Gesell, Silvio, deutscher Geldreformer, * St.Vith 17.3.1862 = Eden bei Oranienburg 11.3.1930. Begründete die Lehre von der Freiwirtschaft. Die natürliche Wirtschaftsordnung durch Freiland und Freigeld(1911). Freiwirtschaft, von Silvio Gesell (1862-1930) begründete Wirtschaftslehre, die eine freie Marktwirtschaft durch Ausschaltung der privaten Monopole herstellen will. Das Bodenmonopol des privaten Landeigentümers soll durch Kauf des bebauten und unbebauten Bodens durch Staat oder Gemeinde aufgehoben werden(Freiland). In der Freiwirtschaft wird das Geldmonopol von einem staatlichen Währungsamt verwaltet, das durch entsprechende Emissions- und Offenmarktpolitik den amtlichen Lebenskostenindex und damit die Kaufkraft der Landeswährung(Indexwährung) unverändert zu erhalten hat. Universallexikon Alpha Verlag(Köln) o.J. ( aber nach 1955)
Silvio Gesell was indeed a philosopher/economist who wrote in the early part of the century. I believe he was more likely Austrian than German, but can't pin down the truth. He was a disciple of Proudhon and, like Proudhon, a critic of Marx's understanding of the nature of money. Litforum members might find most noteworthy about Gesell that he was a major influence on the economic thought of Ezra Pound during the 1930s. Pound's allegiance to fascist Italy lay in his belief that Mussolini's regime had the po wer and the desire to reform economics in a way that would end want and war. Gesell was not completely on the fringe--Keynes championed his advocacy of the "quantity theory of money." As a Marxist heretic Gesell seems to have had considerable appeal to that politically eclectic bunch known as the Italian Fascist Party, whose members came from diverse political backgrounds, Left, Right and Center. Gesell's thought appealed to those like Pound who held left-wing sentiments--loved the workers, at least in the abstract; hated the rich--but felt that Marx's understanding of economics and society was too simplistic. Specifically Gesell (following Proudhon) felt Marx erred in not recognizing _Finance_ as a separate class from _Capital_, that the interests of bankers were not identical with those of factory owners and that the bankers had greater power _because of the nature of money itself_. Money grows, because of interest. Capital depreciates because of the wear and tear of the physical universe. The debtor is thus at a disadvantage to the creditor. On this view Capital and Labor can find that they actually have interests in common against Finance, since it is Finance which determines whether the factory shall open at all, and the factory owner and the worker earn their livelihoods. Gesell's solution was to change the nature of money. Drawing on the "bimetal controversy" of the 19th century, Gesell argued that money was a political or, as we have it today, social construction. It's the fact that a century note says "United States Treasury" on it that makes it valuable, not the gold in Fort Knox. Since money is a political instrument it can be manipulated for the good of the creditor class--or, Gesell believed (as did Pound), for the good of the greater society. Gesell wanted the state to issue money that, like capital assets, depreciated. (Like it doesn't do that already.) One scheme was "Stamp scrip"--dated bills that would lose a certain percentage of value each year unless new stamps were put on them. The idea was nothing less than a full-scale assault on Saving itself--the Gesellites wanted money to stay in circulation. Stamp scrip was actually issued briefly in parts of Alberta and a town in Austria. You can, I suspect, see the implications, which run from the interesting to the baleful to the outright deadly. First, Gesell and Proudhon were clearly right about Marx and the nature of money. Second, the logic of the fascist corporate system becomes clearer--there _were_ sincere reasons to believe that the interests of Labor and Capital could be harmonized. (Remember that "corporate" did not mean "business company." It came from "corpus"--"body" and predated fascism itself.) Third, we can understand Pound as simply one more 20th century intellectual who supported an evil political system in the hope that it would lead to "economic justice." Fourth, the various Gesellist monetary schemes would have guaranteed ruinous inflation in any nation that committed to them; indeed they were inflationary almost by design. Last but by no means least was what happened when the Gesellite demonization of "Finance" (complete with conspiracy theories) met European stereotypes of who those financiers were--a ratcheting up of Jew-hatred just in time to aid the Nazis in applying the "Managerial Revolution" to the prosecution of racial hatred. The story is lucidly told in a book by Tim Redman, EZRA POUND AND ITALIAN FASCISM, (Cambridge U. Press, 1991), including a lengthy explication of Gesell's thought. You have to really care, as the book costs more than $50.Zurück
Last change: 17-Sept-99