The ways of our system, an outline, from Bretton Woods to the financial slump of 2008
ABSTRACT
This is the first of a two-part study of a fundamental but neglected truth concerning the nature of money. Pushing alone against the doctrinaire cross-currents of the monetary maelstrom, anarchist reformers have since the 1920s discussed the introduction of time-dated money. The institutional and theoretical issues underpinning this revolutionary innovation, as well as the questions of its workability in the contemporary framework, will be presented in Anarchist Studies 18.1 (2010). The present article prefaces this extraordinarily important chapter of reformist thought by providing a summary historical account of the monetary system in which we live. This is done with a view to casting in relief the intimately dysfunctional and inequitable constitution of the latter and to contemplate how a blueprint for communal reform based on the principle of perishable money may correct such wrongs.
Key words: Money, policy, empire, United States, business cycle, finance, economic history