The origin and evolution of money
The Origin and evolution of Money - section Economics, Content &#61607; Introduction.
3 &#61607; The Origin And Essence Of De...
Content &#61607; Introduction.
3 &#61607;
The origin and essence of money.
7 &#61607; Types of money.
9 &#61607;
The functions of money and their evolution.
12 &#61607; Conclusion.
22 &#61607;
The list of used literature.
25 * Introduction.
* The earliest form of trade that existed was Barter.
But barter has many disadvantages.
Barter is the exchange of one thing or service for another.
What is money ?
Money can be anything that can be accepted as payment for goods or services.
Since the early centuries, precious metals such as gold and silver, along with copper, have been the most popular forms of money.
Although anything can be money, in principle, the material for money should have the following qualities: * Stability.
The value of money should be more or less the same today and tomorrow.
Modern money should be small and light enough for people to carry it with them.
The selected material must be sufficiently strong, have a significant "lifetime".
Therefore, in many countries, only very high class paper is used as money.
Money of the same value should have an equal value.
* Divisibility.
One of the important advantages of money over barter is the ability to divide into parts.
* Recognition.
The money should be easily recognizable, it should be difficult to counterfeit it.
The quality of the paper and the watermarks make forgery very difficult.
Money is not an invention, a product of reason or social construction, it arose spontaneously, regardless of the will and desire of people many millennia ago.
For a very long time, people could not reveal their essence, they did not understand the reasons for the huge power of money, its creative and at the same time destructive power.
A real discovery in this area was the views of the classics of bourgeois political economy A. Smith, D. Riccardo and other economists, generalized and developed by K. Marx in his conclusions about the commodity nature of money and its origin from the exchange process as a result of the division of social labor.
Money has been known since ancient times and appeared as a result of a higher development of productive forces and industrial relations.
The natural economy, which is characterized by a low level of development of the productive forces, was characterized by the production of products for its own consumption.
Gradually, in the interests of increasing production, people specialized in the manufacture of certain types of products.
At the same time, it was possible to use the increased number of products not only to meet the needs of the manufacturer, but also to exchange for other products necessary for this manufacturer.
This is the most important prerequisite for the emergence of an exchange of products.
Exchange is the movement of goods from one manufacturer to another.
Such a movement implies equivalence, which requires the co measurement of goods that are different in appearance, quality, shape, and purpose.
This co measurement requires a single common basis, such a basis is the cost of the goods.
The value of a commodity is a socially necessary labor spent in the process of producing a commodity and embodied in this commodity.
It is social labor, and not the labor of one producer, that makes goods comparable.
When exchanging one product for another on the market, it is thereby confirmed that labor has been spent on these goods, i.e. both goods have a value.
Due to the fact that not the same labor is spent on different goods, the goods also have different values.
Hence, there is a need to quantify social labor or the value of goods, i.e., the concept of exchange value appears.
Exchange value is the ability of a commodity to exchange for other goods in a certain proportion, i.e. a quantitative comparison of goods is provided.
In natural production, the product satisfied the needs of the producer and his family, i.e. for them it was important as a use value - the ability of products to satisfy any human needs.
When producing goods for exchange, the commodity producer is primarily interested in the value of the goods, and only secondarily in its use value, but if the goods do not have a use value, then no one needs it and it is not possible to exchange it.
So, a product that is not intended for exchange has only a use value for the manufacturer.
The goods in the exchange must have both a value for the manufacturer and a use value for the buyer.
This property of a commodity acts as a unity of opposites: unity, because they are inherent in one commodity, and the opposite, because one commodity for one person cannot be both a use value and a value at the same time.
The development of exchange took place by changing the following forms of value: A simple or random form of value corresponded to an early stage of development between communities, when the exchange was random: x of goods A = y of goods B. The value of goods A is randomly reflected in the use value of goods B.
The latter acts as the equivalent of the first commodity, its equivalent.
This is the germinal form of money.
It is already clear here that the social position of commodity B is different from that of commodity A.
But this form is not as simple as it seems at first glance, since there are already two poles of expression of the value of the commodity.
At the first pole - commodity A, which plays an active role (the relative value of the commodity); at the second pole - commodity B, which plays a passive role, which serves as a material for expressing the value of the first commodity and is in the equivalent form of value.
Thus, the relative and equivalent form are the two poles of the expression of the value of the goods.
