The money economy makes social action approach pure objectivity

Evidence

The opposite pole of the continuum is found in certain phenomena characteristic of modern culture with its money economy. Here the individual, inasmuch as he produces, buys, sells, and in general performs anything, approaches the ideal of absolute objectivity. Except in the highest leading positions, the individual life and the tone of the total personality is removed from the social action. Individuals are merely engaged in an exchange of performance and counter-performance that takes place according to objective norms—and everything that does not belong to this pure objectivity has actually disappeared from it. The personality itself, with its specific coloration, irrationality, and inner life, has completely absorbed the non-social element and, in a neat separation, has left to the social activities only those energies which are specifically appropriate for them. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Directly anticipates the blasé attitude and metropolitan mental life — the same money-economy/objectivity mechanism Julius’s wandering embodies. — connects to: Money economy reduces persons to quantitative exchange value — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 750; Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 664; The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 663 (+10 more)

Related

• Money economy reduces persons to quantitative exchange value (similarity 0.88)
• Intellectual mentality and money economy mutually reinforce each other (similarity 0.88)
• Money expands economic circles and individualizes participants simultaneously (similarity 0.87)
• Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object (similarity 0.86)
• The cash economy correlates social expansion with individual differentiation (similarity 0.85)
• Money functions as an equivalent-certainty that reduces the need for information (similarity 0.85)
• Money makes desire instantly operative, dissolving the technical distance to objects (similarity 0.84)
• Simmel saw money as both cause and expression of social acceleration. (similarity 0.84)
• Money erases qualitative distinctions by reducing everything to quantity (similarity 0.83)
• Money is an impersonal standard that negates the content of goods (similarity 0.83)
• Both aesthetic mood and money-possession liberate the self from resistant reality (similarity 0.82)
• International money homogenizes social life into an undifferentiated present (similarity 0.81)
• Money functions as magic, making desire immediately effective (similarity 0.80)
• Money carries multiple frames of value beyond its economic function (similarity 0.80)
• Economics simplifies and disembeds market participants to become applicable. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Power and language are not disembedding mechanisms like money #contradicts (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 66
• Economic value emerges through the distance exchange creates between self and object #corroborates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 250
• Social structures are objectivated meanings built through inter-subjective exchange #expands (0.60)
• Both aesthetic mood and money-possession liberate the self from resistant reality #corroborates (0.50) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 451