Complex World Money

In its 500 years of evolution, the capitalist mode of production has produced different forms of the most abstract incarnation of what the human species uses as the material carrier of general social value – of money. Social value in disguise permeates all internal models of social agents, from individuals via households and firms to state agencies. In a sense we have arrived at a situation where the largest and most powerful social agents are still a handful of nation-states, of self-determined ‘global players’. Their respective national value system is partly made comparable by the existence of a military hegemon, the USA, and its US dollar. Less powerful nation-states are aligned along the dominance of the US dollar. To fulfill its manifold tasks, the global dollar system has developed highly complex features, most of them incorporated in what today is called ‘international finance’.