The pure commodity theory of money

Abstract Once widely accepted among economists and philosophers, the commodity theory of money—the idea that money is fundamentally a commodity used as a medium of exchange—has since fallen out of favor due to strong objections raised against it. This paper argues for a refined version of the commodity theory—the pure commodity theory—which strips away the excess baggage of the standard commodity theory and thereby avoids these objections. Three main takeaways of the paper are: (i) the origin of money is not essential to its nature; (ii) some commodities, including some forms of money, are immaterial continuants and should not be conflated with services; and (iii) the claim or credit theory of money, insofar as it solves the problem of the double coincidence of wants, ultimately collapses into a version of the pure commodity theory of money.