The Determination of the “Monetary Expression of Labor Time” (“MELT”) in the Case of Non-Commodity Money

Abstract

This paper suggests a way to determine the “monetary expression of labor” (the “MELT”) in today’s regime of inconvertible credit money, a way that is consistent with Marx’s general theory of money and is quantitatively the same as Marx’s determination of the MELT in the case of the inconvertible fiat money of his time. In order to explain this method of determination of the MELT in the case of modern inconvertible credit money, the paper first reviews Marx’s determination of the MELT in the case of commodity money and in the case of the inconvertible fiat money of his time. The final section of the paper discusses the similarities and the differences between my interpretation and Saros’s (2007) interpretation of the MELT in the case of inconvertible fiat money.

JEL classification: B51, E11

Keywords

commodity money fiat money credit money monetary expression of labor time

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