Sinners and the Political Economy of Money

Despite not having won Best Picture or Best Director at the 2026 Oscars, I have no doubts that Ryan Coogler’s Sinners will stand the test of time as one of the greatest cinematic achievements of the 21st Century. In a media landscape saturated with franchises, reboots, and sequels, Coogler’s original genre-bending film about a black community in the Jim Crow south, who find their newly-established juke joint and promise of emancipation devoured by undead vampires, is both incredibly ambitious and refreshing. As the highest grossing original horror film of all time and the recipient of the most Oscar nominations in history, Sinners is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon.

Throughout the film’s 2 hour and 17 minute runtime, Coogler’s writing and direction masterfully elaborates character, environment, pacing, and tone, displaying a sensibility for filmmaking which reflects his status as a Hollywood veteran. So sharp is Coogler’s pen and artistic vision that it is only after watching Sinners several times that its expert craftsmanship can be fully appreciated. Ostensibly inane sequences and shots become indispensable under Coogler’s direction, as they add texture to the world in which the film takes place, and reinforce the film’s political themes without the need for a single line of dialogue. The tracking shot of Lisa Chow, the daughter of Chinese shopkeepers from the Mississippi-delta, crossing the street from the black to the white side of town reminds the audience of the oppression which haunts the film just as Remmick and his vampires haunt its characters. Similarly, the depiction of Smoke, one half of the enterprising brotherly duo who serve as the film’s protagonists, illegally tapping electricity from an electric pole to power the juke joint, again emphasises the precarity of the entire enterprise, and by extension the fragility of black economic emancipation under racist institutions.

Of Coogler’s piercing analysis and critique of the Jim Crow south’s political economy, however, his exploration of the role money plays in perpetrating oppression is by far the most interesting. Not only is the handling of money central to the film’s plot, themes, and symbolic subtext, but Sinners as a whole offers an incredibly detailed and nuanced treatise on the political and social questions inherent in the production and reproduction of monetary regimes. Specifically, the film asks its audience to consider fundamental questions such as; what makes something money? Who is allowed to define what money is? And what effect do the answers to these questions have on the material reality of different groups in society?

Such questions have been pondered and debated for millennia, but a short summary of the main positions will suffice here. Most traditional economic analyses of money, at least those of economists working in the late 19th century, held two things to be true of money: Its value derived from its metallic content, or from the inherent gold value it represented, and its function in the economy was that of a ‘lubricant’ for the otherwise efficient process of barter (ch 2). In other words, such theories thought of money as a commodity whose exchange value was dictated by the forces of supply and demand. As a commodity, money can have an exchange ratio with other commodities. Or, as the economist Leon Walras suggested, money is merely a symbol of abstract value which expresses the value of goods in terms of a ‘numeraire’ and which allows marginalist economists like Walras to model an economy where the market ‘clears’ and no goods remain unsold at a particular price.

It is in this sense that the nature of money, according to economistic interpretations of its use in society, was understood as nothing more than a ‘neutral veil’ in the economy. In the words of legendary economist Joseph Schumpeter, money is just “a representation of the things that actually matter in society which are goods and services, decisions about them, and of relations between them”. As such, money is not an autonomous force in the economy and does not make a difference to the level of economic activity. Money merely enables us, as John Stuart Mill put it, “to do more easily that which we could do without it”. To quote one final proponent of this view, the equally legendary Paul Samuelson, “all trade largely boils down to barter” as money is solely a means of making efficient the process of barter which is thought to be the origin of all economies. Ultimately, these perspectives serve to depoliticise both the origins of money and its function in the economy. A critical analysis of the logic and historical narrative underpinning the economistic position, however, reveals its inconsistencies and can help reintroduce social and political considerations into our understanding of money’s role in the economy.

A large part of the core assumptions underlying economistic analyses of money are questionable. Take for example the assumption that money emerged as a means of making barter more efficient. As I have explained elsewhere, there is no evidence in all of human history that complex barter societies preceded the development of money. What anthropologists instead find are exchange relations between members of a community based on a record of debts between members. In other words, exchange relations and money find their origins not in individual economic rationality, but in social relations of debt which, as the monetary theorist Geoffrey Ingham points out, are inherently political relations of inequality and power (ch 1, p. 20). The anthropological critique of economistic definitions of money is furnished by the state theory of money. This helps further explain the political significance of money’s constitution, and provides a basis on which to understand the economic repression of black people under Jim Crow as it is represented in Sinners. 