The equivalent form of value has a number of features : the use value of the equivalent product serves as a form of manifestation of its opposite the value of the product; (no commodity can treat itself as an equivalent and therefore make its natural form its value.
He must treat another commodity as an equivalent; the concrete labor contained in the commodity equivalent serves as a form of manifestation of its opposite - abstract labor (in terms of the cost of a dress, not only the labor of a tailor is spent, but also the labor of weavers, machine workers, etc.); the private labor spent on the production of an equivalent commodity serves as a form of manifestation of its opposite - directly social labor;
The full or expanded form of the cost.
It is connected with the development of exchange caused by a large division of social labor.
In this regard, many goods are included in the exchange.
And a product that is in the relative form of value is opposed by a set of goods of equivalents.
The disadvantage of this form of value: in connection with the lots of goods of the equivalent value of each item gets a complete expression of the universal form of value the Further development of commodity production and exchange has led to the selection of the commodity in the world of individual products, playing in local markets, the role of the main objects of exchange (salt, sugar, furs, etc.).
The peculiarity of this form is that the role of a universal equivalent was not fixed even for a single commodity at different times and on various markets they serve different products.
The monetary form of value.
The transition from a natural economy to a commodity economy, as well as the requirements for observing the equivalence of exchange, necessitates the appearance of money, without whose participation a mass exchange of goods is impossible, which is formed on the basis of production specialization and property isolation of commodity producers.
For the transformation of a commodity into money, it is necessary: public recognition of this fact by both the buyer and the seller (both subjects can give up their values for money during exchange) the presence of special physical properties of the commodity money suitable for permanent exchangeability (qualitative uniformity, quantitative divisibility, preservation, portability) long - term performance of the role of a universal equivalent by the commodity money.
The features of money are expressed in the following: money is a spontaneously separated commodity (they arose from an exchange, and not by agreement of the parties.
Various goods acted as money, but gold and precious metals turned out to be more suitable.)
money is a special privileged commodity that plays the role of a universal equivalent; (by origin, money is a commodity.
Having stood out from the total mass of goods, they retain their commodity nature and have the same properties as any other commodity: use value and value.
Gold, as a use value, can be used in the form of jewelry, on the other hand, a certain amount of labor was spent on gold.
Money has resolved the contradiction between use value and value.
With the advent of money, the entire commodity world was divided into two parts: one commodity - money, and all other goods.
The use value is concentrated on the side of all goods , and their value is on the side of money.
The goods participating in the exchange act as use values.
Money becomes the expression of these use values of all goods through its value.
Thanks to the use of money, it became possible to divide the one time process of mutual exchange of goods (T - T) into two processes that are carried out at different times: the first of which consists of selling your product (T - D); the second in purchasing the desired product at another time and in another place (D - T).
The origin and essence of money.
In primitive societies, when market relations were not yet established, natural exchange, or “reciprocity”, if we follow the old Russian terminology, prevailed, i.e. one commodity was exchanged for another without the help of money (T - T).
The act of purchase was also an act of sale.
The proportions were set depending on random circumstances, for example, how much the need for the proposed product was expressed in one tribe, as well as how much others valued their surplus.
People are still returning to spontaneous natural exchange.
To this day, barter transactions are carried out in international trade, where money acts only as units of account.
Under the system of mutual settlements (clearing), the difference is usually repaid by additional commodity deliveries.
With the expansion of exchange, especially with the emergence of a social division of labor between producers of products, difficulties in exchange operations increased.
Our seller would like to exchange the caught fish for containers for storing food supplies, but when he came to the market, he did not find the goods he needed; another was going to exchange grain for hides, but also had to leave the market with unrealized goods.
Sellers (they are also buyers) had to wait for a long time for a new market opportunity.
Barter becomes cumbersome and inconvenient.
The owner of the fish, in order to preserve its value and facilitate further exchange operations, will probably try to exchange his fish for such a product that is most often found on the market, which has already begun to be produced as a means of exchange.
Thus, some goods acquired a special status, began to play the role of a common equivalent, and this status was established by common consent, and not imposed by someone from outside.
Among some peoples, wealth was measured by the number of heads of cattle and herds were brought to the market to pay for the intended purchases.
It is curious that the Latin root of the word “capital "comes from” capital" - cattle.
The acts of purchase and sale no longer coincide, but are separated in time and space.
In Russia, exchange equivalents were called " kunami” - from the fur of a marten.
