, has written more recent works on the topic). Whatever may be the case, Marx on Money will be my first station on the way there. Excellent.
De Brunhoff goes through each theme meticulously, gathering up everything Marx wrote and juxtaposing it to earlier theories and later interpretations. It for the first time made credit and national currencies (little discussed in Vol 1, and I've still got some way to go before 3) make sense to me, as well as nesting the different origins of crisis within each other like russian dolls.
In the afterword, she offers a little perspective on the development of marxian economy since and apologizes for the limitations of her work. I'll have to judge for myself whether it's really so dated (her colleague Paul Boccara, likewise deceased since a few years, has written more recent works on the topic). Whatever may be the case, Marx on Money will be my first station on the way there. Excellent.
April 5, 2020
Short, necessary, and insufficient, but exciting enough to demand further research into Marxian monetary theory. I would have liked a glossary, because the text heavily employs the lexicons of Marx and conventional monetary economics, and sometimes the same terms have different meanings in the respective fields.
Things I learned:
•Marx first describes money under all modes of production before treating money under capitalism specifically
•Money hoarding is an effective treatment for inflation. Hoards are a distinguishing feature of capitalist money, vital to finance and incentivized by crises.
•Marx’s ‘monetary theory of credit’ accounts for the contemporary proliferation of “fictitious capital.”
•Financial crises are largely independent from the business cycle.
The book is particularly valuable in the early going for the discussion of the famously-abstruse first few chapters of Capital Vol. 1, and in the late going for its discussion of inter-capitalist relationships from Capital Vol. 3. Marxists and critics of Marxism alike frequently misunderstand both the Marxian theory of value (and/or the value-form) and the theory of the capitalist class. Capitalism is not a conspiracy, and labor does not just naturally produce value; any discussion of Marxism would do well to keep these in mind.
Things I learned:
•Marx first describes money under all modes of production before treating money under capitalism specifically
•Money hoarding is an effective treatment for inflation. Hoards are a distinguishing feature of capitalist money, vital to finance and incentivized by crises.
•Marx’s ‘monetary theory of credit’ accounts for the contemporary proliferation of “fictitious capital.”
•Financial crises are largely independent from the business cycle.
The book is particularly valuable in the early going for the discussion of the famously-abstruse first few chapters of Capital Vol. 1, and in the late going for its discussion of inter-capitalist relationships from Capital Vol. 3. Marxists and critics of Marxism alike frequently misunderstand both the Marxian theory of value (and/or the value-form) and the theory of the capitalist class. Capitalism is not a conspiracy, and labor does not just naturally produce value; any discussion of Marxism would do well to keep these in mind.
July 15, 2019
Inelegant. Someone would have to explain to me what Brunhoff is doing here that could be helpful; to her credit, she herself notes the problem of reading Marx as a theorist of equilibrium in her afterword. But in general, I'm wary of books that treat Marx as an economist of a later-twentieth century variety, rather than a classical economist and philosopher.
February 5, 2021
This slender volume helped me tremendously on understanding Marx's overarching theory of money, especially the relationship between finance and industrial capital, banking and the state. Brunhoff synthesizes all of Marx's analysis on the money form throughout Capital Vols I-III in clear prose.
June 11, 2021
Way over my head. I'll be rereading this later this year once I've finished Das Kapital Volume 2, or perhaps in a year when I've finished Volume 3. This book is not for beginners ...
March 4, 2019
Having never read Capital fully (not to mention the sequels), this book was hard going. I bought it thinking it would be an intro to Marx's ideas about money, but it advances a particular argument about Marx, which is hard to follow if you don't know the economics of the day as well. Can't say I learned much, but might come back to this again after being wiser.
February 14, 2021
This is a generally informative study that asks how Marx regards money, an issue the author notes was a neglected topic when this work came out in 1973.
The book sheds light on the question in Marxist economics of how price relates to value. In the first part, the author emphasizes the distinction of money as a measure of value and money as a means of circulation, arguing for the importance of establishing the first function strictly before proceeding to the second. The last part takes up the role of finance capital and pulls together the various remarks Marx made on the subject of money throughout Capital.
While the treatment of the subject is a help for those who have read Marx, I think the author would surely have had much more to say if she had written today, an extraordinary time in which finance capital has overwhelmed all other kinds in advanced capitalist economies.
The book sheds light on the question in Marxist economics of how price relates to value. In the first part, the author emphasizes the distinction of money as a measure of value and money as a means of circulation, arguing for the importance of establishing the first function strictly before proceeding to the second. The last part takes up the role of finance capital and pulls together the various remarks Marx made on the subject of money throughout Capital.
While the treatment of the subject is a help for those who have read Marx, I think the author would surely have had much more to say if she had written today, an extraordinary time in which finance capital has overwhelmed all other kinds in advanced capitalist economies.
September 7, 2025
Not bad as such, but there are *much* better introductions to Marxist monetary theory than this. I would recommend David Harvey's "The Limits to Capital" over this every day of the week. It does a much better job of introducing Marx's theory of money as it exists on such a high level of abstraction, and also integrates said theory within a broader analysis of the capital relation and it's associated logics as well, which this little book doesn't really try to do.
July 4, 2016
Found the book hard to follow as someone relatively new to Marxist economics, but hope to go back to it later with a better understanding and read it again later.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews