Money and social interaction in Simmel's philosophy of value

Sociology

Georg Simmel's The Philosophy of Money centers on the subject of money and its social meaning to the individual and the society. In his discourse, Simmel discusses how money becomes the symbol of a rational society, which is highly impersonal, rational, and calculable. This argument is due to the characteristically lesser interaction between or among people interacting on strictly impersonal situations, i.e., business transactions where there is an exchange of money (from the buyer) and good or service (from the producer/seller). Furthermore, societal relations among people may decrease, but individual empowerment, because it "increase personal freedom and fosters social differentiation" (Coser, 1977:193-4). In effect, through Simmel's discourse on the social meaning of money, society shift from being a close-knit to a mass society.

If Simmel's arguments about the social meaning of money will be applied in the context of the credit card industry, most of the viewpoints he expressed are indeed characteristic of the interaction among people who transact by means of credit cards. When Simmel stated, "If, thus, value is at the same time the offspring of price, it seems to be an identical proposition that their height must be the same" (Simmel, 1900). This contention is the quantitative of money or other medium used commensurate to the value of money.