Yuran what money wants; an economy of desire (2014)

WHAT MONEY WA N TS WHAT MONEY WANTS AN ECONOMY OF DESIRE Noam Yuran STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSâ•… *â•… STANFORD, CALIFORNIA To my parents, Hava and Yossef Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2014 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved This book was published with the support of the Israel Science Foundation This book has been partially underwritten by the Stanford Authors Fund We are grateful to the Fund for its support of scholarship by first-time authors For more information, please see www.sup.org/ authorsfund No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yuran, Noam, author What money wants : an economy of desire / Noam Yuran pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-0-8047-8592-1 (cloth : alk paper) — ISBN 978-0-8047-8593-8 (pbk : alk paper) Money—Philosophy Desire—Economic aspects Economics—Philosophy I Title HG220.3.Y83 2014 330.01'9—dc23 2013021463 ISBN 978-0-8047-8889-2 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/15 Adobe Garamond Pro CONTENTS Acknowledgmentsvii Preface by Keith Hart Introduction Ontology: The Specter of Greed ix 13 Part I: Between Orthodox and Heterodox Economics 13 Part II: What Is a Social Object? 42 History: Fantasies of a Capitalist 79 Mystery: The Materiality of Symbols 125 Revelation: Weber’s Midas 181 The Economic Sublime: The Fantastic Colors of Money 223 Notes 269 Bibliography 283 Index  291 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The economy teaches us that having sufficiently large debts that can no longer be settled is actually a blissful situation I acknowledge such happy debts to the many people who have helped me during the work on this book Haim Marantz, who supervised my PhD dissertation on which this book is based, is endowed with a generous spirit, which only true teachers have This book could not have materialized without him His insistence that I add a chapter on Veblen proved essential to the project I thank him for his wise and patient advice I wholeheartedly thank Slavoj Žižek, who also supervised my work Apart from being a source of intellectual influence, Slavoj took the time to read and comment on several versions of the manuscript Keith Hart encouraged me to publish the work I greatly benefited from the long conversations we had and from his wide perspective on economic thought I thank Arjun Appadurai for his invaluable advice after reading the manuscript His thoughtful comments helped me clarify the notion of history that underlies this book Arjun’s invitation to visit the Cultures of Finance group at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University provided me with an opportunity for an inspiring intellectual engagement I especially want to thank two members of the group, Robert Wosnitzer and Benjamin Lee, for their interest and advice on the project They helped me to better understand the connections between finance and consumer culture While working on the book, I received a research fellowship from the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University I thank Adi Ophir, the co-director of the center, for many years of dialogue and support The collective work at the center is an ongoing stimulation for me I especially enjoyed three years of lively discussions with the political economy research group there I thank the members of the group: Yuval Yonay, Dotan Leshem, Acknowledgments╇╇ viii Anat Â�Rosenberg, Roy Kreitner, Oz Gore, Michael Zakim, Shaul Hayoun, Uzi Livneh, Oleg Komlik, Tahel Frosh, and Rami Kaplan I especially want to thank my friends in the researchers’ room at the center Dikla Bytner—Tali Friedman, Uri Eran, Ori Rotlevy, Moriya Ben Barak, and Yael Atiya—for their jolly company and for enduring my pointless complaints during the work on the book Remember, there is no despair in the world whatsoever Many colleagues and teachers kindly shared their knowledge and thoughts with me I especially thank Moshe Zuckermann, Arie Arnon, Gideon Â�Freudenthal, Anat Matar, and Eva Illouz I am thankful to Evergreen Venture Partners, which accepted me to its fellowship program The turbulent seminar headed by Doron Avital was an intellectual challenge I thank the members of the seminar: Elad Mentovich, Oriel Bergig, Romi Mikulinsky, and Roly Belfer Thoughts about money are of an obsessive nature as many of my friends have learned I am grateful to good friends with whom I shared my thoughts I thank Eyal Dotan for the conversation that sprouted the idea for this book I thank my friend Oded Shechter for many years of common thought and shared ideas I thank Joshua Simon, partner on many roads, and Yitzhak Laor, Gavin Steingo, and Yuval Kremnitzer I thank my fellow PhD students in the Philosophy Department at Ben Gurion University: Ariel Sarid and Sergeiy Sandler The staff at Stanford University Press made the publishing process a pleasant experience Emily-Jane Cohen put her trust in the project from the beginning I thank her for her kind support and care I thank Emma S Harper and Judith Hibbard for making all procedures so easy Many of the words in this book are Leslie Rubin’s Her work went beyond copyediting, and she provided valuable insights to the book Finally, I would like to thank my family My brothers Hanan and Nadav Yoran were involved with my work, and I thank them for their constant care I thank my wife Sivan for her love and patience during the long project and my children Itamar, Alona, and Omer for being there. PREFACE Keith Hart During a period around 1900, five books came out, each of them offering a radically new perspective on the modern economic system that was then given a name, “capitalism.” They were V I Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), which is still the best available account of capitalist development in backward areas; Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which launched the study of consumption and institutional economics; Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money (1900), which has a claim to being the most profound meditation on the topic since Karl Marx; Werner Sombart’s Der Moderner Kapitalismus (1902), which is the original source for the name of our economic system; and Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5), which is possibly the most famous essay in sociology ever written All of these were in some kind of dialogue with Karl Marx’s work that was published in the mid-nineteenth century This was also a time when the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and cubism were being formed Not much later the Federal Reserve and the first fully-automated production line saw daylight in 1913, and twentieth-century capitalism was born Noam Yuran’s book is likewise in dialogue with Marx, and it draws heavily on Veblen and Weber, but only indirectly or not at all on the others We are living through a watershed in world economic history when the doctrines of orthodox economics have been discredited by financial crisis It ought to be a time of intellectual renewal and discovery, but the contours of such change are not yet obvious By revisiting that epoch just over a century ago and, especially, through his interpretation of Marx’s theory and method, Yuran may well have produced a classic of our era His argument is by no means solely an exercise in intellectual archaeology, nor is it an explanation .. .WHAT MONEY WA N TS WHAT MONEY WANTS AN ECONOMY OF DESIRE Noam Yuran STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSâ•… *â•… STANFORD, CALIFORNIA To my parents, Hava and Yossef Stanford University Press Stanford,... word “want” means both something missing and the desire for it Hence Yuran emphasizes money as an object of desire The Germanic “want” retains a dialectic that is missing from the Latinate desire. ”... distancing between money and commodities, the consumer economy is characterized by an ever more intimate entanglement of money and commodities The brand name can actually be seen as made of money