Stúdentablaðið - 01.12.2008, Blaðsíða 29

the public, interviewing people other than those
who already control the discourse (although
coverage is almost completely restricted to the
Reykjavík area, except when the topic is
aluminium smelters, the Aluminium Gospel still
being the govemment’s main solution for mral
areas). But the damage has already been done.
Through their reporting of the protests, the
Icelandic media put themselves in direct
opposition to a certain part of the public, against
those who wanted to express their opinions and
start a critical discussion on the country’s past,
present and future. They belittled people who
wanted to have their say and actually harmed the
grassroots movements with misleading coverage
- a person who’s considering attending a
demonstration will probably swiftly decide
against it if all she hears of is riots and tussles.
By hiding material that showed the country’s
leaders in a bad light, they’ve raised suspicions
about what else may have been hidden. With
their lax performance during the expansion
madness, they lost their tmstworthiness.
Over the past few weeks, there’s been an
emergence of new media that don’t hide behind
an imaginary impartiality, for instance web-based
media such as Smugan and Nei. On Nei’s website,
Haukur Már Helgason describes how he was
tumed away from a press conference since he
didn’t work for the “real” media; the new media’s
access is not a given. You need the right mates to
get onto a bank’s board of directors - you even
need the right mates to get into a press confer-
ence.
In Iceland, we have three big newspapers, two
of which are really the same paper. In Iceland,
we have a national broadcaster that pays its
directors megawages and cuts down its news
department when society is standing at a
crossroads. In Iceland, every single programme
on national television seems to be brought to us
by an American fast food chain. In Iceland,
politicians and fat cats are allowed to show up
on their own for interviews. In Iceland, the new
media aren’t allowed to play. In Iceland, in the
name of media freedom, 55,000 people sign a
declaration of support for a television channel
that during the same weekend offers such
priceless gems as America’s Next Top Model,
American Music Awards and America’s
Funniest Home Videos.
I reckon it’s time to think again.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chomsky, Noam. What Makes Mainstream
Media Mainstream. Retrieved from http://
chomsky.info/articles/199710-.htm
Haukur Már Helgason. Lýðræðisklúbburinn.
Retrieved from http://this.is/nei/?p=818
Written by: Salka Guðmundsdóttir
Translation: Salka Guðmundsdóttir
P. 10-11
MONEY
VJith full respect to BabyJesus, beliefin the
value of money is probably the most
powerful, perhaps even the most fanatical,
religion ofour time.
Stúdentablaðið approached a few wise
people within the university to answer the
question: What is money?
Karl Marx - philosopher, sociologist
and economist: Valuables, capitalist
machines and business tools
In the latter part of his life (1857-1883), Karl Marx
wrote his theory on capital and how it molds society.
The theory is both economical and sociological. In
the third chapter of the first volume of Das Kapital,
Marx puts forward his analysis of money in three
parts. Firstly, he claims that money is a measure for
wealth or valuables. Secondly, it is a tool for
commerce, and thirdly it is a tool for collecting
wealth in a manner different from that in which it
was done in a society without a monetary system.
Money came into being to make commerce easier. It
became increasingly difficult to calculate the
exchange of goods, like 240 fish for a cow, or five
shells for a rafa stone - but with the emergence of
money, collecting wealth became less difficult and
the need to return interest on capital became the
driving force in society. At first, interest was attained
through commerce, but in the 16th century the capital
in Britain found a way to increase the interest gained;
a new workforce which wasn’t bound by a feudal
society. Employers paid workers the market value of
their labour capacity, but the value of the commodities
workers produced exceeded that, and so the
productive capacity was increased and the employers
then gained the surplus production; ergo, employers
benefited greatly from their workforce. By now,
capital was much more than just a collection of
valuables, it had instead tumed into a certain system
of intersocial connections, which molded and
changed the whole of society, as the Communist
Manifesto describes with great flare.
The growth of capital is the motor which drives the
capitalist way. The growth, however, is under certain
limitations from the natural environment, as has
become evident with the current environmental
crisis. Marx’s friend claimed that when you increase
the amount of material wealth in society while at the
same time decreasing the economic value of this
wealth, you lower the rate of profit, thereby leading
to an economic crisis. Over time, owners of capital
leam various tricks to postpone the downfall, through
loopholes in a complicated financial system. In the
the third volume of Das Kapital, Marx illustrates
how this happened in the crises in the latter part of
the 19th century; in 1929 the crisis became even
deeper and more extensive than ever, and now we’re
heading for a new record.
