ComradeBobRojavakian [he/him]

Marx against the MMTers.

I think it is a “for Dummies” version of the much more expansive and detailed work of Prof. Anwar Shaikh, who has a video on Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPMoESXe4x8&index=27&list=PLB1uqxcCESK6B1juh_wnKoxftZCcqA1go

Money is the universal equivalence for all commodities, as Marx spells out in Das Kapital. There is nothing magical about it, anything can be used for money in practice, but people tend to choose to base money around something with a relatively stable value- like Gold or Silver, or, in the modern era, the USD. If people did MMT magic with the USD, then other nations will simply abandon it in favor of whatever seems more stable, so the usual MMT argument that we can fuck with the USD however we like and not run any risk since it is the world reserve currency is silly.

The traditional account of money is generally more correct than that MMT nonsense.

All adherents to any religion think that their critics “don’t have any real knowledge of MMT”, which is, ironically, what makes MMT the Austrianism of the left.

https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/06/01/the-grey-tree-of-post-keynesianism-and-monetarism-the-classical-account-inflation-and-unemployment/

I agree, which is why I started with the Assad meme.

But bad economic analysis will lead to terrible economic policies, and terrible economic policies would mean the failure of all the left.

And they are wrong about MMT. What do you know, Marxist economists can be wrong about Marx and about economics as well. As to people who predicted the Great Financial Crisis, a lot of people get credit for it- the vehemently anti-MMT Anwar Shaikh, who I think is probably closer to Marx than either of these folks, also predicted the GFC, so did a bunch of Austrian Loons.

Graeber wrote an entire book on “Debt”, where he claims that the basis of all money, regardless of whether it is fiat or not.

He also boosted that dumb ass MMT debt is all in your imagination and inflation, what inflation shit that has poisoned the left.