Analytical Tool: Heads and Tails

 "Look at a coin from your pocket. On one side is 'heads'-the symbol of the political authority which minted the coin; on the other side is 'tails'-the precise specification of the amount the coin is worth as payment in exchange. One side reminds us that states underwrite currencies and that money is originally a relation between persons in society, a token perhaps. The other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of entering into definite relations with other things, as a quantitative ratio independent of the persons engaged in any particular transaction. In this latter respect money is like a commodity and its logic is that of anonymous markets" [1]

The example above illustrates Hart's point quite literally: On the "head", we find the depiction of Austrian novelist and pacifist Bertha Von Suttner, a symbol of national pride and achievement that serves to ground the authority of the issuing government in the history of the society as a whole. On the "tail, meanwhile", is the actual quantitative value represented by this currency, in addition to the entire geographic area in which this coin functions as legal tender, which is, in this case much larger than the society bound together by the depiction on the head. 

Hart discusses this idea of head and tail as a unification of two different schools of thought (the "Keynesians" and "monetarists") regarding the meaning of money, and argues that this broad perspective provides a much more general framework for understanding the many-faceted nature of numismatic meaning. Going forth, the idea of "heads" and "tails" will be a common framework through which we can form a comparative understanding of specific example currencies.