WHAT IS MONY?
Origins and consequences of Mony, trading and currency.
MONY is the belief that the notion of (market) value is necessary to exchange.
Mony is the heart of our world. It is at the heart of all monetary systems, which in the end are one and the same. But it isn't the currency; it is its raison d'être. However, a tree is judged by its fruits.
Currency is an agreement without consent: it is created, guaranteed and imposed by the State (23) which forces individuals to accept it and which accepts or requires it itself as payment. Once it's in circulation, once everyone needs it, it's obtained by selling a good or providing a service (legal or illegal) in exchange for a certain quantity of monetary units to the person who holds them. (At least this is the normal way to obtain it since, being a material thing, it can also be stolen.) The quantity of monetary units exchanged (price, market value) is either defined in advance by one or the other of the parties involved in the exchange, or by mutual agreement at the time of the exchange. It's the quantity of monetary units that have actually changed hands that determines the momentary price of the thing obtained in exchange. As long as a price is not validated by a transaction, it is illusory. An unsold or unsaleable thing doesn't generate anything; its market value is nil regardless of the seller's claims.
CURRENCY is at the same time a unit of value, a standard of value, a property, a representation of property, a means of exchange, payment or purchase - a means of individualistic exchange it should be specified -, a means of appropriation and dispossession, a means of accessing the market and, finally, a portion of all the rights which enjoyment or exercise requires access to said market. But, for all these reasons, it is also and above all a tool of oppression, a tool for the powerful - whether
(23) Currency, as a standard medium of exchange, can also be issued by powerful individuals who are both able to impose this standard and to ensure its value (as a means of establishing their power and making a profit). This is how the first modern currencies appeared in China. This is also how the bonds issued by the Constituent Assembly during the Revolution, secured on the property of the clergy, became bills because they were themselves used to pledge "trust bonds" issued by wealthy individuals. But this is also what independent banks (rich people's cartels) have been doing since they sneakily stripped the States of the right to mint currency and enslaved them with interest rate loans (e. g. in the USA in 1913, in France in 1973, at the level of the European Union in 1992).
they derive their power from a high social position or from their wealth - to deprive the weak of his rights (first of all those whose enjoyment or exercise requires money, then of all others) and thus to establish their domination.
The market value of a thing is unrelated to the thing itself. Nothing has a market value in itself; nothing has a value in itself. A thing may be of interest, of sentimental value to the one who considers it, but this value - which cannot be measured and is nevertheless the only true value - is already neither universal nor eternal. On the other hand, the market value of a thing is imposed on everyone by the market, derives from the cost of labor and profit margins that producers, carriers, traders and public administration have successively agreed upon and varies according to multiple criteria unrelated to that thing (place, time, circumstances, quantity, appreciation, value of money, et cetera). Even fixed at a time T, it still varies according to the purchasing power of customers since it increases relatively as the purchasing power decreases, and vice versa. In short, market value is a decoy; prices are independent of things; money is only used to pay people. It's the payment of money to people that gives market value to things and makes them believe, on the one hand, that they have an intrinsic market value, and on the other hand, that they need money to measure that value and to trade or access the market, in other words, to buy. Admittedly, the need for money is real in a monetary system, but people themselves create this moral and material need; they lock themselves up in this vicious circle by their own doing; they can only rely on themselves to get out of it.
