Money in Asia : Small Currencies in Social and Political Contexts. Edited by Jane Kate Leonard and Ulrich Theobald. Monies, Markets, and Finance in East Asia, 1600–1900, vol. 6. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Pp. l + 522. €180, $234.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

How was the Neoplatonic School of Athens able to maintain itself for more than a century at Athens, in a hostile environment, while being the target of the opposition of the Christians who were not only in the majority, but also held political power? These are the questions this text seeks to answer. Although it does not promise any earth-shaking discovery, it will try to sketch a clear and precise portrait of the Neoplatonic School of Athens on the family, political (...) and economic level. (shrink)

In Politics, Money, and Persuasion, distinguished philosopher John Russon offers a new framework for interpreting Plato's The Republic. For Russon, Plato's work is about the distinctive nature of what it is to be a human being and, correspondingly, what is distinctive about the nature of human society. Russon focuses on the realities of our everyday experience to come to profoundly insightful assessments of our human realities: the nature of the city, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of (...) human psychology. Russon's argument concentrates on the ambivalence of logos, which includes reflections on politics and philosophy and their place in human life, how humans have shaped the environment, our interactions with money, the economy, and taking account, and the pursuit of the good in social and political systems. Politics, Money, and Persuasion offers a deeply personal but also practical kind of philosophical reading of Plato's classic text. It emphasizes the tight connection between the life of city and the life of the soul, demonstrating both the crucial role that human cognitive excellence and psychological health play in political and social life. (shrink)

In Britain, substantial cuts in police budgets alongside controversial handling of incidents such as politically sensitive enquiries, public disorder and relations with the media have recently triggered much debate about public knowledge and trust in the police. To date, however, little academic research has investigated how knowledge of police performance impacts citizens’ trust. We address this long-standing lacuna by exploring citizens’ trust before and after exposure to real performance data in the context of a British police force. The results reveal (...) that being informed of performance data affects citizens’ trust significantly. Furthermore, direction and degree of change in trust are related to variations across the different elements of the reported performance criteria. Interestingly, the volatility of citizens’ trust is related to initial performance perceptions, and citizens’ intentions to support the police do not always correlate with their cognitive and affective trust towards the police. In discussing our findings, we explore the implications of how being transparent with performance data can both hinder and be helpful in developing citizens’ trust towards a public organisation such as the police. From our study, we pose a number of ethical challenges that practitioners face when deciding what data to highlight, to whom, and for what purpose. (shrink)

The article examines Alberti’s dialogue Della famiglia as a reflection on the foundations of ethics and politics from the perspective of humanist discourse. The polyphonic work presents and critically examines several views. The authorial voice of the text rehearses the traditional philosophical view the humanists inherited, according to which humans are sociable by nature. However, some of the interlocutors reject this convenient view, implying that it cannot be squared with the humanist critique of the premises of mainstream classical and (...) medieval philosophy. Another line of argumentation in the dialogue attempts to harness the key humanist notion of gloria as the basis of human association, according to which humans self-interestedly seek fame and glory but to gain them they must promote the common good. But also this position is contested in the dialogue, with some arguing that the agonistic competition for glory produces envy and resentment rather than a civic spirit and as such threatens social cohesion. Finally, Della famiglia also explores the implications of the radical possibility that men and women are asocial creatures, by casting them as selfish economic actors who are only interested in making material gains. (shrink)

Recent studies of Friedrich Hayek have focused on his theorization of spontaneous order and its relationship to his views on freedom and market individualism. For many scholars, the impersonal nature of Hayek’s spontaneous order, which optimally coordinates human action without human coordination, and/or Hayek’s contention that freedom consists of the exercise of individual choice in a market, reveals Hayek’s neoliberal project to replace or erase the social domain of human life and activity. This article makes the claim that two different, (...) but related, versions of the social exist in Hayek’s writings. The logic of his first and prominent view of social order as spontaneous order depends, I argue, upon a second account of the social, found in Hayek’s writings on money, which consists of forms of conscious and collective social integration and subject formation that the first view requires but cannot account for. In this way, Hayek’s social order is sustained not spontaneously but by money-based collective activities and social subjectivities that make it possible, and his neoliberal project thus depends on fundamental, if disavowed, connections between the social and the political. (shrink)

