The theory of the monetary circuit aims to provide a highly stylised account of the workings of a modern monetary production economy. While there may have been a time when it succeeded in this aim, that time is over. The key development in the monetary sphere of capitalism over recent decades is...

While recognising that most pre-capitalist formations exhibited elements of commodity exchange, Marx argued that capitalism differentiates itself as a genuine commodity system by virtue of two interdependent processes having reached a critical stage of development: a `stretching` of commodity...