Money

This book sets out to provide a scholarly analysis of money and capital, the institutional economic class interests that exist in Ireland, and alternatives to same in the spheres of paid labour and social reproduction. In essence it is a political work in that it picks a side in the debate over these issues. Money is a social technology, one that underpins a complex system of social relations, and the ownership and control of that technology gives those who hold it enormous social, economic and political power. There is a class in Ireland that has carved out a niche for itself within that system at a national and international level, and that class is deeply embedded in the institutions of the State. There are alternatives, but they involve facing up to both the deep economic class divisions within Irish society and the gendered nature of economic inequality, as well as working collectively to transform the institutions and ideas which sustain and reproduce those divisions. The book’s singular focus on that topic should not be taken as an argument for a singular causality – that the money system is somehow the cause of all our woes and that a change in that system will change everything. I do not believe that. Capitalism did not invent the money system. That system was appropriated by capitalism and shaped to serve its own particular interests.