In ancient times, “fur” money was used in part of our territory.
And money in the form of skins was circulated in remote areas of the country almost in Peter's time.
The development of crafts and especially the melting of metals has somewhat simplified the matter.
The role of intermediaries in the exchange is firmly fixed for metal ingots.
Initially, these were copper, bronze, and iron.
These exchange equivalents expand the scope of action and stabilize, thereby turning into genuine money in the modern sense.
The exchange is already carried out according to the formula T D T.
The fact that money appears and spreads does not directly lead to an increase in the consumption of goods and services in society.
They consume only what is produced, and production is the result of the interaction of labor, land and capital.
The indirect positive influence of money on production is undoubtedly.
Their use reduces the overall costs, the time required to find a partner, contributes to the further specialization of work, the development of creativity.
As the social wealth increases, the role of the universal equivalent is assigned to precious metals (silver, gold), which, due to their rarity, high value with a small volume, uniformity, divisibility and other useful qualities, were, we can say, doomed to perform the role of monetary material for a long period of human history.
The essence of money is that it serves as a necessary active element and an integral part of the economic activity of society, relations between various participants and links of the reproductive process.
The essence of money is characterized by the fact that: Money is a universal commodity equivalent.
The production of goods is carried out by people with the help of tools, using objects of labor.
The goods produced have a value that is the total volume of the transferred value of tools and objects of labor, and the value newly created by living labor.
The value of the goods produced by individual commodity producers, expressed by the price, depends on the price of these goods on the market.
thus, the commodity owner can claim to receive other goods in an amount equal to the value of the goods produced.
This is facilitated by compliance with the requirements of equivalence, performed with the help of money.
Money serves as a means of universal exchangeability for goods, real estate, works of art, jewelry, etc.
This ability of money becomes noticeable when compared with the direct exchange of goods (barter).
Individual goods can also be exchanged for others on the terms of barter.
But such exchange opportunities are limited by the scope of mutual need and compliance with the equivalence requirement of such operations.
Only money has the property of direct exchangeability for goods and other values.
Money improves the conditions for preserving value.
While preserving the value in money, and not in the product, storage costs are reduced and spoilage is prevented.
Therefore, it is preferable to keep the cost in money.
With inflation, such an advantage is lost to a certain extent and there is a need to take into account the depreciation of money.
When describing money, attention is often drawn to its commodity origin and, accordingly, its commodity nature.
However, gradually, including in connection with the transition from the use of full fledged money to the use of banknotes that do not have their own value, as well as with the development of non cash payments, money lost such an inherent feature of goods as the presence of value and use value.
In modern conditions, banknotes and money of non cash circulation do not have their own value, but the possibility of using them as exchange value remains.
This indicates that money is increasingly different from goods and has become an independent economic category, with the preservation of some properties that give them the similarity of goods.
Types of money.
Money in its development appeared in two forms: real money and signs of value (substitutes for real money).
Real money is money whose nominal value (indicated on them) corresponds to the real value, i.e. the value of the metal from which they are made.
Metal money had different forms: first piece, then weight.
Coins of the later development of monetary circulation had distinctive features established by law (appearance, weight content).
The round shape of the coin turned out to be the most convenient for circulation.
The obverse side of which was called the obverse, the reverse the reverse, the sawn off edge.
In order to prevent damage to the coins, the edge was made rifled.
Initially, gold coins and silver coins were in circulation at the same time.
The country came to the golden conversion in the second half of the X1X century.
The reason for the transition to gold circulation was the properties of the metal that make it the most suitable for performing the purpose of money ( uniformity, divisibility, preservation, portability).
Due to its stability, real money performed all five functions without hindrance.
The peculiarity of such money is that they have their own value and are not subject to depreciation.
This means that if there is a full fledged gold money in an amount exceeding the actual need, they go out of circulation into the treasure.
On the contrary, with an increase in the turnover demand for cash, gold coins freely return to circulation from the treasure.
Thus, gold coins are able to adapt flexibly enough to the needs of turnover without compromising the owners of money.
Under such conditions, there is no need for certain measures to regulate the mass of money in circulation in accordance with the needs of turnover, which is typical for paper banknotes.
However, gold money has considerable disadvantages: gold mining did not keep up with the production of goods and did not provide a full need for money; gold money of high portability could not serve a small turnover in terms of cost; the high cost of using gold money, which costs much more than banknotes made of paper.
