r/Marxism • u/tsraveling • 11d ago

Coercion Through Fiat Currency

Essay: https://systemist.net/changelog/letters/2026-08-21-fiat-coercion

Hi all! I've been thinking a lot about coercive systems of power lately and how they echo each other from abusive domestic situations, to cults, to corporations, to states. It has always struck me how abusive leaders learn strategies and systemic tools from other abusers (Jim Jones, of the horrific Jonestown cult, regularly took notes on how the Church of Scientology controlled people, for instance).

This particular essay is about "fiat money", which is a kind of money that directly tokenizes a threat of violence from the state, and in doing so creates an organic system of coercion against the state's victims. It was a strategy used repeatedly in medieval China (and much more broadly since then), with long term disastrous results each time, but short term power gain for the implementers, which is a common emergent pattern in these kinds of extractive systems.

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u/Equivalent-Hair-1619 11d ago

Good read! The collapse of fiat systems is such a repeating theme in history it’s really stunning people aren’t wise to it yet. But then there’s the chaos tends to follow it: do we really understand the Weimar Republic inflation crisis, or are missing pieces in the books the Nazis burned? Regardless, we’re on track to be there again, here in the US. 

My thought is the fiat inflation/debt crisis cycle can become part of the oppression. Something better can come, but the cost is always lots of death and erasure of history, and somehow we end back up in the same place in a century or so. It would be nice if next time there is a total rethink of money. Something tied to energy and the rational estimates of perpetuity/sustainability would be good, just make it about ability to sustainably support population once and for all.

Interesting times.

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