Accepting criticism, leveled by Keynesians among others, of the tendency to reduce money to the status of a mere veil, I further argue that the ontological privileging of a real economy over its monetary moments is prevalent across time and paradigms. This dichotomy between real economy and less-real money, which I call the \emph{realist dualism}, is thus more general than the classical dichotomy. As such, even fervent opponents of the classical dichotomy may reproduce their own ontological dualism between the real and merely monetary. After outlining the basic features and theoretical consequences of the realist dualism, I present examples of how this philosophical tendency shapes monetary theory and debate, both ancient and modern.

Within the Marxian tradition, dependence on such a dualism has impeded attempts to theorize money in its relation to both (1) the economy in general and (2) its own manifold forms and functions. The distinction between real and less-real on a macroeconomic scale is repeated within the conceptualization of money itself, privileging real commodity money over symbolic and imaginary forms. I provide an alternative to this tendency, based on an overdeterminist understanding of the relationships between so-called imaginary, symbolic, and real/material aspects of money. This alternative ontology informs a critical and deconstructive reading of money within the Marxian tradition and a reframing of the problem of non-commodity money. In lieu of deriving a theory of non-commodity money from a logically and historically privileged notion of real commodity money, my general Marxian theory of money takes as its object the interaction between (1) the imaginary, symbolic, and real/material dimensions inherent to money in general and (2) class processes of value production, appropriation, and distribution. This project accepts that a specifically Marxian theory of money is not produced from the logic of supposedly real commodity money, but through the entry point of class.

Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime. This dissertation uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity. Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this dissertation finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower, crime rate. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in the prison population results in a 0.28 percent increase in the violent crime rate and a 0.17 percent increase in the property crime rate. This counterintuitive result suggests that incarceration, already high in the U.S., may have now begun to achieve negative returns in reducing crime. As such it supports the work of a number of scholars (Western 2006, Clear 2003) who have suggested that incarceration may have begun to have a positive effect on crime because of a host of factors.

Most of the empirical work on the question is undertaken at an aggregate level (county, state, or national data). Yet, criminologists (Sampson et al. 2002, Spelman 2005 and Clear 1996, 2007) have long argued that the complex intertwining of crime and punishment is best understood at the neighborhood level, where the impacts of incarceration on social relationships are most closely felt. This dissertation examines the question using a panel of neighborhoods in Tallahassee, Florida for the period 1995 to 2002. I find evidence to support the contention that the high levels of prison admissions and prison cycling (admissions plus releases) is associated with increasing crime rates in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This effect is not found in other neighborhoods. Looking more closely at the issues of race and class, I find that while marginalized neighborhoods experience slightly higher crime rates, they are faced with much higher incarceration rates. In Black neighborhoods in particular, prison admissions are an order of magnitude higher in comparison with non-Black neighborhoods even though underlying crime rates are not very different.

If incarceration does not lower crime, then why did prison populations multiply seven-fold? This dissertation argues that mass incarceration is a central institution in the neoliberal social structures of accumulation. Mass incarceration as an institution plays a critical but underappreciated role in channeling class conflict in the neoliberal social structures of accumulation (SSA). Neoliberalism has produced a significant section of the working class who are largely excluded from the formal labor market, for whom the threat of unemployment is not a sufficient disciplining mechanism. At the same time, it has undermined the welfare systems that had managed such populations in earlier periods. Finally, the racial hierarchy essential to capitalist hegemony in the United States was threatened with collapse with the end of Jim Crow laws. This dissertation argues that mass incarceration has played an essential role in overcoming these barriers to stable capitalist accumulation under neoliberalism.