Questions sur la nature de la monnaie : Charles Rist et Bertrand Nogaro, 1904-1951

This text questions two French economists of the first half of the 20th Century, Bertrand Nogaro (1880-1950) and Charles Rist (1873-1956), on the nature of money. This period is characterized by a "nominalist revolution", of which Keynes is only one of the promoters. Some texts of Nogaro and Rist can be read as representative of the struggle between nominalism and metallism. Their reflections develop in their full strenght in the twenties and in the thirties, whereas their monetary writings spreads out between 1904 and 1951. This text discusses Nogaro's nominalism and Rist's metallism. Nogaro starts developing a nominalist view in 1908, while Rist, in spite of a change in 1945, remains on a theoretical metallist position that appears increasingly unsustainable, although attractive on a normative level. Nogaro, as for him, does not develop his reflection towards possible solutions to the question of the necessary stability of the purchasingpower of money. When he publishes his theses in a book, nominalism is already triumphing.