Journal of Peer Production, No. 4: Value and Currency (2014)

“In the context of earlier understandings of peer production, the question of value and even more of currency has been rather marginal. This issue of the Journal of Peer Production (JoPP) demonstrates that theories and practices of value and currency are moving into the foreground. There has been a veritable explosion of experiments with currency and also a continuing metrics creep in many peer projects and beyond. More fundamentally, though, the question of value and how it circulates through a collective body is central to any mature theory of social organisation.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Annika Richterich, Alexandre Mallard, Cécile Méadel and Francesca Musiani, Quinn DuPont, Johan Söderberg, and comments by Amir Taaki, Beat Weber, Michel Bauwens, and Miguel Said Vieira & Primavera De Filippi.

Edited by Nathaniel Tkacz, Nicolas Mendoza and Francesca Musiani
Published in April 2014
Open Access
ISSN 2213-5316

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Georg Simmel: The Philosophy of Money (1900-) [German/English]

In The Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel puts money on the couch. He provides us with a classic analysis of the social, psychological and philosophical aspects of the money economy, full of brilliant insights into the forms that social relationships take. He analyzes the relationships of money to exchange, human personality, the position of women, and individual freedom. Simmel also offers us prophetic insights into the consequences of the modern money economy and the division of labour, in particular the processes of alienation and reification in work and urban life.

An immense and profound piece of work it demands to be read today and for years to come as a stunning account of the meaning, use and culture of money.

German edition: Philosophie des Geldes
Publisher Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1900
554 pages

English edition
Translated by Tom Bottomore and David Frisby from a first draft by Kaethe Mengelberg
First published in 1978
With a Foreword by Charles Lemert
Publisher Routledge, London/New York, 2011
ISBN 9780415610117
596 pages

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PDF (German, 1900)
PDF (German, 5th edition, 1930)
PDF (English, 3rd enlarged edition, 2004)
PDF (English, 3rd edition, 2011)

Maurizio Lazzarato: The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition (2011–) [French, English]

“‘Debt—both public debt and private debt—has become a major concern of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx’s lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.

Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of “public safety” through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the “entrepreneurs” of our lives, of our “human capital.” In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured.

How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt.”

French edition
Publisher Éditions Amsterdam, 2011
125 pages

English edition
Translated by Joshua David Jordan
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2012
Intervention series, 13
ISBN 1584351152, 9781584351153
199 pages

Review: Nikolay Karkov (Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy, 2012).

Publisher (EN)

La Fabrique de l’homme endetté. Essai sur la condition néolibérale (French, 2011, updated on 2016-12-23)
The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition (English, 2012, updated on 2017-6-26)