About false grounds of existing money theories and money's impact on social relations

The paper discusses the socio-economic nature of money. The author conducts a brief inventory and classification of existing monetary theories, as well as analyzes the underlying scientific myths. Based on historical illustrations with the reference to the advanced data of economic sociology and social anthropology, the following generally accepted economic postulates are debunked in the paper: the state nature of money as a legal means of payment; the presence of money’s “intrinsic” value, as well as the origin of money from the exchange trade (barter). The paper analyzes the chronological development of the false scientific paradigm “Barter-Money-Credit” in the 19-20 centuries and clearly demonstrates that money has a symbolic (semiotic), and not material nature. In conclusion, the author comes to the logical inference that, being a means of measuring debt in society, any monetary system can be both public and private, have optional intrinsic value, and ultimately form a monetary culture, on the basis of which in exceptional cases of social cataclysms, barter may occur.