The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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MONEY AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY 229 ale .es- - of ess in- ac- be- ion ce. nd do- » at- the the itis but WS nal er- 118~ he- en- 1fi- ing one “ion nto :ar- /08~ the subject and its objects were not viewed in contrast and op- position; and even when differentiation in consciousness began, it was long before it resulted in actual independence. Possession among primitive people was an immediate activity of the individual; feudalism tied the individual to the possession; hereditary professions and caste and guild systems signify an intimate connection between the pos- session or the economic function and the whole of the per- sonality. With the advance in civilization there begins a differentiation which results in the growth of self-suffi- cient economic processes, in the development of an imper- sonal technique on the one hand and a growth in individual independence on the other hand. In this process of differentiation, money exercises the function of enlarging the distance between the possessor and his possessions. The shareholder of an industrial con- cern and the landholder who leases his farm leave the run- ning of their property to a purely technical administration. They merely enjoy the fruits without participating in the actual production. This is possible only in a money econ- omy. Money allows the possessor and the possession to exist each according to its own laws, and drives them com- pletely apart. This completion of the process of differentiation through the introduction of money is manifest, not only in the receiver of rent or interest, but also in the producer of goods or of services. It means in all cases a differentia- tion between the personality and the object or the service, and the entrance of one of these into the economic system. The money economy allows the substitution for personal services of an objectively defined function, either in terms of objects for a market instead of for a client, or in terms of a definite amount of labor power. In this case only the function enters into the economic system and finds its

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