Money as Commodity, and its Political Career: A Theoretical Abstraction

It is sometimes advisable, and I follow it by starting with a negation. 

Money is, of course not a commodity; it has no intrinsic or essential value. 

It is a promissory entity, it promises value which is not ‘contained within it’ but to be realized through transactions, usually in the realization/obtainment of a commodity. However money could also be exchanged for other promissory entities, namely cheques, drafts, etc. At this point it would be wrong to say that ‘money’ has never been a commodity. Money, as we know it, is promissory, but there has been other ‘moneys’. Commodities were considered mediums of exchanges for an unbelievably long period of time; and the value of commodity money came from the value of the commodity from which it was made, namely gold, silver, copper, salt, peppercorns, livestock, conch shells (in India) etc. Together with the advent of industry, and the cultures of modernity came the desire and the need to ‘manage’ money properly and effectively and hence we graduated to paper money, or promissory money; money as we know it.

But how did money come to become commoditised? What is a commodity in the first place? A cursory and general understanding will presume that commodities are consumable; things that we consume, like tea, beverages, like even capital management schemes (namely Mutual Funds, and though we do not consume it, money market instruments are particularly ‘packaged’ to ‘manage’ our money better, which certifies and guarantees its subsequent consumption/sale/business) etc. On the other hand, air, that we breathe every moment of our life, cannot be considered a commodity. Subsequent stages of value addition, like air in a pressurized scuba tank, like air in a mountaineering gear, like flavoured air in beauty/skin treatment saloons however certifies it as a commodity. A ‘thing’ (for want of a better word) need not always be packaged to become a commodity. The ‘value addition’ (as understood in financial parlance) is something that we call ‘affect’.

A commodity is not a product (it is important to remember!), commodity is a process. Commoditisation, and decommoditisation depends on how affect works. I will give a particularly interesting example, that of water. Water (consumable water; here understood as non-salty water) occurred naturally and geographically depending on various factors like groundwater reserves, precipitation levels, slope of terrain, general climactic humidity as was found first in various forms like lakes, rivers etc. Then, value addition in the form of ‘affect’ worked by ascribing extra elemental qualities; like finding ‘holiness’ in water (declaring this particular well, that pond as ‘holy’), like slowly developing anecdotal material on water (that for example, the Ganga absolves one of all the sin committed in one’s life, the particular performance of which we are witnessing in the observance of Gangasagar Mela presently). Water was also made ‘scarce’, for example by denying the dalits the right to use water from a common village well. 

Myths have developed around water, battles have been fought, relics were immersed, World Bank funding were sanctioned and denied, nations found identities, boundaries were drawn and redrawn, until water not merely remained water. Subsequently it was understood that water is really scarce, and essential, until finally a new body of litigation developed to make it universally accessible, for everyone, so to speak. Today again, water is commoditised, albeit in a secular way, and we realise that whenever we reach for a bottle of packaged Alpine water (sometimes costing to the extent of Rs. 40), or an expat in New York buys a bottle of muddy Gangajaal for five dollars.

We therefore come to the realization that 'affect' makes and unmakes a commodity in a process that is continual and unmistakable. Some things/items (again, for want of a better word) gets commoditised easily while others resist commoditization. But why do people reach out for commodities? The answer is to be sought in two directions; a commodity has a use value (for example I need a toothbrush every morning though in winter I abhor its sight!), and a commodity has an exhibitional value, (for example, nobody otherwise would buy a pair of shoes used by Salman Khan in a particularly successful Bollywood movie for a fortune!). 

Now, coming back to our original topic of discussion, money, of course, though not a commodity per se, has use value as well as exhibitional value. In a globalised economy of money dependency, money perhaps has more exhibitional value than use value. Money creates commodity fetishism; the more the exhibitional value of money increases, the more people crave for money, the more people who don’t have enough money are rendered failed consumers. 

I am, however going to argue from a very different point of view altogether. Money, as I have argued before is primarily a promissory entity, it does not contain value; it however promises value through exchange. I am going to pursue the fate of money when it is not in circulation, when it cannot be circulated, and when it is poorly managed.

Recent studies conclude that the estimation of Indian money (black/illicit of course) stashed in the coffers of Swiss Banks go to the extent of 1.71 trillion Dollars. In another recent report it has been found that ‘over the last two decades, overseas development assistance from the rich to poor countries has totalled $50-80 billion per year. In the same period, every year, $500-800 billion of illegal funds have been sent from the poor to rich countries. 

To the best of my knowledge, Madhu Koda's (illegal mining case-wala), involving illicit monetary transactions to the extent of 600 crores could not have been investigated because of insufficiency of data regarding the Swiss bank accounts of Mr. Koda. My point is, is money like these, i.e., illicit money, a commodity. This money is out of circulation, stashed offshore as it is, and this is a money that does not have any use value for sure. Huge black money cannot usually buy huge property/commodity because it renders things disproportionate at it were. Why is therefore it valued, and how does the culture of valuation, or affect work?

My thesis is, black/illicit money is valued for its exhibitional value. One cannot exhibit illicit money per se, but there are almost innumerable subterranean ways through which this culture of illicit money and corruption find publicity, acquire exhibitional status, is craved for and finally finds a liminal acceptance in the public culture. The news of a scam is both a shock, and a pleasurable sensation. It leads to desire and craving, and without jargonizing the arena with psychoanalytic theories, I can simply say; it leads to a circulation in the public realm of a desire of more scams and more money.

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Rajarshi Mitra asked me to edit this piece; which of course, at the outset, I was reluctant to engage in: definitely, due to the futility of doing so. As I proceeded with it, that is, while reading it and then posting it for everybody's perusal, I could feel the eerie sensation of being overwhelmed by a zombie; called "Money".