In 1990, the global capital was worth 10 gazillion
dollars and needed a profit of 1 gazillion dollars in
order to retum interest. In 2008, the capital was
worth 100 gaziUion dollars and needed 10 gazUUons
to retum interest. Obviously the profit hadn’t grown
tenfold - you couldn’t avoid a recession anymore; it
brings the price of capital down to the number which
you can realisticaUy retum interest on.
There had been wamings, but the belief in endless
growth won yet another Pyrrhic victory.
Gestur Guðmundsson, professor of Educational
Sociology, took on thejob of explaining what money
is according to the theories of Karl Marx.
Kristín Loftsdóttir, professor of
Anthropology: Money and the gift
exchange system
In a wider context, it could be said that our society
has agreed that money should mirror the value of
other things. Money is also symbolic, especially with
regard to quantity, and individuals in our society are
often valued on the basis of how easily they can
approsich, or get access to, money. This means that
the worth and value of money at a particular point in
time is transferred onto individuals.
A society founded on a fundamental unit other than
money would probably be based on some kind of gift
exchange system. I can well imagine how such a
society would function, and we do have systems in
the world which are veiy different from the economic
system we know from Iceland. I did my doctorate
project in Niger, West Africa, amongst the nomads of
the WoDaaBe people. In their society, money is used
a lot, but the gift exchange system is also very
important. The WoDaaBe for example have one
system which functions like this: If you were to lend
someone your heifer for a couple of years, they
would get to keep the calves that come from your
cow for the duration of time that this person has it.
STÚDENTABLAÐIÐ EN 29
As a result, you don’t get as many calves, but on the
other hand, if there is a famine and you lose a big part
of your Uvestock, you have put in “good-wiU” with
the person you lent your cow to, and in retum they
will lend you their cows if possible. That’s how
individuáls reduce the risk by changing things which
depend on ecological circumstances (such as their
herd of cows) into connections unbound by those
circumstances.
There are many things you cannot get for money, and
other things that you caxmot put a price on. However,
those who say money doesn’t matter to them simply
have enough of it! I once said to one of my WoDaaBe
friends that a friend of mine didn’t care about money
at all, and by doing so wanted to emphasize what an
unspoilt and fine person she was. His reply was:
“Wow, she must be very rich - we poor people think
about money áU the time.” His answer reaUy got me
thinking, and I see now that it is, in a way, very
arrogant to claim that money is of no importance.
Money is important in the way that one can be sure
of having food and a shelter over one’s head.
ProportionaUy, the ecstasy probably decreases when
one has acquired larger amounts of money.
Steinunn J. Kristjánsdóttir, lecturer in
Archeology: Materialism is at least
23.000 years old
Money is an official commercial unit with imaginary
power and value. Within our westem society today,
it is presented to us in the form of tangible coppers
and bills. However, every society, now and in the
past, has concurrently had - partly or completely - a
commercial currency unit other than money. The one
that is probably the most famiUar to us is the present,
which has probably been with the human being since
the days of yore.
The functionality of a society is in fact based on
commercial units of some kind or another, and one
could therefore state that without them, the societal
unit itself would not exist. Goods used in trade
through time have been of various sorts, such as
metals and metal compounds, glass, shells, ivory,
food, woven items and containers of clay, stone or
glass, as well as coins. The oldest examples of
materialism are frorn the Stone Age, roughly 23.000
years old, judging by the first burials with grave
goods.
For a very long time, the tradition within the field of
archeology was to focus only on concrete units of
currency and other commercial units. Today, such
research is not only aimed at the concrete, but also
its connections to the abstract meaning and social
background of the commercial unit in question -
because of its imaginary value which cannot be
analysed through simple measurements or categoriz-
ation.
For money you can get all or nothing. You can get all
you desire; but if the money doesn’t stretch, you get
nothing.
Þorsteinn Villijálmsson, a professor of
Physics and the History of Science:
Money is now only a symbol
Money is made by man, an invention which can be
traced very far back, just like the wheel and the fire.
The precedents of money can be found in archeology
from way before histoiy began and, granted, it is very
difficult to imagine a human society without any
trace of a monetary system in place.
Trade between people began as the exchange of
goods. I caught this fish and I want to eat some of
your potatoes with it. You give me some of your
potatoes in exchange for half the fish and now both
of us can eat fish and potatoes.
This is a win-win situation and can work well if both
indviduals involved are hungry at the same time.
However, if you are full, you don’t want the fish and
I don’t get any potatoes. Then we could use something
else, rnaybe in exchange for something you’ll receive
later, or some goods from a third party.