The political ecology of money: Uneven development, materiality, and unequal exchange

This review of a selection of literature in critical geography, political ecology, eco-Marxism, and ecological economics over the past five decades reflects on the paucity of discussion on the phenomenon of modern, all-purpose money. This is paradoxical, given the almost universal denunciation of mainstream economics and capitalist political economy in this literature. The critiques of environmental injustices and uneven development tend to target an abstract capitalist ‘system’ rather than the peculiar and historically recent artefact of money through which it operates. A rethinking of the role of money in the modern world economy can unravel ambiguities in Marxian concepts of value, unequal exchange, and exploitation. In remaining confined to the hegemonic worldview, monetary framings of inequalities miss the mark of exposing the veiled material asymmetries in social metabolism. It is argued that the concept of value refers to money, rather than vice versa, while unequal exchange should be understood as asymmetric transfers of material resources, rather than values. Monetary and biophysical flows must be approached as analytically distinct phenomena, where the latter are mystified by the former. Rather than attempt to straddle this distinction, the Marxian labour theory of value can be understood as addressing a subset within a wider range of exploitative, biophysical exchange relations. The monetary theory of value indicated here appears to be aligned with some recent Marxist scholarship.