<p>This paper examines capitalism as a joint system of storage and flow, integrating fixed hubs of territorial ownership with the continuous circulation of money and labour. It conceptualises capital as land and equipment, monetary claims and commodified persons, and argues that money functions primarily as a unit of account encoding credit–debt power, rather than as ‘representation’ of market transactions. An exacerbation of this monetary logic shaped financialisation as primary for capitalism from the outset, enabling, as secondary, exploitative production. Drawing on gift-exchange theory, the paper then seeks to overcome the representation/unit of account dichotomy of money as such. Instead, true value augments through mutual recognition and circulation. Policy implications are outlined—including local currencies, shared-risk banking and public credit. These are aimed at reorienting accumulation from infinite linear expansion towards sustainable, community-based spiral reciprocity. </p>