Currency seems essential because it corresponds to the conception of the exchange it conveys and its use instills in people. This conception is inherited from barter, a mode of exchange that people instinctively and inevitably practice in a context of artisan production. This mode of exchange consists in individuals exchanging with each other goods that they have produced or at least own. By exchanging goods for other goods, equivalence is established between them and the notion of market value appears which is then measured, for one good, in quantity of other goods. This is how it's imposed on people and how the exchange is based on what we call Mony, i.e. the belief that the notion of (market) value is necessary to exchange. It's therefore important to note that 1) Mony was not imagined and adopted by people but imposed itself on them by necessity, 2) the notion of market value is inseparable from individualistic exchange, 3) Mony, the notion of market value and individualistic exchange are born and only have meaning in a context of low production. However, direct exchange between two individuals is often impossible, as it's rare for both of them to simultaneously desire an object that the other owns and that he's willing to exchange. It appears that bartering is facilitated if one of them makes a first exchange with a third party and exchanges with the other what he has thus obtained and which has served, in his eyes, only as a unit of value and a means of exchange. Bartering therefore carries as a seed all the principles that, over time, give birth to primitive currencies (objects or goods that can be desired either for themselves or as usual means of exchange) and then modern, standardized currencies (desired only as means of exchange). Thus, all the fundamentals of the monetary system come from bartering. The nature, form and place of money have changed, but not the principles on which it's based. On the other hand, currency highlights the antisocial nature of individualistic exchange and the notion of market value that the private nature of barter can conceal; it also develops new vices.
Before producing and bartering - which dates back only a few thousand years (Man has existed for about 2 million years) -, people lived, like social animals, in communities: everyone participated in collective activities and received a share of the common product in return; everyone enjoyed the benefits of the city; they were equal in duties and in all the rights (security, food, shelter) that their community guaranteed through their contribution. They had little or nothing. They still did not distinguish themselves by their properties when they began to use stones, bones or pieces of wood as tools or weapons or even when they began to manufacture them with techniques within everyone's reach.
But there came a time when the manufacture of certain objects required a certain talent, and the desire that these objects aroused encouraged their production and diverted the manufacturers from collective activities on the product of which they therefore no longer had any rights. The need for manufacturers to make a living from their production and the desire of others to personally own these objects forced both sides to exchange. But how could manufacturers give priority to one over the other when everyone wanted the rare object and none of them, as part of a community, had anything special to offer? To be able to be separated, the latter had to distinguish themselves and therefore work hard on their side to have their own goods likely to interest manufacturers, whose interest was obviously to exchange with the highest bidder. Thus, in order to be able to practice barter, then the only possible mode of exchange, community members increasingly abandoned collective activities and ended up devoting themselves exclusively to individual activities. In other words, the duty to participate in the life of the city in return for its benefits fell into obsolescence, as individuals were creating their main "rights" for themselves. The role of the city was now nil on a daily basis. There was already no community left, but only a collection of individuals.
But Man is a sociable being. He needs to live in society and believes that this is the case as long as he has ties with his fellow human beings. However, it's not enough for individuals to have common points (geographical, ethnic, historical, cultural, family) to form a society. The state of society is defined by intangible and universal relationships between its members; belonging to a society is more a question of acts than of origin. Individuals who don't have duties towards each other - as it happens under barter - don't form a community, even if everything else contributes to giving them this illusion. Nevertheless, individuals who believe they form a community believe they have a duty to defend it when it's threatened, so that their illusory community in normal times becomes a reality in extraordinary times. Defending the city is indeed the first duty of the citizen and the last vestige of citizenship after the implosion of society.
Bartering plunges men into a strange and unprecedented state: they're not quite in the state of nature, but they are no longer exactly in the state of society. This mode of exchange dissociates the elements of the social body but without dispersing them; it disrupts social relations, not to say that it establishes anti-social relations, while people still aspire to live in society but no longer know what it should be. Consequently, what serves as a society is ultimately only used to support the consequences of individualistic exchange.
The first of these consequences is the obligation for individuals to own what they trade, and therefore what they privately produce. They therefore demand that the "society" recognize and guarantee them ownership of their production, although said production no longer involves it. But since this requirement is universal, the "society" consents to it. In other words, individuals want to have rights through the protection of "society" without these rights being the counterpart of duties towards it. It is the divorce between duties and rights. From now on, rights have no direct link with duties; they are no more than conventions (arbitrary by definition, even if general membership sometimes confers legitimacy on them); it opens the way to all kinds of aberrations and abuses. The very notion of duty no longer makes much sense, since the remaining obligations do not grant the rights they generate or grant rights they do not generate. In the latter case, the rights in question are the result of belonging to the "society" which, in turn, is based less on duties than on criteria.