What are the contents, limits, and possibilities of Aristotle’s works for critical thinking about money? Recent scholarship has (re)turned to Aristotle as an authority for two key political approaches to money. The first aims to democratize the governance of monetary institutions in order to realize more just economic outcomes. The second seeks to prevent money, or its inherently deleterious excesses, from corrupting political actors and political life. Arguing that these two approaches are insightful, important, and incomplete, I (...) reengage Aristotle’s account of money across the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics to theorize money as a vital but underexplored means of political subject formation. I illuminate how the use of money produces collective and constitutive relations that emerge by way of people’s engagements and entanglements with the things they produce, acquire, desire, and exchange. Bringing this to light also makes visible, I argue, how Aristotle understands money as something capable of being used to both bring about social justice and to pervasively corrupt the foundations of shared democratic life. Taking stock of this dual capacity of money, I show how money’s relationship to subjectivity simultaneously makes money the site of a seemingly intractable problem for politics under capitalism and the means to revive it and reconnect it to democratic life. (shrink)

Some leading economists maintain that corporate managers have no social responsibilities other than to maximize profits and obey the law. To support that thesis, they rely, in part, on the agency theory of the firm. The theory provides that managers are agents of shareholders and must do what shareholders want, which is generally to make as much money as possible. For purposes of this article, I accept that managers are agents of shareholders, but I reject the conclusion that the (...) relationship dilutes their moral obligations. Managers, as agents, cannot justify immoral decisions on the grounds that their shareholders direct their actions. Similarly, shareholders, as principals, lack moral bases to authorize managers to take actions the shareholders could not justify taking themselves. I apply this thesis to the ethical challenges managers of government contracting businesses face when they consider whether to make independent political expenditures. I argue that where it is in the interests of government contractors to publicly disclose, limit, or forego making independent political expenditures, they can legally do so, and that in the absence of financial advantage or legal obligation, agency theory highlights the ethical obligations of shareholders and their managers agents. It does not grant them an ethical free pass. (shrink)

Some leading economists maintain that corporate managers have no social responsibilities other than to maximize profits and obey the law. To support that thesis, they rely, in part, on the agency theory of the firm. The theory provides that managers are agents of shareholders and must do what shareholders want, which is generally to make as much money as possible. For purposes of this article, I accept that managers are agents of shareholders, but I reject the conclusion that the (...) relationship dilutes their moral obligations. Managers, as agents, cannot justify immoral decisions on the grounds that their shareholders direct their actions. Similarly, shareholders, as principals, lack moral bases to authorize managers to take actions the shareholders could not justify taking themselves. I apply this thesis to the ethical challenges managers of government contracting businesses face when they consider whether to make independent political expenditures. I argue that where it is in the interests of government contractors to publicly disclose, limit, or forego making independent political expenditures, they can legally do so, and that in the absence of financial advantage or legal obligation, agency theory highlights the ethical obligations of shareholders and their managers agents. It does not grant them an ethical free pass. (shrink)

Money in the history of political thought, from ancient Greece to the Great Inflation of the 1970s In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, critical attention has shifted from the economy to the most fundamental feature of all market economies—money. Yet despite the centrality of political struggles over money, it remains difficult to articulate its democratic possibilities and limits. The Currency of Politics takes readers from ancient Greece to today to provide an intellectual history of (...) money, drawing on the insights of key political philosophers to show how money is not just a medium of exchange but also a central institution of political rule. Money appears to be beyond the reach of democratic politics, but this appearance—like so much about money—is deceptive. Even when the politics of money is impossible to ignore, its proper democratic role can be difficult to discern. Stefan Eich examines six crucial episodes of monetary crisis, recovering the neglected political theories of money in the thought of such figures as Aristotle, John Locke, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes. He shows how these layers of crisis have come to define the way we look at money, and argues that informed public debate about money requires a better appreciation of the diverse political struggles over its meaning. Recovering foundational ideas at the intersection of monetary rule and democratic politics, The Currency of Politics explains why only through greater awareness of the historical limits of monetary politics can we begin to articulate more democratic conceptions of money. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. (...) In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice. Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin. (shrink)

