Credit, Debt and Money as Social Institutions of Trust

Abstract

While the notions of credit, debt and money are today almost exclusively associated with economic discourse, their semantic fields prove to be significantly wider and more complex. This article seeks to restore the repressed meanings of these three notions. Its aim consists of a deconstruction of the dominant economic narratives on credit, debt, money and trust, that would show that these concepts should be primarily considered as social, rather than solely economic institutions. Therefore, in the introduction we will look at the etymology of the word credit and disclose its semantic proximity with magic as a social practice. Furthermore, the first section will examine the intrinsic relation between debt and credit, departing from Marcel Hénaff’s three types of symbolic debt and exposing how these shape the financial credit in neoliberal capitalism and install the creditor-debtor relation (such as Maurizio Lazzarato describes it) as predominant at all levels of society. The second section shows how relations of credit and debt crystallize in the notion of money: firstly by exposing some major historical and anthropological insights about money; moreover, by considering money from an onto-axiological point of view as the knot in which all social relations of trust culminate; and finally, by relating the three different types of trust in money, proposed by French heterodox economists Michel Aglietta and André Orléan, to the three forms of symbolic debt, thus showing how credit, debt and money are fundamentally anchored in social relations.

Dok se danas pojmovi kredit, dug i novac skoro isključivo vezuju za ekonomski diskurs, njihova semantička polja svedoče o njihovoj značajno većoj širini i kompleksnosti. Ovaj članak stremi da ponovo uspostavi potisnuta značenja ova tri pojma. Njegov cilj leži u dekonstrukciji dominantnih ekonomskih narativa o kreditu, dugu, novcu i poverenju, koja bi pokazala da ovi koncepti predstavljaju pre svega društvene, a ne i isključivo ekonomske institucije. Stoga, u uvodu će fokus biti na etimologiji reči kredit i na otkrivanju njegove semantičke bliskosti sa magijom kao društvenom praksom. Nadalje, prvi deo će biti posvećen ispitivanju intristične veze između kredita i duga, polazeći od tri modela simboličkog duga koje predlaže Marsel Enaf (Marcel Hénaff) i pokazujući kako potonji oblikuju finansijski kredit u neoliberalnom kapitalizmu, ali i uspostavljaju odnos između kreditora i dužnika (onako kako ga Mauricio Lazarato (Maurizio Lazzarato) opisuje), kao dominantan na svim društvenim nivoima. Druga sekcija članka pokazuje kako se odnosi između kredita i duga kristalizuju u pojmu novca: isprva izlažući najznačajnije istorijske i antropološke uvide o novcu; potom, razmatrajući novac sa onto-aksiološke tačke gledišta kao čvorište u kom kulminiraju svi društveni odnosi poverenja; i konačno, povezujući tri modela simboličkog duga sa tri različita tipa poverenja u novac koje predlažu francuski heterodoksni ekonomisti Mišel Aljeta (Michel Aglietta) i Andre Orlean (André Orléan), a tako pokazujući na koji način su kredit, dug i novac fundamentalno utemeljeni u društvenim odnosima.