THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO RESEARCH OF THE NATURE AND ESSENCE OF MONEY
At present, the monetary economy is undergoing a serious transformation, caused by numerous factors of both endogenous and exogenous character. The world community faces a serious task related to the need for further regulation of monetary relations, which is especially important in the era of their virtualization. Despite the emergence of new forms of money, they still remain the organizing means of the reproduction process, acting as a system-forming factor in the economic relations of modern society. Consistent partici-pation of money in all stages of the reproductive process makes it possible to characterize them as a multi-faceted scientific category with a wide range of essential characteristics. Despite of some developed provi-sions of the theory of money, there are questions of the genesis and essence of money, the relevance of its functions to the current conditions for the development of money circulation, etc. The aim of the study is to identify the nature and essence of money through basic approaches and concepts of economic science. Within the framework of the research, dialectical, systemic, institutional, evolutionary methods of scien-tific cognition are used. According to conclusions, firstly, it is necessary to abandon monistic understand-ing of the nature of money, which is possible only when using the principle of methodological pluralism in studying their genesis; secondly, in the study of the essence of money, it is necessary to distinguish two categories: material and non-material, which is especially important in the modern era of virtualization of monetary units.
Keywords: money, money circulation, functions of money, goods, institution, money relations, institu-tional relations, essence of money.
Highlights:
• the high scientific interest in the category of money is due to its variety, duality, and contradictory nature of individual manifestations, which makes it possible to characterize them as a kind of continuum in which objects with varying degrees of liquidity and with different values gradually pass into each other;
• analyzing directly the phenomenon of money, it is necessary to distinguish directly epistemological prob-lems associated with the study of its nature, and to identify the characteristics of this phenomenon, reflect-ing its essence;
• ¨ legal) and evolutionary;
• the study of the essence of money is possible as a result of using the following theoretical approaches: con-ventional, functional, reproductive, institutional and information;
• synthesizing numerous aspects of the study of the essence of money, it can be noted that the category of money is inherent in duality: on the one hand, money is the result of the social development of society, mentality, practice, tradition, trust, on the other, it is the product of the material sphere, the result of the development of commodity production, exchange, fixed by the corresponding institutions of the state.
Konstantin Yu. Surikov, Candidate of Economics, Manager of the Department for the Samara region of the Volga-Vyatka Central Department of the Central Bank of Russia.