Literature and Monetary Thinking
Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, studying Spanish literature, stumbled into the monetary writings of the authors of the School of Salamanca; she shared those writings with F.A. Hayek, who realized how relevant they were. Murray Rothbard was also exposed to the Salamanca tradition by Hutchinson, and I count myself in that tradition (Calzada, Moreira, Huerta de Soto, Gomez Rivas, and others, continue to study those authors). On the other side of the ideological spectrum, Karl Marx also reflected on money using the great William Shakespeare. His views on The Power of Money , where he quotes Shakespeare, still resonate with many. The links point you to one of the books by Grice-Hutchinson (courtesy of the Mises Institute) and to the paper by Marx (courtesy of Marxist comrades).
A taste from Shakespeare as quoted by Karl Marx:
Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:
“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?
No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! …
Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,
Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.
… Why, this
Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,
Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:
This yellow slave
Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves
And give them title, knee and approbation
With senators on the bench: This is it
That makes the wappen’d widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores
Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To the April day again. Come, damned earth,
Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds
Among the rout of nations.”