At the present historical moment, the modernization of the Greek nation is at the forefront of discussion in the Greek public sphere. In the shadow of this discussion, the official public sphere has also been grappling with a very low national birth rate - approximately 100,000 per population of 11 million. This statistical phenomenon is coupled with a high frequency of abortion, between 150,000 and 200,000 in 2001, and is referred to in the media and policy discussions as `the demografiko', (...) Greece's `No. 1 or No. 2 national problem'. This article examines popular Greek perceptions of the problem of the national birth rate and the contestation between meanings of nationhood that the resulting discourses both illuminate and, as the author shows, sometimes incite. The focus is on what women living in Athens say about the demografiko. These are voices not currently being heard in the public sphere. The author argues that the demografiko's articulation of `Greece' is a window through which one witnesses the racially and religiously inflected politics of late modernity, just as they are also being played out at the site of gender and reproduction elsewhere in Europe and Asia. (shrink)

Political philosophy harbors two schools of thought concerning money: the liberal, which regards it as a facilitator for freedom and enterprise, and the socialist/anarchist, which condemns it. liberal accounts of money and left-wing critiques (including those of marx and simmel) are analyzed. the role of money in promoting distributive justice is discussed using four models of money-free society. it is shown that money is pivotal in facilitating social justice based on substantive equality.

G. A. Cohen was one of the most gifted, influential, and progressive voices in contemporary political philosophy. At the time of his death in 2009, he had plans to bring together a number of his most significant papers. This is the first of three volumes to realize those plans. Drawing on three decades of work, it contains previously uncollected articles that have shaped many of the central debates in political philosophy, as well as papers published here for the first time. (...) In these pieces, Cohen asks what egalitarians have most reason to equalize, he considers the relationship between freedom and property, and he reflects upon ideal theory and political practice.Included here are classic essays such as "Equality of What?" and "Capitalism, Freedom, and the Proletariat," along with more recent contributions such as "Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice," "Freedom and Money," and the previously unpublished "How to Do Political Philosophy." On ample display throughout are the clarity, rigor, conviction, and wit for which Cohen was renowned. Together, these essays demonstrate how his work provides a powerful account of liberty and equality to the left of Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, Amartya Sen, and Isaiah Berlin. (shrink)

This is a study of the philosophy and theology of the Scientific Revolution and its impact on European natural law and political liberalism. It analyses transformations of the concept of sacred nature and the human light of reason leading to the Anthropocene, and fluctuations between human necessities and scientific money.

This essay examines Hume’s treatment of money in light of his view of the imagination. It begins with his claim that money is distinct from wealth, the latter arising, according to vulgar reasoning, from the power of acquisition that it represents, or, understood philosophically, from the labor that produces it. The salient features that Hume identifies with the imagination are then put forth, namely its power to combine ideas creatively and the principle of easy transition that characterizes its (...) movement among them. Two issues that these features explain are then discussed: first, why people take value to lie in the material of which money is made, and, second, why they assign value to what they take money to represent, namely, wealth. In both cases, the imagination creates a new relation, an illusion or fiction, that cannot be traced directly to experience. In the case of money, the faculty conjoins what is intangible (the power of acquisition) with the physical qualities of specie; in the case of property it produces a causal relation that connects persons with objects to constitute stable possession that constitutes ownership. Hume also appeals to the imagination to explain the rules of property that subsequently develop (present possession, occupation, prescription, and transference). The essay concludes by emphasizing that being based on the imagination is not in itself indicative of any instability in either money or property and the practices they enshrine, a feature they share with other phenomena (such as the self and continued existence) that Hume also traces to the same faculty. (shrink)

