What is Money?

Coins and bank notes: Before coins were minted, lumps and bars of precious metals, among many other things, were used as objects of payment. With coins, all these objects of payment acquired a standard. Only then did they also become a medium of exchange.

Archaic means of payment: In archaic times payments were made to satisfy an obligation, whether a debt or a wrongdoing. Many things could be used for payments. Archaic payments are indeed the origin of our money but they are far from being the same as our money.

The fact that money possesses such great a power is not rooted in the thing itself but in the specific social coherence which it induces and from which it derives its power. It is this social coherence we are going to explore.