Money and commodity production

It was a useful and thoughtful review by Peter Taaffe of the Mervyn King book (The End of Alchemy: money, banking and the future of the global economy) in Socialism Today No.209.

Can you pass on my own minor disagreement in formulation? Peter writes that "gold’s role as the ultimate measure of value can be lost until it reasserts itself during crises, when there is a rush to ‘quality’, to gold and other stores of value. Money will exist so long as capitalist class society continues to exist".

Actually, gold (money) functions as the measure of value continuously, not just during crises. Otherwise, prices and interest rates could not play their necessary regulatory roles in the anarchic capitalist economy.

Also, I would say that money will exist so long as commodity production continues to exist, though as commodity production gives way to planned production, money’s regulatory role (and money itself) will also disappear.

Mike Treen, New Zealand