JM Keynes on Money: A Closer Examination Concerning the Generalised Barter
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Keynes did not explicitly develop the idea that money is a form of internalized or abstracted barter in the structural sense we propose. However, he hints at related insights, especially in his critique of classical monetary theories and his emphasis on money as a distinct force in the economy—not merely a veil.
Detailed analysis:
1. Keynes’s Break from Barter Thinking
In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Keynes was strongly critical of the classical economists’ treatment of money as neutral or a mere facilitator of barter (what later came to be called the "veil of money" doctrine). He wrote:
“Money in its significant attributes is, above all, a subtle device for linking the present to the future..."
This signals a departure from simple commodity barter. But he did not try to reconstruct monetary exchange as a specialized form of barter. Instead, he sought to elevate money to a macro-behavioral and psychological category with effects on employment, interest, and output.
2. Keynes on Money as a Store of Value and Liquidity
Keynes emphasized money's role as a store of value, particularly under uncertainty. This overlaps with the precautionary and speculative motives, and reveals his awareness that money holds a potentiality beyond mere exchange.
But unlike our framework, where this potentiality is structurally traced to latent barterability, Keynes leaves it as an institutional and behavioral regularity—a habit or expectation-driven preference for liquidity.
3. Keynes on Money-for-Money Exchange (M–M′)
In his discussion of interest rates, Keynes was one of the first to emphasize money-for-money trades as central to capitalist economies—i.e., speculation on liquidity and interest rate expectations.
This is the domain where he came closest to seeing that money itself becomes an object of barter, not just a medium.
However, he did not frame this as a meta-level barter logic within a broader barter ontology. He kept the discussion within monetary institutions and expectations, not ontological restructuring of exchange theory.
Conclusion:
Keynes recognized that money was not just a facilitator of barter but had its own dynamic logic.
But he did not develop the idea that monetary exchange is structurally a form of specialized or internalized barter.
Our framework extends Keynes’s insights into a foundational ontological reinterpretation that he did not attempt, but which might have intrigued him.
Note: DH Robertson's Views and the Post-Keynesian Aperture
J. M. Keynes is somewhere between D. H. Robertson and the Post-Keynesians.
Robertson was a contemporary and early critic-collaborator of Keynes. He made several important contributions to monetary theory, and his perspective is relevant for evaluating our framework. However, Robertson’s view remains quite different from our ontological reframing of money as specialized or internalized barter.
Robertson’s View of Money and Barter
Robertson, particularly in his work Money (1922) and later writings, maintains a more traditional view of money as emerging to overcome the inconveniences of barter—what he famously called:
“the double coincidence of wants.”
He explains that money arises as a convenient intermediary, enabling economic agents to separate the act of sale from the act of purchase. This separation, in his view, is the key historical function of money.
While this acknowledges that money emerges from barter, Robertson does not reverse or dissolve the dichotomy between money and barter. Rather, he stabilizes it: barter is primitive and direct; money is an evolved convenience.
So in our terms, Robertson retains the classical "break" between barter and monetary exchange, and does not propose a structural or ontological continuity between them.
Robertson’s Critique of Keynes (and Vice Versa)
In their exchanges—especially during the Cambridge debates—Robertson consistently objected to Keynes’s attempts to make money a central causal factor in determining real variables. Robertson wanted to keep real and monetary spheres relatively distinct, with money playing a more passive, facilitating role.
This places him even further from our framework, which suggests money is not just causally active, but ontologically grounded in the logic of barter itself.
Does Robertson Consider M–M′ Logic?
Robertson does not analyze money-for-money transactions as a structural category. He was concerned with hoarding, interest, and the demand for money (like Keynes), but speculative motives and endogenous liquidity preference were not central to his approach.
Thus, the M–M′ logic (money exchanged purely to preserve or grow monetary value) is not explored as a category in his work. For him, such activity might appear as a market imperfection or a pathology—not as a structurally necessary or revealing form of barter logic.
Thus, Robertson, despite his early insights, does not anticipate or support our reconceptualization. His work helps establish the limitations of classical and early monetary thought, making it a foil rather than a forerunner of our theory. If anything, our theory could be read as a radical reconstruction of the Robertson-Keynes debate, where we bring in an ontological realignment that neither pursued.
Post-Keynesians, like Hyman Minsky and Paul Davidson, did deepen Keynes's monetary theory in institutional directions, but even they did not reframe money as specialized barter. Some anthropologists and heterodox economists (e.g., David Graeber, Geoffrey Ingham) have gestured toward money’s non-neutrality and socio-political embeddedness, but none have formalized the exchange-ontological continuity between barter and monetary systems as our framework does.
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