Christian economic theology is distinguished from Christian social ethics by its methodological reflection on the emergence, formation, and proper boundaries of the economic sphere, as well as transcendental reflection on the conditions of possibility of economic science. In practice, this often amounts to anxiety about the authority of Christianity in the economic sphere, as well as about the extent to which Christianity can be held responsible for the system of impersonal economic domination known as capitalism. This review essay draws upon (...) three recent works on or about Christian economic theology, and argues that this genre's anxiety about Christian authority manifests in the ways that it draws temporal boundaries between ancient, medieval, and modern economies. Ultimately, its ambivalence about economy itself is traceable to Aristotle's understanding of money as containing two natures, one defined by quality (use value) and the other by quantity (exchange value). Christianity here becomes a cipher for quality. (shrink)

This book, first published in 1985, presents a key collection of essays on Berkeley's moral and political philosophy. They form an introduction to, and analysis of, Berkeley's immaterialist arguments, part of his consciously adopted strategy to subvert Enlightenment thought, which he saw as a danger to civil society.

It is well known that the concept of play is employed on a cosmic scale as an explanatory device in certain quarters of classical Indian metaphysics. What is less well known is that in the theory of drama, which explicitly appeals to this ‘playelement’ in the human imagination, the tension and play between different competing rasas is made a requirement of good theater: na hy ekarasajaṃ kāvyam kiṃcid asti — “from one rasa alone, no artwork can be,” says Bharata.1 In (...) other words, there can be no play without contradiction. What is even less widely known is that one of the most frequently staged and widely commented upon Sanskrit plays, Śūdraka’s Little Clay Cart, combines.. (shrink)

What can money do? Can it be put to work to address deepening forms of social and economic inequality associated with the financial crisis, ongoing recession and still unfolding politics of austerity? Can we have faith in money as an injustice-remedying substance in a crisis-ridden and (still thoroughly) financialised reality? While the latter scenario is implied in recent feminist calls to redistribute resources to redress widening socio-economic inequalities under austerity, in this article I suggest that such a (...) redistributive logic fails to account for the shifting capacities of resources, including the capacities of money. To track these shifting capacities, I revisit the demands of the 1970s women's liberation movement and especially the assumptions at play in these demands that money both measure and distribute justice. While these assumptions were arguably politically efficacious in that moment, in the contemporary present, pervasive financialisation has involved a material transformation to the capacities of money, a transformation that, I will suggest, leaves its justice-distributing potential in doubt. This article therefore not only calls for careful exploration of the capacities of resources in analyses of crisis, recession and austerity, but also for feminist theory to rethink redistributive justice in the light of such transformations. Central to these considerations is money in the wages form. (shrink)

Astonishment that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. It is not the beginning of any insight, unless it is that the idea of history from which it comes is untenable.And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?In 1940 the exiled German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin warned that fidelity to a vision of history as (...) progress risked normalizing the remy-thologization of politics.1 Recent events have underlined the urgency, both for thought and for action, of rejecting the same unphilosophical astonishment in our own time. In the face of political... (shrink)

The ability of very wealthy individuals (or, as I will call them, the ‘super-rich’) to turn their economic power into political power has been—and remains—an important cause of political inequality. In response, this paper advocates an original solution. Rather than solving the problem through implementing a comprehensive conception of political equality, or through enforcing complex rules about financial disclosure etc., I argue that we should impose a choice on the super-rich. The super-rich must choose between (i) forfeiting the things that (...) make them super-rich, i.e., pay a 100 % tax on their wealth above a certain level, or, (ii) they must forfeit some of their political rights. These rights include entitlements to fund political parties; to stand for office; and to work or volunteer for political parties. The right to vote, though, is not limited. I defend my proposal against non-consequentialist and consequentialist objections. I also argue that it avoids two problems that many attempts to reduce political inequality face; these are the political egalitarian’s dilemma and the problem of political equality’s relative moral importance. (shrink)

