Richard Kerschagl, Die Lehre vom Gelde in der Wirtschaft (1921)

Kerschagl’s essay is not a full history of monetary doctrine but a methodological reading of its decisive turns from Ricardo to Bendixen. Its thesis is that money theory advances when it ceases to treat money as an autonomous object and begins to understand it as a function of social economy, production, distribution, income, law, and state.

Es will keine Monographie in irgend einem Sinne sein, sondern die Darstellung jener gesellschaftlichen Erscheinungen der Wirtschaft, welche wir heute als das Geldproblem bezeichnen.

English translation: It does not aim to be a monograph in any sense, but rather a presentation of those social phenomena of economic life that we today designate as the money problem.

The organizing opposition is individualism versus universalism. Individualism sees the economy as an aggregate of separate actors and treats money as a self-contained commodity, ideally metallic, valuable by its own substance and controllable through absolute quantity. Kerschagl condenses this view sharply:

Das gänzlich unabhängige Geld mit Eigenwert erscheint dem Individualismus als das Ideal.

English translation: Wholly independent money possessing intrinsic value appears to individualism as the ideal.

Universalism, by contrast, treats money as arising within an organic economic whole. Money is not a thing beside society but a social relation made usable: a means through which division of labor, payments, claims, and distribution become possible.

Die universalistische Betrachtungsweise behandelt die Wirtschaft als eine organische Einheit, in der es nichts voneinander gänzlich Unabhängiges gibt, in der die Zahnräder ineinander greifen, wo das Versagen eines Einzelnen den ganzen Bau zerstören oder doch mindestens verändern muß.

English translation: The universalist perspective treats the economy as an organic unity in which nothing is entirely independent of anything else, in which the gears mesh with one another, and where the failure of a single part must destroy, or at least alter, the whole structure.

Ricardo is therefore read as a transitional and contradictory figure. His metallism repeats the older commodity conception of money, while his quantity theory already undermines it by linking money value to quantity. Yet Ricardo still opposes “absolute” money to “absolute” goods and thus abstracts both from the human and social economy in which they have meaning. The defect of quantity theory is not merely technical; it is methodological. It explains money by isolating it from the organism that gives it function.

Adam Müller becomes Kerschagl’s first great universalist. Müller grounds money in social division of labor and in the living unity of state, law, and economy, without making money merely a bureaucratic creation of the state. His famous formulation captures the point:

Müller bezeichnet das Geld als „die geselligste Sache“.

English translation: Müller describes money as "the most sociable thing."

For Kerschagl this means that money’s value lies in mediation, not substance. It belongs to “idealische Produktion”: like law or administration, it produces value by enabling organized social action. Hence Müller’s critique of metallism and of the simple quantity explanation of depreciation. Inflation signals disorder in the whole productive and distributive organism, not merely an excess of signs.

Knapp’s Staatliche Theorie is treated as a juridical but still largely universalist breakthrough. By making money valid through legal acceptation and state payment practice, Knapp attacks metallic naturalism. Kerschagl stresses, however, that Knapp’s legal formalism risks overstating the state as creator rather than expression of society. Still, the concept of valutarisches Geld shows that money is defined by its place in an organized order of payment:

Das valutärische Geld ist also das Geld schlechthin.

English translation: Currency money is therefore money par excellence.

Wieser and the Austrian marginalists shift the problem from absolute quantity to income and subjective valuation. Money value is determined through the goods obtainable with it and through the distribution of income in the “extended money form.” This is a major universalist gain, because money becomes part of the whole circulation of social claims. Yet Kerschagl thinks Wieser does not fully derive money sociologically from division of labor and leaves the objective money-value problem insufficiently solved.

Gesell is treated more ambivalently. His proposals for depreciating “Reformgeld” are practical, critical, and often unsystematic, but his strongest insight is genuinely social: money is indispensable because indirect exchange makes modern labor division possible.

Das Geld ist die Grundlage und Voraussetzung der Arbeitsteilung, der Warenproduktion.

English translation: Money is the foundation and precondition of the division of labor, of commodity production.

Bendixen is the culmination of Kerschagl’s narrative. He translates Knapp’s legal theory into an economic and sociological theory of money as communal function. Money is neither metal nor mere token but a claim-form mediating service and counter-service within the national economy:

Das Geld ist der Vermittler zwischen Produktion und Konsumtion.

English translation: Money is the intermediary between production and consumption.

The book’s relevance lies especially in its postwar context: inflation cannot be understood by blaming paper money alone. Kerschagl’s final claim is that monetary theory must move from cause-and-effect formulas toward the study of money’s “economic function.” Metallism versus chartalism becomes secondary: a question of technical organization and quantity control. The deeper issue is whether theory sees money as a thing, or as the visible form of society “in ihrer Arbeit und Wirtschaft.”