“[sc. Bendixen says that the] … old ‘metallist’ view of money is superstitious, and Dr. Bendixen trounces it with the vigour of a convert. Money is the creation of the State; it is not true to say that gold is international currency, for international contracts are never made in terms of gold, but always in terms of some national monetary unit; there is no essential or important distinction between notes and metallic money; money is the measure of value, but to regard it as having value itself is a relic of the view that the value of money is regulated by the value of the substance of which it is made, and is like confusing a theatre ticket with the performance. With the exception of the last, the only true interpretation of which is purely dialectical, these ideas are undoubtedly of the right complexion. It is probably true that the old ‘metallist’ view and the theories of regulation of note issue based on it do greatly stand in the way of currency reform, whether we are thinking of economy and elasticity or of a change in the standard; and a gospel which can be made the basis of a crusade on these lines is likely to be very useful to the world, whatever its crudities or terminology.” (Keynes 1914a: 418).
As
When Mises’s German-language book first appeared in 1912, Keynes reviewed it in the prestigious Economic Journal, dismissing it as being unoriginal. Seems pretty damning, until we learn that Keynes himself, in his 1930 book Treatise on Money, confessed that “in German, I can only clearly understand what I already know – so that new ideas are apt to be veiled from me by the difficulties of the language.”
Keynes’s influential dismissal of Mises’s work was based not on anything as lofty as informed disagreement; it was based instead on incomprehension.
It certainly does not hurt my feelings to learn that the entire and elaborate Keynesian hoax relies upon something as preposterous as the “state theory of money”. Go for it.
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