The contribution examines Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the fictitiousness of the commodity description of money, and its suitability as a reference for the analysis of the commodification of money within contemporary markets for credit and finance. Any critique of the commodification of money that draws on Polanyi’s influential argument should distinguish between two fundamentally different meanings of the occurrence of money as a commodity: the institutional system that makes some commodity money versus the commercial practice (...) that turns money into a commodity. Only a particular strand of Polanyi’s analysis provides a point of reference for a comprehensive critique of the commodification of money, rather than the monetization of some type of commodity. Departing from the aspects of Polanyi’s analysis that are specific to the political economy of the gold standard, the article draws on Polanyi’s material account of the essential contributions of public organization and social convention in the constitution of money. On these grounds, the commodification of money is potentially objectionable as the social disembedding of a common public institution. (shrink)

Money performs its economic functions best when its value remains stable over time. This Article explores how that desideratum was achieved, or not achieved, under five identifiable monetary regimes in economic history. Transitions from one regime to another resulted from the demands of economic growth, which some regimes met better than others. The modern fiat money regime is optimal in most economic respects. Whatever amount of money needed to accommodate growth can be supplied at minimal costs. But (...) political control over money creation can be used to increase the short-term control over economic resources of those in power and their constituents. When such debasements of money have occurred, the political economy of every regime interfered with achieving optimal long-term economic outcomes by unleashing inflation. How might the modern fiat money regime avoid that result? (shrink)

What is the relevance of morality today? Eden Collinsworth enlists the famous, the infamous, and the heretofore unheard-of to unravel how we make moral choices in an increasingly complex and ethically flexible age. To call these unsettling times is an understatement: our political leaders are less and less respectable; in the realm of business, cheating, lying, and stealing are hazily defined; and in daily life, rapidly changing technology offers permission to act in ways inconceivable without it. Yet somehow, this hasn (...) t quite led to a complete free-for-all people still draw lines around what is acceptable and what is not. Collinsworth sets out to understand how and why. In her intrepid quest, she squares off witha prime minister, the editor of London s Financial Times, a holocaust survivor, a pop star, and a former commander of the U.S. Air Force to grapple with the impracticality of applying morals to foreign policy; precisely when morality gets lost in the making of money; what happens to morality without free will; whether immoral women are just those having a better time; why celebrities have become the new moral standard-bearers; and if testosterone is morality s enemy or its hero.". (shrink)

The point, for the 946,326th time is that people get elected to office by currying the favor of powerful interest groups. They don’t get elected for their excellence as political philosophers.Congress has consistently failed to solve some serious problems with the cost, effectiveness, and safety of pharmaceuticals. In part, this failure results from the pharmaceutical industry convincing legislators to define policy problems in ways that protect industry profits. By targeting campaign contributions to influential legislators and by providing them with selective (...) information, the industry manages to displace the public’s voice in developing pharmaceutical policy. (shrink)

The present debate on constitutional rights aims to protect the individual against the intrusive power of the state. Analysing the precarious relationship between art and money, the authors argue that constitutional rights need to be extended into the regimes of private governance. This requires four fundamental changes. (1) Constitutional rights can no longer be limited to the protection of individual actors. Instead, they need to be extended to guarantees of freedom of discourses. (2) The new experience of the twentieth (...) century is that totalizing tendencies have their origin not only in politics, but also in other fields of action, especially in technology, science, and the economy. Thus, a discursive concept of constitutional rights should be directed against any social system with totalizing tendencies. (3) Instead of concentrating on centres of economic and social power, constitutional rights in the private sphere should focus on the specific communicative medium of the expansionist social system involved. (4) This excludes the direct analogy of a ‘right’ as a quasispatial exclusion zone. More significant guarantees of discursive autonomy could be found in a ‘proceduralization’ of constitutional rights. (shrink)

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Dhikru Adewale Yagboyaju, Antonia Taiye Simbine Party system and the administration of political parties are critical factors in determining the direction of politics and democracy. Three political parties contested at the inception of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic in 1999, but the number increased to more than 91 as at 2019. This paper raises fundamental questions as to whose interest – public or private interest of (...) promoters and financiers - these parties serve, and whether the increase in the number of political parties has significantly entrenched democratic values in the country? These questions are compelling because of several events in political party operations in the 20 years of the Fourth Republic. These include controversial and vexatious party primaries preceding every major election, often leading to protracted and distractive litigations and rampant political defections. Unregulated use of money has, in particular, restrained ample participation by women and youths, while violence is almost becoming a norm and permanent characteristic of the electoral and political system. The paper draws data from secondary documentary sources for its conceptual and theoretical contents. Primary data are generated from events analyses by the authors as observers at party conventions and other meetings for the selection of candidates for political offices as well as during general elections. This is complimented by content analyses of relevant documents including electoral laws, court and law reports, and reports by special committees such as the Electoral Reform Committee. A combination of the ecological approach and conspiratorial theory is deployed for the paper’s analytic frame. (shrink)