The gold circulation did not last long - until the First World War, when the warring countries issued value signs to cover their expenses.
Gradually, gold disappeared from circulation.
Substitutes for real money (signs of value) are money whose nominal value is higher than the real one, i.e. the social labor spent on their production.
These include: metal signs of value - erased gold coins, small coins made of cheap metals of copper and aluminum.
paper value signs, usually made of paper.
There are paper and credit money (banknotes).
Paper money is the representative of real money.
The difference between the nominal value of the issued money and the cost of their issue (expenses on paper, printing) form the issue income of the treasury, which is an essential element of state revenues.
Historically, paper money appeared as substitutes for gold coins in circulation and was issued by the state along with gold coins and exchanged for them for the purpose of their introduction into circulation.
However, the appearance and then the growth of the state budget deficit caused the expansion of the issue of paper money, the size of which depended on the state's need for financial resources.
Paper money performs two functions: means of circulation and means of payment.
The economic nature of paper money excludes the possibility of stability of paper money circulation, since their release is not regulated by the needs of commodity turnover and there is no mechanism for automatic withdrawal of excess paper money from circulation.
As a result, paper money, which is stuck in circulation regardless of the turnover, overflows the circulation channels and becomes devalued.
The reasons for the depreciation are: excessive issuance of paper money by the state; a decline in confidence in the issuer; an unfavorable ratio of exports and imports of the country.
So, the essence of paper money is that they act as signs of value issued by the state to cover the budget deficit, they are usually not exchanged for gold and are endowed by the state with a forced exchange rate.
Credit money originated with the development of commodity production, when the purchase and sale is carried out with an installment payment, i.e. on credit.
Their appearance is associated with the performance of the function of money as a means of payment, where money acts as an obligation that must be repaid after a predetermined period with valid money.
Their econ omic value: to reflect the need of commodity turnover in cash; to save real money; to promote the development of non cash turnover;
A banknote is a credit money issued by the central bank of a country when performing credit operations carried out in connection with various economic processes.
By providing a loan, the bank can allocate its banknotes to the borrower: after the expiration of the loan period, the funds provided are subject to return to the bank to repay the loan debt.
The classical banknote differs from paper money : according to the method of issue, paper money is issued by the Ministry of Finance, (treasury), banknotes - by the central bank; features of their issue into circulation: banknotes are issued in connection with credit operations performed in connection with the real processes of production and sale of products, paper money enters circulation without such a link; purpose of issue: paper money is issued to finance the state budget deficit, banknotes - to finance various economic processes.
The peculiarity of credit money is that its release into circulation is linked to the actual needs of turnover.
This involves the implementation of credit operations in connection with the actual processes of production and sale of products.
At the same time, the volume of payment funds provided to borrowers is linked to the actual need for turnover in money.
This feature is the most important advantage of credit money.
If there is a violation of the connection with the needs of turnover, credit money loses its advantages and turns into paper money.
This is confirmed by the modern experience of monetary circulation in Russia, where banknotes are put into circulation (issued).
Currently, all the central banks of the countries issue banknotes of a certain denomination.
In essence, they are national money throughout the entire territory of the state.
There is no material support in the form of goods or gold.
Special paper is used for the manufacture of banknotes and measures are taken to protect banknotes from forgery.
The functions of money and their evolution.
The functions of money are inherently stable, they are not subject to changes, while the role of money in different conditions can change.
Money acts as: a measure of value, a means of circulation; a means of payment; a means of accumulation.
In addition to these functions, it is often recognized that money performs the function of world money, in which it is used for monetary transactions between countries.
The performance of such a function in the existence of gold money or a freely convertible currency is beyond doubt.
Money performs the function of a measure of value by estimating the value of goods by setting a price.
The price is a monetary expression of the value of the product.
Money as a universal equivalent measures the value of all goods.
But it is not money that makes goods comparable, but the socially necessary labor spent on the production of these goods creates conditions for their equalization.
In the case of the same prices for certain types of goods, manufacturers have an advantage, whose costs for the production of goods are lower than socially necessary.
On the contrary, producers whose costs for the production of goods are higher than socially necessary, have losses to the point that they are forced to reduce or stop the production of such goods.
This shows the activity of the influence of money, through the use of which the reduction of costs for the manufacture of goods is stimulated.
All goods, including valid money, act as products
