© Columbia University Press
The Value of Money
March, 2009
Cloth, 280 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14676-0
$37.50
/ £26.00
"Prabhat Patnaik's closely argued and strikingly original book exposes logical flaws at the heart of all versions of the 'monetarist' claim in which price flexibility stabilizes aggregate demand, employment, and growth in capitalist economies. Instead, he argues that only 'propertyist' theories with Keynesian and Marxian roots, in which money prices are anchored outside of supply-demand fluctuations of particular markets and in the relation of the capitalist system to precapitalist societies, can illuminate the political economy of globalization. Through this perspective, the ongoing pauperization of large populations has created a price-taking army of labor that has served as a 'shock absorber' stabilizing global capitalism. In Patnaik's view, this historical pattern has reached a crisis that now underlies multiple problems facing advanced capitalist societies, from energy to immigration. The Value of Money not only raises important questions about dominant ideas in monetary theory and macroeconomics, but also provides a coherent and analytically enlightening account of globalization's dilemmas and contradictions. A powerful antidote to complacent preconceptions about the future of the world economy." — Duncan Foley, Leo Model Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research, and external faculty, Santa Fe Institute