Stanley Jevons is one of the father of neoclassic theory. His work still have a huge influence on economic science and its thought impacted directly several key concepts: the economic rationality, the methodologies, the markets functions and role of money. Then the results he obtained, the marginal reasonment, largely influences the development theories and the observed economies as well. From a formal point of view, the Jevons works are generally logical and the endogenous market forces lead the social transformations and the market growth. In the paper we propose, we going to focus on a specific book, “Money and the mechanism of exchange” wrote by Jevons 1875.

For two reasons, at least, this work presents an evident interest. It proposed a theory of the money genesis, from barter, largely adopted and still used as the theory. However, at the opposite of the others proposals of Jevons, the methodological framework of this book has a logical problem. We going to focus on this point (the logical problem) and we are going to explain why the methodology he used has a problem.

We demonstrate the problems of Jevons’ theory about money and market, are form a confusion in between two levels of abstraction. Jevons proposes a normative genesis of money and he sets out to describe a historical phenomenon as well. Without verifying if assimilating the two abstraction levels is possible, he considers the normative feature of its work and the historical process as one. The methodological problems are from this confusion of level. First problem, in order to make the two levels compatible, Jevons base its normative and universal analysis on very singular examples. They are not universal and they do not arise from the endogenous market forces. At the opposite, the examples he choose are fantaisist or marginal but they have a number of required features. Second, the concepts of money and barter as defined by Jevons are polysemic and adapted to the needs of his demonstrations. Then, according to the levels of abstraction, (normative or historical) it remains to be seen if the State plays a role in the process of the genesis of money.