Neurath on money

some reflections on Neurath's Monetary thought in the historical context of the birth of modern Monetary economics

Peter Mooslechner

pp. 101-114

in: Elisabeth Nemeth, Stefan W. Schmitz, Thomas Uebel (eds), Otto Neurath's economics in context, Berlin, Springer, 2007

Abstract

Otto Neurath must have been a fascinating personality. On becoming acquainted with his writings which cover an incredible broad range of issues, one is immediately struck by his enthusiastic and stimulating way of analysing and discussing all kind of topics. Even if one is not a Neurath specialist and, moreover, unable to cover the broad range of his interests, it becomes clear that taking his thoughts as a starting point and trying to follow his line of thinking would make for an exciting intellectual journey. The focus of this contribution is on one specific aspect of Neurath's economic publications and puts particular weight on contextualizing it. It concerns the birth of modern monetary economics at the turn of the century and the question of whether and how Otto Neurath's economic though took account of it.The structure of the paper is as follows. The first section conveys the historical economic context at the turn of the century. This is followed, in the second section, by my selection of pronouncements on money by Neurath. The third section deals with the characteristics of "modern monetary economics" (Blaug 1978 and 1995) at the beginning of the twentieth century and, once again, tries to relate these to Neurath's main arguments. Section four looks into the future, concentrating on post-Keynesian economic thinking on money and finance and on how this is connected to the debate at the beginning of the century. Finally, a tentative conclusion as well as a personal assessment are provided and – in addition – a particularly fascinating element in Neurath's economic writings is pointed out.

Cited authors

Neurath Otto