The xeno-dollar and money
as an instrument of hegemonic power
At the beginning of the 70’s, the topic of money became a primary concern in the rhizosphere. Thanks to differential- money, namely the main instrument used by liberal democratic systems to assault, restructure and regularise national and international economic crises, the French Nietzschean revolutionary community wanted to build a new analytic grid that could overcome the ideological morass which still clutches a significant portion of the traditional Left as well as of the new antagonistic Left. Klossowski produced, as his farewell to publishing and writing, a brief text, dense and enigmatic, titled La Monnaie vivante (Living Currency, 1970), which presented his peers with more than one critical interrogative on the industrial and commercial world, and on money as an instrument and simulacrum of the vital agent soothing human impulses. In a handwritten letter sent in autumn 1970, Foucault greeted Klossowski’s volume as “the greatest book of our times”. That was the same period in which, at the beginning of 1971, Deleuze and Guattari attended Foucault’s lectures at the Collège, having just finished the in itinere draft of the Anti- Œdipe. The role of the “imperial” currency – the US dollar as hegemonic currency – within the Western economic system, as well as the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rates regime, were at the centre of the tense international political debate. In December 1969 inflation in the United States reached 6%. Nixon, as soon as he was elected president, was struck by the prediction made by his own staff that the dollar had to be rescued in maximum two years. The world was jammed by xeno-dollars and the US reserves could not compensate anymore the increase in the global amount of dollars with the corresponding amount of gold as contemplated in the agreement. In a few months, in 1971, violence in the Vietnam war reached its peak, and so did military expenses and the related budget deficit. The United States had entered a
recession in 1970 and unemployment was
at 6% and growing. The issues presented
by domestic economic circumstances were
unprecedented: inflation was high in a
phase of recession, as opposed to the usual
combination of recession and deflation, as
it had previously happened during the Great
Depression in 1929. The situation was out
of hand. There was no empirically tested
academic theory which corresponded to
such an economic situation; there was no
plan. Any technical decision could equally
mean the salvation of global commercial
leadership or its collapse, precisely at a
time when the international Communist
movement was challenging Anglo-Saxon
industrial capitalism the most. The
sudden breakdown of the Bretton Woods
system could cause a rapid downfall of
the hegemony of American power, the
winner of World War II. Power can switch
sign. Nixon’s staff was divided between
monetarists, namely the rising star
Friedman and the Chicago School, and
orthodox mainstream economists, such as
Burns and the Federal Reserve. Friedman
and those favouring the free floating of
exchange rates unpegged from the gold
standard prevailed. Timing was crucial. In
May 1971 West Germany left the Bretton
Woods system, instituted in 1944 on the
ashes of the Axis Powers, letting the
German Mark free to float. The situation
deteriorated and Nixon’s economic staff
had to hurry: it was time to take actions
because the element of surprise and the
promptness of intervention were crucial.
In August 1971, Nixon suddenly announced
to the nation and to the whole world that
the US dollar was not convertible in gold
anymore, leaving the American currency
free to float too. After about 3,000 years
from its invention, money lost its tie to
an objective and concrete value. It was
the first time in Western history, without
considering the periods of war and brief
experiments, always ended in failure:
money completed its final transformation,
to which it was probably destined ever since
its invention, becoming a pure simulacrum
of value in all its forms, from the round-
shaped metal piece to banknotes. The
question that economists asked themselves
are several: Will the “orphan money” be
able to stand only based on its face value?
Will the hegemonic currency, i.e. the dollar,
be able to walk on an “empty space”? Has
money grown enough to demonstrate its
maturity? The monetary de-aurification is
the temporary situation in which we are
still today: a mixture of sovereign, post-
sovereign, xeno- and headless currencies
that float freely without any fixed exchange
rate, victims of speculations and market
imbalances. However, the monetary
coordinates within which Foucault
develops his analysis are not simply related
to the contingency of events, but rather to
the study of forces and their effects on the
domain of sovereign formations associated
to the research and analyses conducted
within the Rhizosphere. The concept of
money considered by Foucault in the
lectures that he gave between 10 February
and 10 March 1971 is, surprisingly for most
people but not for the Rhizomatics, the
Ancient Greek currency employed between
the seventh and fifth century B.C.; that
is the historical, social, economic and
institutional period when money, conceived
as Greek measurement, eventually
becomes the core of an “immense social
and polymorphous practice of assessment,
quantification, establishing equivalences,
and the search for appropriate proportions
and distributions” (LWK, 134). According
to Foucault, this analysis should approach
the hypothesis according to which money
constitutes a political instrument used to
create and preserve new balances during
profound social transformations: thus,
money does not preserve relations of
sovereignty but relations of dominance.
It is fascinating how Foucault introduces
the concept of money towards the end of
the lecture he gave on 17 February 1971,
as redistribution of relations between the
discourse of justice and the discourse of
knowledge, and of the relations between
the just, measurement, order and truth:
“The institution of money, which is not just
a measure of exchange, but which was
established mainly as an instrument of
distribution, division, and social correction”
(LWK, 129).
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Soundtrack and Pic: POP GROUP Y (click here to listen)
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
Soundtrack and Pic: POP GROUP Y (click here to listen)
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento