The State Theory Of Money. Abridged Edition, Translated By H.M. Lucas And J. Bonar Knapp Georg Friedrich

First edition in English. 8vo. xviii, 306 pp. Original cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, ruling continued to boards in blind, dust jacket (front free endpaper excised, remnants of old paper label clumsily removed from rear pastedown, contents otherwise unmarked; the cloth shows some light wear to extremities; jacket rather worn, spine panel heavily toned with chipping to tips and small area of loss to upper portion, a good copy only). London, Published on behalf of the Royal Economic Society by MacMillan & Co., Ltd. The State Theory of Money, originally published in German in 1905, 'was the counter-revolution against the traditional classical and neoclassical theories of money. These theories regarded it as a logical necessity for money to consist of (or to be 'covered' by) a commodity, generally gold, silver, or both, whose exchange value or purchasing power would then determine the exchange value of purchasing power of money. Knapp defined money independently of its material value as the creation of the legal order of the State. Both Knapp's institutional approach and his rejection of the quantity theory of money, his theoretical assessment of price increases being independent of the quantity of money and determined by 'real' phenomena such as wages and incomes, constituted a first step towards the later theories of Keynes and his school' (New Palgrave).