Money, Credit, Capital and the State: On the evolution of money and institutions

This paper combines several important arguments, which have puzzled economic theory for decades, to arrive at a more adequate description of the current global crisis. The main theoretical innovation is to view the long-run economic evolution as a stepwise evolution of money forms. Moreover, as already indicated in the title, this development of money forms is closely linked to the development of social institutions, in particular of state institutions. Capital, the most recent form of money, today has to be understood as an omnipresent algorithm, as a growth imperative implicit in social institutions and internalized models. The task of evolutionary political economy thus will be to provide an adequate theoretical counterpart to mirror these processes. This paper explores how far a careful reconsideration of received economic theory can contribute to this task.