Put simply, the state theory of money argues that money’s value derives not from any inherent value the form of money takes, but from its ability to settle tax liabilities to the state. As citizens of states, we are all required to make recurrent payments to the state, and it is this state which determines what currency and how much it will accept from its citizens in settlement of this debt. Crucially, whatever the state accepts as a means of tax payment will immediately take on value, most importantly as a means of deferring punishment for failing to pay until the next period when the debt resets. The state theory of money thus explains several issues in political economy which commodity and economistic theories of money are unable to make sense of. Why, for example, is modern fiat currency worth anything if it is not tied to a gold standard and hence has no inherent value. Going a step further, why has the global economy not collapsed as a growing proportion of payments are made immaterially through digital means? The state theory of money is well equipped to answer these modern developments as it centres its analysis not on the form money takes, but the institutional power which sustains its value and circulation in society.

For a historical example of the state theory of money’s political implications, consider French colonial expansion in West Africa and during the 18th century. In their book, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc Story, Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla describe how the French state obtained monetary hegemony in their colonial territories through legal and, ultimately, violent means. As French soldiers were sent to organise small markets where the franc was the only acceptable currency, alternative currencies such as the manilla and cowrie were banned as means to settle payments. During this period, the French colonial administration demanded that the exorbitant taxes levied against the occupied population be paid in francs. As Samba Sylla and Pigeaud note, this had the effect of “forcibly converting local societies to the colonial capitalist system”. 

The fact that the notes demanded by the French state were of poor quality and resembled worthless pieces of cloth did not matter. Under the purview of the colonial administration, the worthless pieces of cloth were transformed into the only means to avoid, however uncertainly, the violence one would certainly suffer should they fail to pay their dues. Once the local population became fully integrated into the colonial monetary regime in this way, meaning they had no other choice but to receive a salary in francs to pay for necessities and avoid the state’s wrath, the network of colonial banks operated by French trading companies could systematically starve indigenous communities of credit and centralise control of industry in the hands of French business owners. Importantly, this story highlights the state’s capacity for violence as a core requirement for the establishment and control of monetary regimes. As Smoke puts it in the film, “all money comes with blood”.

Applying these critiques and theories in a textual analysis of Sinners, the film offers a powerful critique of the way in which money and the institutions which support it, far from operating as a ‘neutral veil’, work to oppress disadvantaged groups in society. Sinners introduces this theme most blatantly when its characters Smoke, Stack, and Annie debate whether to accept payment in wooden plantation scrip, a substitute for USD which plantation owners used to pay their predominantly-black employees during Jim Crow. When a patron of the juke joint attempts to pay in scrip, Smoke chastises the others for serving the man, stating, “This sure ain’t no house party. And it damn sure ain’t no charity. We taking cash. USD muthafuckin’ dollars”. 

Smoke’s outrage at his partners’ acceptance of plantation scrip reflects the reduced purchasing power of scrip and its function as a means of economic entrapment for black Americans in the wake of slavery’s abolition. Now unable to formally enslave their black employees, plantation owners throughout the south employed a variety of strategies to ensure black people remained economically trapped and subservient to their white employers. One of these strategies was the payment of wages in plantation scrip, a practice which forced sharecroppers to buy food and other necessities at extortionate prices from the plantation owner’s own stores since the currency was very rarely accepted elsewhere. As a result, ostensibly freed slaves were ‘free’ in name only. 

The effect such economic exploitation has on the black community’s aspirations for material emancipation become evident in a later scene where the Smokestack twins discuss the juke joint’s finances on opening night. Stack is initially excited, noting that their establishment is full of patrons spending their money. Smoke, however, is quick to bring down his brother’s hopes. “I tallied the till”, he says, “That top figure…that’s plantation money. Bottom figure’s real dollars”. When Stack asks for the projection on the joint’s finances, Smoke answers bluntly, “Two more months like this and we’ll be out of real cash. And we’ll be back in these crackas pockets like the rest of ‘em”. 

