Money is a medium of exchange which allows trade to take place. Trade in a large complex society would seem to be impossible for a species of our phscology to engage in without the existence of money or some equivalent concept. If I want to obtain ten gallons of fuel for my car it would be very inconvenient if I had to go door-to-door to each of my neighbors to find one that just happens to have some spare gas and also just happens to want something that I just happen to have. And where does this fuel come from anyway? The infrastructure behind providing energy products such as fuel to a modern society it actually quite complex. Would the oil drillers all be paid in oil that they are expected to take time out of their day to find someone willing to give them all their daily needs for? Are the refinery operators paid in fuel they refine from oil? Suddenly everyone is taking hours out of their day just to find people willing to trade basic needs such as food for whatever random junk they happen to have lying around. Then there is the real estate business... How does my agent decide which offer to accept when one guy is offering 2.3 metric tons of iron ore that he saved up from being a local miner, one guy is offering his F 250 truck whose bed is loaded with coal, and a third is offering three dairy cows and forty unused white T-shirts?
Specialization is the backbone of modern society and it is impossible to have without some form of universal or near-universal easy exchange system such as what money provides. But does it have value by itself? Of course not.
All his anxiety has regard not to the means which are provided for the sake of an object, but to the object for the sake of which they are provided. And although we may often say that gold and silver are highly valued by us, that is not the truth; for there is a further object, whatever it may be, which we value most of all, and for the sake of which gold and all out other possessions are acquired by us. Am I not right?
