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By Root 1395 0

is concerned with the value of money, and a doctrine that cannot tell us anything about the purchasing power of money is not suitable for dealing with questions of currency policy. Knapp and his disciples enumerate laws and decrees, but are unable to say anything about their motives and effects. They do not mention that there have been parties supporting different currency policies. They know nothing, or nothing of great importance, about bimetallists, inflationists, or restrictionists; for them, the supporters of the gold standard were led by "metallistic superstition," the opponents of the gold standard were those who were free from "prejudices." They studiously avoid all reference to commodity prices and wages and to the effects of the monetary system on production and exchange. Beyond making a few remarks about the "fixed rate of exchange," they never touch upon the connections between the monetary standard and foreign trade, the problem which has played so great a part in currency policy. Never has there been a more miserable and empty representation of monetary history.

As a result of the World War, questions of currency policy have again become very important, and the state theory feels itself obliged to produce something on topical questions of currency policy. That it has nothing more to say about these than about the currency problems of the past is shown by Knapp's article "Die Währungsfrage bei einem deutsch-österreichischen Zollbündnis" in the first part of the work published by the Verein für Sozialpolitik: Die wirtschaftliche Annäherung zwischen dem deu tschen Reiche und seinen Verbündeten. There can hardly be two opinions about this essay.

The absurdity of the results at which the nominalistic doctrine of money is bound to arrive as soon as it begins to concern itself with the problems of monetary policy is shown by what has been written by Bendixen, one of Knapp's disciples. Bendixen regards the circumstance that the German currency had a low value abroad during the war as "even in some ways desirable, because it enabled us to sell foreign securities at a favourable rate." [3] From the nominalistic point of view this monstrous assertion is merely logical.

Bendixen, incidentally, is not merely a disciple of the state theory of money; he is at the same time a representative of that doctrine also which regards money as a claim. In fact, acatallactic views can be blended according to taste. Thus Dühring, who in general regards metallic money as "an institution of Nature," holds the claim theory but at the same time rejects nominalism. [4]

The assertion that the state theory of money has been disproved by the events of currency history since 1914 must not be understood to mean that it has been disproved by "facts." Facts per se can neither prove nor disprove; everything depends upon the significance that can be given to the facts. So long as a theory is not thought out and worked up in an absolutely inadequate manner, then it is not a matter of supreme difficulty to expound it so as to explain the "facts"—even if only superficially and in a way that can by no means satisfy truly intelligent criticism. It is not true, as the naive scientific doctrine of the empirico-realistic school has it, that one can save oneself the trouble of thinking if one will only allow the facts to speak. Facts do not speak; they need to be spoken about by a theory.

The state theory of money—and all acatallactic theories of money in general—breaks down not so much because of the facts as because of its inability even to attempt to explain them. On all the important questions of monetary policy that have arisen since 1914, the followers of the state theory of money have maintained silence. It is true that even in this period their industry and zeal have been demonstrated in the publication of ample works; but they have not been able to say anything on the problems that occupy us nowadays. What could they, who deliberately reject the problem of the value of money, have to say about those problems of value and price which alone constitute