Money is a right: Alfred Lansburgh's Token Theory of Money

Alfred Lansburgh was a leading publicist on money in Germany during the Weimar Republic. He developed a Token Theory of Money, a nominalistic monetary theory with an endogenous quantity of money but warns of the danger of misuse. Only therefore, he combines his understanding of money as a right-as a legal claim on goods and services-with a metallistic conception of gold money. Lansburgh was misunderstood during his time, and he remains so until today. He was often described as an "orthodox gold money theorist," but he was a passionate "token money theorist," with many similarities e.g. to Joseph Schumpeter.