Theology of Money
Theology of money (IV) the crisis of the golden calf when the Hyperreality of the symbols Ernesto Sabato fracture of the material reality ever observed that the simple operation of changing a sheep by a sack of wheat already involves an exercise in abstraction. We can also consider that later the appearance of the earliest forms of money, even before the ancient Mesopotamia, materialized this abstraction and involved the invention of an implicit State. Since then, the money was linked to a material reality. A historical ultimately was gold. But gold, represented by money, was also a more symbolic than material reality.
Not only because it required an act of collective faith on its mysterious existence at any Bank of London or of United States, but because the same value of an ingot of gold as the value of any coin or chattel paper is symbolic. In the first instance depends on the collective faith. In turn, this faith is guaranteed and stabilizes with the force of the State through their ministries of economy, of its legislative and judicial apparatus and, at last, the police and army. The difference of our time with the times of Hammurabi or of the first centuries of capitalism consists of progressive and radical separation between the symbol and the reality, between the value attributed to capital and goods of consumption and production. The abstract value of postmodern capital no longer represents a reality for example, the number and quality of scarce goods, but it modifies doubly: on the one hand (1) is capable of modifying the material reality and on the other (2) is capable of decreeing themselves alone the value of that reality. A brief example consists in remembering the real estate values in the United States. In 2007 there were N houses for N people with a value A constantly growing.