Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

Chapter Four
CRUELTY AND REDEMPTION
We will buy the poor for silver, the
needy for a pair of sandals.
-Amos 2:6
THE READER MAY have noticed that there is an unresolved debate
between those who see money as a commodity and those who see it
as an IOU. Which one is it By now, the answer should be obvious:
it's both. Keith Hart, probably the best-known current anthropological
authority on the subject, pointed this out many years ago. There are,
he famously observed, two sides to any coin:
Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is "heads"-the
symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the
other side is "tails"-the precise specification of the amount
the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us
that states underwrite currencies and the money is originally a
relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other
reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite
relations with other things.1
Clearly, money was not invented to overcome the inconveniences
of barter between neighbors-since neighbors would have no reason to
engage in barter in the first place. Still, a system of pure credit money
would have serious inconveniences as well. Credit money is based on
trust, and in competitive markets, trust itself becomes a scarce commodity.
This is particularly true of dealings between strangers. Within
the Roman empire, a silver coin stamped with the image of Tiberius
might have circulated at a value considerably higher than the value of
the silver it contained. Ancient coins invariably circulated at a value
higher than their metal content.2 This was largely because Tiberius's
government was willing to accept them at face value. However, the