World Money and Oil: Theoretical and Historical Considerations

Abstract

Over recent years, Marx's category of world money has proven to be a useful analytical tool for understanding the preeminent global role of the US dollar. However, accompanying the emergence of the US dollar, there was a second transformation receiving much less attention in the Marxist literature on world money: the shift towards an oil-centered global capitalism. Situating oil within the account of world money can provide numerous insights. Most notably, it helps illuminate the constitutive role of violence and imperial force in the money form, as well as the linkages between social and class structures in oil-producing countries and the dominant forms of world money issued by core countries. It also raises important questions around the possible future of world money, particularly in the context of an apparent US decline and the necessary transition away from fossil fuels.