The Fictitious Commodification of Money and the Euro Experiment

Abstract

This paper examines money, the least theorized of Polanyi’s fictitious commodities, whose value to human’s livelihood warrants extensive regulatory oversight in the price-setting mechanism. In doing so, it contributes to the scholarship that explores the variegated nature of countermovements which can be engendered by unforseen agents deploying various means, often market-based. In light of extensive central bank intervention in the economy, Polanyi’s claim about the fictitious character of money deserves credence. This paper argues that the non-conventional policy instrument of quantitative easing in the Eurozone serves the function of protecting society from the commodity fiction of money. The ECB’s lender of last resort function is a quintessential counter-measure akin to those extended to labour and land. Yet, despite its protective disposition, the ECB‘s involvement in managing the currency does not engender a double movement, it rather faces political limits in engendering indiscriminate macro-economic stabilization across an increasingly polarized monetary union.