Page 152 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

Environment and Pecuniary Culture 141

rialism, individualism, and denigration of the sacred). Innis also insisted that
the predominant medium of communication in a society or culture is nor-
mally controlled by the group or class that is most powerful in society. He
summarized this position with the phrase, “monopolies of knowledge,”
roughly equivalent today to “the political economy of information and com-
munication.” Innis maintained further that in nonrevolutionary times, culture
and political/economic power are, and must be, aligned, as otherwise the dis-
equilibrium or tension between the two will result in change—either cultural,
political-economic, or both. Normally, this equilibrium or consistency be-
tween culture and the political-economic is maintained through control of the
predominant medium of communication. Only when Minerva’s owl takes
flight (a metaphor for cultural and political instability) are political-economic
power and the system of culture inconsistent, and this instability, according to
Innis, is usually accompanied by the rise to predominance of a new medium
of communication controlled by a hitherto marginalized group.
Let us then turn, in Innisian fashion, to the “biases” of money in its role as
a medium of communication. By biases I mean the systematic emphasis ac-
corded some types of information and the downplaying or excluding of other
types, and as well the mind-set inculcated almost subliminally by continual
use of money. Three “biases” unobtrusively propagated by the money
medium are the normality of exponential growth, present-mindedness, and
the naturalness of individualism/quid pro quo. Here I treat each briefly; else-
where I discuss these and other biases at greater length. 5

Exponential Growth
The medium of money induces expectations of limitless growth, as opposed
to satisfaction with current affairs or, more technically, with a steady state. 6
Through “the magic of compound interest,” any principal, say one thousand
dollars, invested at a positive rate of return increases annually by ever-
increasing amounts.
Money is an abstraction. It is a symbol, or better a symbolic system, which
we use to represent real wealth. Because it is a symbol, money can, in
principle, grow without constraint; it can, indeed, increase exponentially,
forever—or at least for as long as there are human beings to create and use it.
Expectations today are normally that if one invests money, it will grow ex-
ponentially, forever; this implies that the material wealth represented by
money likewise should grow exponentially, forever; otherwise, there is
merely “inflation.”
Certain of the world’s economies have had bitter experiences from expo-
nential increases in the money supply over brief periods of time. In Germany