The Market as a Matter of Money: Denaturalizing Economic Currency in American Constitutional History

Abstract

Histories of the early American political economy present that world in fractured form, dividing political and constitutional dimensions from economic aspects. The fragmented approach reflects an old, oft-denigrated, but still powerful imagery, one that naturalizes economic activity as a set of myriad spontaneous and individuated exchanges, conducted with a conventional medium, money, and predictably composinga market sphere. The motif and its underlying assumptions in turn dissuade exploration of money and markets as territories of public decision, insulating by neglect the structural power of determinations made there. This essay traces the naturalization motif through a historiography of macroeconomic models of money. It then considers how money, recognized as a dynamics of value, would look if the law structuring it were approached as a complex set of relations that expressed, reiterated, and revised the distribution of authority in society. The early American political economy appears in a different light: money becomes a matter of value and governance at once, and therefore a crucial area of constitutional debate.Through that medium, the political economy of early America is transformed not once but repeatedly, from a mercantilist to a domestic paper to a liberal capitalist form. 1 2. Albert 0. Hirschman traces the changing conception of interest from sin to beneficent human motive (1997). 3. Innes describes the reception of the rationally calculating profit motif as an acceptable and eventually beneficial force. A variety of accounts locate (or refute) a shift in culture or mentality from traditional, communal, social, and customary, to modem, individualistic, and formally legal (Innes 1995,39-41 [reviewing scholarship]; see, e.g., Henretta 1991, 1978,3-32; Mann 1987; see also Lamoreaux 2003,437-61 [exploring transformation as culturally mediated divergence in economic worlds of farmers and merchants]).

From credit to debt: A political history of English sovereign finance and money from the seventh century to the seventeenth

“…As regards taking some tax obligations in advance of times due, Desan's elucidation of war funding has made a significant contribution to our understanding, upon which I build here (see Desan, 2005Desan, , 2014Desan, , 2016). Desan's story is that war financing took the form of subjects' provision of exceptional levels of labour (defence works, armed service, support services) and goods (armaments, materiel, foodstuffs for troops), in return for which, sovereigns' representatives gave assurances that contributing subjects would be released from their normal tributary obligations over a stated number of coming years.…”

“…Money lost its meaning because of the withdrawal of the political authority that had created that money. That much is well established and uncontroversial: currency depends on authority (see also Desan, 2005Desan, , 2014. But as Bholat (2013: 107) observes, England had "uniquely reverted to barter; metal in England was de-monetised between the fifth and seventh centuries".…”

The Psychological Science of Money

“…It also posited that money fashioned from precious metals solved a value-storage problem since gold and silver, unlike iron or perishable commodities like grain, can last generations (and is therefore heritable). The general version of this monetary tradition is categorized as the commodity theory of money and the more specifi c version (embracing gold and silver) as metallism (Schumpeter, 2006(Schumpeter, /1954see also Bell, 2001 ;Desan, 2005 ;Wray, 2010 ).…”

“…For these scholars, money is thus a constitutional project. See especially the important work of Desan ( 2005Desan ( , 2006Desan ( , 2008Desan ( , 2010. 16 For a review of work by anthropologists and others on fi nance after the crisis, see Ho ( 2010 ) and Maurer ( 2012 ).…”

Money and Society: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives

“…Money often appears to be purely neutral or to be based on "inherent value." Ingham is basically right on this point, although one can think of several critical periods in U.S. history (colonial era, post-Civil War) when naturalization failed, and money became politically contested and explicitly problematized (Carruthers and Babb, 1996;Desan, 2005). He does note, however, that modern money is harder to naturalize (p. 149), and so perhaps we are heading into a period of renewed conflict and politicking.…”