Another consequence of bartering, and not the least, is the need for farmers and herders to own the land they use in order to own what they get from it. The “society " must, logically, make this new concession. The common territory is therefore divided into private property. In other words, "society" guarantees individuals the right to occupy and use its territory without requiring them to exploit it properly and to devote their production to trade; at least it allows them to give priority to their particular interests over the general interest. When all individuals have a portion of soil, it seems harmless. When not everyone has land, however, it gives some of the "citizens" the opportunity to starve and enslave the other. It is therefore doubly insane for "society" to deprive itself of all or part of its territory and grant individuals the "right" to harm their "fellow citizens".
Exchange between individuals (first by direct barter and then via currency) destroys society in terms of principles. But it develops so slowly that people adapt to it without perceiving change and don't understand the root cause of social unrest when they finally see it. From equal citizens working together, they have become rival individuals operating separately. However, the context favorable to barter reduces rivalries (some mutual assistance remains), especially since exchanges are rare, concern only a few goods or objects and involve only a tiny part of everyone's production. Individuals (families) are almost selfsufficient; they provide for most of their needs themselves.
Paradoxically, the era of barter is one of the least exchange.
With the evolution of techniques, the increase in specialization, the multiplication of products and with them needs, exchanges intensify, direct barter reaches its limits and currency appears. The strengthening of interdependence between individuals leads to their geographical grouping. Specialists are concentrated in villages that sometimes grow to become cities exclusively populated by specialized producers, forced to provide for their basic and other needs through the daily sale of their production or the payment of their labor.
Civilization then enters the monetary phase, which lasts as long as the conditions of production impose the same mode of exchange, i.e. until a revolution in production makes it possible to design and adopt a new mode of exchange. In the meantime, currency, apart from its supports and forms that vary according to place and time, retains the same operating principles and properties, and therefore always has the same vices and effects.
We have already established what currency is; we will explain here where its features and flaws come from.
People did not conceive bartering; this mode of exchange was imposed on them. On the other hand, they designed the currency according to the logic of barter. In their minds, the exchange could only take place between two individuals; it could only consist in exchanging one thing for another, both things being ultimately assumed to be of equal value. To facilitate trade, some have had the idea of using a good or object as a unit of value, i.e. as a "universal" currency of exchange. Since currency can represent the value of anything, it was now a question of selling one's products or work for that currency in order to have enough of it to buy or pay for the products or work of others. The monetary exchange is never more than two stages barter or two consecutive barter exchanges: it's always barter. In addition to the notion of value and the individualistic nature of monetary exchange, it's also through barter that currency must be a means of exchange that is exchanged, that changes hands. This property of money, which today doesn't offend anyone, is an absolute calamity.
Currency is often considered a neutral object that men would misuse. "It's only a means of exchange", is meant, as if the nature of a means of exchange, the logic it conveys and the way it works were irrelevant! As if a tool was suitable for all uses because it's a tool! It is true that people can worsen the consequences of money (then this aggravation is itself due to the permissiveness of this means of exchange, the needs it creates and the mentalities it shapes), but they cannot prevent it from having effects inherent to its nature and beyond their control (trying to counter these effects is futile and even catastrophic).
The means of exchange that is money works according to two principles:
1) that of communicating vessels, 2) that of attraction.
Units intended to change hands with each exchange circulate. For there to be any here, it is necessary to take it elsewhere in one way or another: this is the principle of communicating vessels. But these units also embody the right of individuals to access the market, to enjoy the benefits of their "society" and to enjoy the freedoms it offers. Everyone (individuals, workers, the unemployed, companies, associations, administrations, etc.) needs the rights conferred by currency and must obtain them at the expense of others. The end justifies the means in this case, since these rights are not registered; they belong to the person who holds the currency, regardless of the way it was acquired (money has no smell). At least they belong to him as long as he doesn't exercise them, since to enjoy them you have to strip yourself of them (pay). It's therefore in the nature of the monetary system that individuals wage a permanent no holds barred war, a war where rights are the prize.
