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Hudson and Desai are right: money has no value.

In fact, Hudson has yelled at people for regurgitating a “fascist talking point” when someone once asked him, during an interview, that if money has inherent value.

Marx called gold the money-commodity in Vol. 1 because at the time, which was the gold standard era, every economist still bought into Adam Smith’s “money = barter” myth. Marx’s take on money was more nuanced in Vol. 3.

Hudson’s research into the palatial origins of money and interest (popularized by David Graeber in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years) has thoroughly debunked Smith’s barter myth and demonstrated that money is simply debt (and debt is simply a promise).

When the currency issuer gives you money (by purchasing something created with your labor), what you are receiving is an IOU (debt owed to you by the currency issuer) - a promise that you can use that money to exchange for something else. Therefore, money/gold has no inherent value, but merely represents a promise to you by the currency issuer who has the legal monopoly of issuing and coining the currency.

It is now much more accepted in the field that gold emerged as a proxy of money during the Middle Ages because unlike the early civilizations when the population base was much smaller, it was very difficult for the sovereignties of the Middle Ages to legally enforce money as a form of debt, especially when it comes to trade. And they still did it in the colonies where they would force the native population in the colonies to pay a hut tax in exchange for their labor. Therefore, the role of money as debt never went away, simply that the authorities could not feasibly enforce its role during the Middle Ages.

In other words, gold was an inferior substitute of money due to the technological limitations in transportation and communications at the time. In the modern economy with a modern financial system where everything has been digitalized and computerized, there is simply no reason for gold (or any kind of fixed exchange rate regime) to be used as a currency simply because the currency issuer, as a monetary sovereign, can easily enforce their legal authority almost everywhere in the world, instantaneously.

I've noticed this too and have qualms when academic Marxists throw out value from a discussion of Marx and political economy. I have tried getting a better idea of how Desai and Hudson view money, and if any hints at value may be there. After all, in academia one often must hide ones orthodox Marxism. But their views are very Chartalist.

Radhika Desai says in an earlier Geopolitical Economy Report episode, Understanding money and the dollar system’s contradictions with Radhika Desai & Michael Hudson

I’d just like to say that it is very common, actually, both among mainstream as well as critical thinkers, to tend to talk as if money is a commodity. You will even find many Marxists who say that Marx thought money was a commodity. In reality, money is not a commodity. Money is actually an ancient social institution. It arises from old practices of keeping accounts ... keeping accounts of debt, et cetera.

And then later in the Episode Radhika makes a point that gold isn't money, but is money material, material thay serves as a stand in or expression of money.

if money is debt, then money is a relation. It’s not a commodity. It is not a single object or entity or anything like that... Because gold has played such an important role in the recent and modern history, or monetary history, of the world, people think that gold and silver were money. Gold and silver were not money. Gold and silver were money material.

As long as one relates thay back to value, then I can vibe with that. But they never seem to discuss value

And from Desai's and Hudson's paper, Beyond the Dollar Creditocracy: A Geopolitical Economy

You can see their Chartalist, MMT perspective by their relating money fundamentally to debt, and not to value or commodity exchange.

No other notion sets back our understanding of money than that money is a commodity

First, all money is debt, whether issued by states or owed by households and fi rms to private creditors.

I'm okay with even the idea of looking at money as debt, but to me (and I'm an just pol econ n00b so this may be half-brained) discussing debt is another way of discussing value. If a person x is in debt to person y, then person x, or some part of society's labor that x controls, must allocate real labor toward the production of value that can satisfy that debt. And if we abstract away from money but think of an example od debt repayments in kind, x baking an apple pie for y probably isn't a good debt repayment for the aircraft carrier that x borrowed from y. Why... hmm, maybe it has something go do with value.

Maybe I'm off base here, but I see value has the true thing that underlies even debt. So value comes back into the picture because production, labor is the bedrock of any political economy. And that social labor must be reallocated in various outlets and acts as the real constraint, even if its only debts that are being paid back.

I've shared one criticism of MMT from Michael Roberts here before, but got some push back. And the push back may have been warranted. This paper may oversimplify the MMT position and I can't completely judge it's worth. Nonetheless I'll risk sharing it again. More discussion re. It is good even if it is disagreement. The criticism is again, that MMT, or at least the popularized versions of it ignores value, and hence the limits of an economy's productive capacity - while also noting that scholars within the field do recognize these limits even if the limits aren't present in the popularization of MMT

From Michael Robert's article The Modern Monetary Trick

Money only has value if there is value in production to back it. Government spending cannot create that value... Productive value is what gives money credibility. A productive private sector generates the domestic product and income that gives government liabilities credibility in the first place. When that credibility is not there, then trust in the state’s currency can disappear fast, as we have seen in Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Argentina.

The claim that governments can spend money and run deficits without the constraint of the burden of rising debt is not really new, or radical.... All MMT seems to be adding is the claim that governments don’t even need to increase debt in the form of government bonds, as the central bank/state can ‘print’ money to fund spending. 

But even MMT theorists admit that there are real constraints to money creation.

But there are constraints on government spending, that MMT admits to. According to Kelton, ‘the only economic constraints currency-issuing states face are inflation and the availability of labor and other material resources in the real economy’. Those are two big constraints, it seems to me. According to MMT, inflation arises after unused capacity in an economy is used up, so that there is full employment of the workforce for given technology. When there is no extra capacity, and supply has reached its limit, more government spending financed by printing money will be inflationary and prices will rise. The state may control and issue the currency, and governments may never run out of it, but the capitalist sector controls technology, labour conditions and the level of skills and intensity of the workforce. In other words, the state does not control the productivity of labour – real value – with its dollar printing. An economy is limited by productivity and the size of the labour force when fully employed, so if the government goes on pumping money in when output cannot be raised further, inflation of commodity prices and/or in speculative financial assets will follow. And MMT supporters are well aware of this risk.

In recognising that the law of value and the exploitation of labour power determine the value of money, Marxist Monetary Theory explains precisely what MMT obscures: that production is for profit not social need; that it is for exchange value, not use value; and that the monetary system is based on exploitation in production, not the creation of money for taxation

I'm not the one who can express it, but I'm sure there are ways to better put Desai and Hudsons views in better dialogue with Value. Academic Marxists tend to throw out value, but I think of that as a major theoretical error. You throw out the law of value, and the current through which either economy fundamentally rests on labor

Another limitation of MMT that both Michael Hudson and Michael Roberts mention is that it is a theory of domestic money creation. It doesn't help with the creation of foreing currency obviously. So there are limitations in the theory's use in international exchange. As well as for nations that have no sovereign currency, obviously.