In an article for The Atlantic titled ‘The Jim Crow Economy Is the True Horror in Sinners’, Adam Serwer laments the twins’ economic predicament stating that “if the sharecroppers were paid with actual money, the juke joint would have been profitable”. While Serwer provides a brilliant analysis of Sinners’ historical context, he is wrong to speak in terms of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ money. As the state theory of money makes clear, money is essentially a means of payment whose value is legitimised by the state’s collection of taxes and, by extension, is monopoly on violence. Money’s form is therefore irrelevant. There is nothing inherently more ‘real’ in a worthless piece of green paper than in a worthless wooden coin. The state’s staunch opposition to the economic liberation of black people in the 1930s, especially in southern states like Mississippi where Sinners is set, is reflected in the constitution of its monetary regime and its oppressive implications. Just as the state mobilises its capacity for violence to stunt the economic development of black people, however, it could just as easily work to uphold a more equitable monetary regime. It could, for example, make payment in wooden scrip illegal, provide cheap start-up loans for black people to open their own businesses, or run employment programmes for black people which pay in USD. In making a naturalising distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ money, Serwer and others fall into the trap laid by the economistic definitions of money provided above, in that he obscures the political processes which make such distinctions possible in the first place.

Faced with the prospect of bankruptcy, the twins are forced to rely on the purchasing power of three white wandering musicians with ‘real’ money to spend and ambitions of turning the juke joint’s patrons into an army of the undead. This serves as a brilliant visual metaphor for the way in which oppressed communities without the means for becoming independent of the state’s monetary regime are forced to rely on the same institutions responsible for their oppression, and the danger this poses. The absence of black-owned financial institutions during the New Deal, for example, forced black communities to seek credit from white-owned banks and were systematically denied mortgages, loans, and insurance by The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation’s racist risk grading of black neighbourhoods. The process of purchasing property from white landowners would similarly expose hopeful black entrepreneurs to racist discrimination, often being denied sale completely or being forced to pay exorbitant prices relative to white buyers. Finally, in the rare case that a black business owner managed to secure the start-up capital and land required to establish a trade, they would still be faced with the prospect of hate crimes committed against their property. Indeed this threat has materialised spectacularly and repeatedly throughout early 20th century American history and was often either indirectly supported or actively perpetrated by the American state.

Thus, when Mary, one of the film’s protagonists, is forced to leave the safety of the twins’ juke joint to ask Remmick, Sinners’ primary antagonist, whether he has ‘real’ money to spend, she is symbolically reenacting the black community’s treacherous quest for economic prosperity among institutions and individuals that don’t have its best interests at heart. Indeed, Mary’s first exit from the juke joint mirrors the fate of black peoples and businesses described above in that she is subsequently devoured by Remmick’s vampires and turned into one herself, setting into motion the film’s final act wherein the juke joint is ultimately burned to the ground and its patrons, once turned into vampires themselves, disintegrate under the light of the morning sun. The juke joint and its patrons’ hopes of joy or economic emancipation are thus destroyed, literally, by the political economy of money.

Sinners thus stands as a masterful rebuttal to economistic theories of money, helping us understand how money’s constitution in society is inherently and profoundly political for the way in which it becomes an autonomous force in the economy, mediating “who gets what, when, and how”. For this reason, it would be wrong to dismiss the film’s critiques as merely an indictment of a particular political economy which, while horrific, now lives only in the memories of those who lived through it in a specific place and the history books which tell of its horrors. Money today is just as oppressive and political an institution as it has ever been, and money’s nature as a ‘creature of the state’ ensures that its existence will continue to uphold the political imaginaries of those in positions of institutional power. Today, for example, the vast majority of the world’s money supply is created and controlled by the private banking sector, who extend credit and finance investment in accordance with their own profit-maximising motives, not out of any sense of the public good or a belief in a more equitable future. In this sense, Sinners reminds us that, as the German Sociologist Max Weber puts it, money is always and everywhere a weapon in the “battle of man against man”.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/The Movie Blog

Licence.

No image changes made.