Units that circulate according to the artificial set of values, that embody and confer rights and that can be accumulated unfailingly end up forming clots, that is, concentrating in the hands of a few individuals. The latter have more money and more rights than others and hold them in their dependence and power. The rich are in a position of strength; they buy everything, fix the value of things to their advantage, lend with interest and borrow with ease. Money goes to money. It's the principle of attraction. Equality (in duties and rights) is impossible in the monetary system; on the contrary, it's in its nature that inequalities increase over time, that the gap between rich and poor widens inexorably.
These two principles mean that the money supply is never sufficient for all individuals, who are therefore forced to tear each other apart in order to have a share or not to lose the share they hold. It's as if, in extreme cold, a blanket was made available to several individuals without being able to cover them all. Thinking only of his survival, everyone would hold on to it, pull on his side: the weak to get even a ridiculous part of it, the strong not to risk being exposed to the cold at all. All would reason in the same way even though they are in different positions.
Money makes rights a rare thing. The reason is simple: rights are embodied in money, which itself represents objects in terms of value because it comes from barter. However, bartering is a primary mode of exchange, the one used by small producers. Its underlying logic therefore corresponds to a particular context, a context where products are scarce. Money follows the same logic and this makes sense as long as production remains artisanal. But in the industrial era, a means of exchange based on this logic is both anachronistic and grotesque. In this new context, money maintains the idea that the mode of exchange is always individualistic, that individuals always practice indirect barter and that they exchange their products or their work for wages of equivalent value. In reality, there is no longer any exchange between individuals since, with a few exceptions, no one produces anything alone, each being only a link in the production chain within a company (it would therefore be impossible to return to barter per se); workers are no longer paid by the piece but by the month and often according to standard scales for all professions; it's no longer the work done that is paid, but the position held; the right to access the market is now a question of status. The current mode of exchange therefore combines two main approaches: that of bartering, which is outdated, and that of the City, in the making.
In a Society (or City) worthy of the name, Citizenship is acquired and preserved by fulfilling the Citizen's Duties, including the duty to participate in the life of the City in accordance with its requirements, and guarantees all Citizens the enjoyment of all its benefits, results of their collective efforts. These benefits include goods and services placed on the market by companies. All Citizens have access to it; it's Citizenship itself that gives them the right to access the market. This Right is therefore indefinite, equal for all and, in theory, unlimited. Although there is no currency, no exchange between individuals and no notion of market value, citizens acquire goods produced by others and benefit from the services of others: the fruits of labor change hands, so there is an exchange. But in this mode of exchange, the circulation of goods is only one consequence. The real exchange takes place between the Citizen and the City: he fulfills his Duties towards it, it guarantees its Rights. Access to the market is in a way a lump sum payment: Citizens no longer pay retail for the things they acquire, nor are they themselves paid individually; by participating in the life of the City, they pay the "price" to freely access the market, they pay globally and in advance for everything they receive from it. As in the current monetary system, market access is linked to a status, with the difference that there's only one status, that of Citizen, that it's this status itself, not units, that confers the right to access the market - this right therefore has no intrinsic limit, it is not external to those who enjoy it, no one can exercise it in their place and it can't be taken from them - and that Citizens are truly equal in rights. (All this undoubtedly makes it possible to understand why and how the currency used to pay for work is above all a means of stealing from workers, of depriving them of the essential of their rights as Citizens. And what about the people who participate objectively in the life of the "City" but who, not being economic actors, don't even receive a salary?)
We are at a crossroads. The industrial era has transformed the nature of producers and, consequently, that of the protagonists in trade. Salaried employment is based on currency but invalidates its assumptions. The industrial era has also brought to its climax the interdependence of individuals. Only currency still instills individualism in them. But computer science is hastening the end of the latter (particularly in France) and offers new possibilities. Fundamental changes are underway. One world dies; another is in the making. As always, things have evolved faster than mentalities, but people will soon catch up and achieve the greatest revolution of all time.
