Money is a structured process

Abstract

The topic of this paper is the nature of money. Multiple scholars pointed out that there exist significant structural and processual similarities across all the known or imaginary economies: in all of them, a practically implemented social accounting system operates and helps to organise individual access to collectively produced consumption goods. This central message of the social accounting system approaches is systematised with the help of the social ontology of Tony Lawson and the Cambridge Social Ontology Group–social positioning theory (SPT). According to SPT, social reality consists of processes of social actions and interactions organised (structured) by packages of rights and obligations. Among these processes and structures, the social accounting system is comprehended as a specific structured process, one connecting the processes of production and consumption. Money is identified with the whole structured process of social accounting, together with its underlying structure of monetary rights and obligations. As a corollary, the credit theory of money and modern money theory are in brief considered, and the compatibility of their ideas on the nature of money with the general framework of social positioning theory is established.