The first currencies were rare or imposing goods or objects, having value either by the covetousness of mankind (shells, stones) or by their own utility (animals, jewelry, metals). They proved to be inconvenient (perishable, abundant, cumbersome, heterogeneous) and poor as a standard of value. People therefore renounced it for others who were increasingly more practical, more rare, more uniform and more constant, until they realized that the value of the medium was less important than the value they gave it, that any material medium was useless, that virtual units were just as good, that their mode of exchange was entirely based on trust and the belief that the notion of value was necessary. What remains at the end of the currency is the essence of what was at the beginning, under barter: Mony.
Mony is the belief that the notion of (market) value is necessary to exchange. However, market value means differences in values between things, between products, between jobs, and therefore differences in income and wages, and therefore inequality in rights. Moreover, the notion of market value only makes sense in the context of exchanges between individuals, who must own what they exchange, and therefore their production, so that they must produce and work for them, by economic obligation, no longer for the city, no longer by social obligation. Finally, to believe that the notion of value is necessary to
exchange is to focus solely on things, to think that they are more important than people, to think in terms of values, not in terms of rights, to forget the social dimension of exchanges, not to consider the protagonists as citizens, and therefore to empty citizenship of all substance. Inequality, individualism, materialism, inhumanity, the annihilation of social principles, the destruction of society (in the sense of community), the dissociation of the duties of rights and the distortion of each of these notions, these are, among others, the dialectical consequences of Mony. Before we even talk about bartering or currency and from any angle, Mony turns out to be antisocial by nature. That it governs exchanges and is therefore at the heart of the "society" is questionable at best!
Mony manifests itself through bartering and currency, the new consequences of which, always as disastrous, are indirectly its own. Everything that flows from Mony refers to it and is therefore part of it in its broadest sense. But using Mony in the broad sense is dangerous because it makes you lose sight of its strict definition and doesn't allow those who don't know it to grasp it. They believe Mony refers to what they call money, that is, the currency of which they have a naive conception. However, this confusion is good: even if they don't know exactly what Mony is, they understand that they should no longer ignore money, that they should be interested in currency, which is the last step before the revolution. Of course, attacking the currency does not necessarily put Mony in danger, but taking down Mony means eradicating the currency, which still seems like a heresy. In short, denouncing Mony breaks a mental lock, an essential condition for imagining going even further than modifying or simply eliminating the medium of exchange that is currency.
Challenging currency is not a first in history. As early as the 16th century, Thomas More imagined his suppression in Utopia. But no theorist or "revolutionary" ever conceived Mony. Their reflections on currency and society remained superficial, so that none could propose or implement a viable alternative system in the more or less long term. Four types of solutions were considered: 1) collectivism, 2) donation, 3) rationing, 4) artificial credits (24).Collectivism and donation share the common feature of eliminating all forms of means of exchange by rejecting money, while rationing and artificial credits modify money but retain a means of exchange based on the notion of value since it uses units. All of them have in common that they haven't learned the right lessons from the monetary system, that they've reproduced certain ways of thinking
and that they are mistaken, by reaction, in new mistakes. The ultimate form of intellectual laziness, however, is donation, a solution that consists in just abolishing money and hoping for the best, relying on providence and humanity. We erase everything, we don't think anymore. No more means of exchange, therefore no more need for society, no more duties, no more constraints, no more realities, no more countries, no more borders: everyone is beautiful, everyone is kind; we are all citizens of the world without even knowing what citizenship is.
All these solutions create vacuums that nature abhors and consider unnatural measures that will be torpedoed by the force of circumstances. They forget the saying: what's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh. When they suppress all means of exchange, they eradicate currency but do not extirpate Mony from the minds, because nothing conveys or instills another conception of exchange and society, so that people are unconsciously always at the same point; when they propose another means of exchange, it's always based on Mony and is only a bastard currency doomed to failure, because it is absurd and disastrous to change the way in which currency works, since the currency as it is and as it functions is the natural consequence of Mony. These conceptual weaknesses stem from the lack of distinction between currency and the principle of means of exchange, from the ignorance that anything based on units is a currency and results from Mony. (25)
Mony has its laws. Currency has its laws. All these laws are imposed on people. They cannot be suppressed. At best, they can be contained for a certain period of time by force, because only force can impose measures