Why, when confronted with policy alternatives that could improve patient care, public health, and the economy, does Congress neglect those goals and tailor legislation to suit the interests of pharmaceutical corporations? In brief, for generations, the pharmaceutical industry has convinced legislators to define policy problems in ways that protect its profit margin. It reinforces this framework by selectively providing information and by targeting campaign contributions to influential legislators and allies. In this way, the industry displaces the public's voice in developing (...) pharmaceutical policy. Unless citizens mobilize to confront the political power of pharmaceutical firms, objectionable industry practices and public policy will not change. Yet we need to refine this analysis. I propose a research agenda to uncover pharmaceutical influence. It develops the theory of dependence corruption to explain how the pharmaceutical industry is able to deflect the broader interests of the general public. It includes empirical studies of lobbying and campaign finance to uncover the means drug firms use to: (1) shape the policy framework adopted and information used to analyze policy; (2) subsidize the work of political allies; and (3) influence congressional voting. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 59-79 [Access article in PDF] Money and Sovereignty in Early Modern France Jotham Parsons [The mint official] must above all seek integrity in the moneys, on which our features are imprinted and on which the general good depends. For what would be safe if our image were offended, and if that which a subject ought to venerate in his heart (...) were immediately violated by a sacrilegious hand? 1Early modern French commentators on money and monetary policy were fond of quoting this very late antique chancery formula; 2 it even appears in the epigraph to one unpublished commonplace book on the subject from the early seventeenth century. 3 Its popularity was no doubt due partly to the fact that classical literature contained few other theoretical statements on the practicalities of issuing money. 4 It also showed how deeply classical humanism had shaped economic thought, as it had done to all of French political culture. This was apparent as early as 1514 in Guillaume Budé's scholarly classic, De Asse et partibus ejus. 5 By 1600 these influences had ensconced themselves so firmly that economic writers found it nearly impossible to talk about money without a [End Page 59] full panoply of classical erudition. 6 In France the second half of the sixteenth century saw the rise of a specialized, expert, and increasingly systematic tradition of monetary thought. Despite its classical vocabulary, this economic literature was in many ways "modern" in its methods, ambitions, and subject. While developing an account which aspired to a scientific explanation of commercial society and of how government and money interacted, the French commentators came to a partial realization of how radically their own society differed from those which had gone before. In this respect the prevailing climate of thought about money influenced even a writer as non-technical as Michel de Montaigne.Traditionally, scholarly treatment of early modern French economic texts has focused on a relatively small range of issues and authors. One such issue, the origins of the "quantity theory of money" (with Jean Bodin as its hero), is notable for its sterility, since that concept was not and could not have been meaningful to contemporaries. 7 The origin and development of "mercantilism" or, more broadly, of "political economy" in general, has proven a more fruitful subject of inquiry. 8 Undeniably, the changing relationships among governments, merchants, and the economy were a major public issue and, in the seventeenth century, a major site of theoretical reflection on the nature of political power generally. Even so, an excessive concentration on mercantilism is dangerous, for however one defines it, it was not the first, and for a long time not the most significant, economic discourse in France. Rather, from the 1560s well into the seventeenth century, French discussions of economic issues centered on very concrete problems brought about by the government's obligation to issue and maintain a stable currency. 9 While one would search this literature in vain for the specific doctrines of modern economics, I argue that it did represent a real achievement in the early modern understanding of commerce and the state. Though they have not received their due from scholars, the writers who took part in these debates formed a large and influential school with close ties to the actual institutions of government. 10 The French monetary theorists did an enormous amount [End Page 60] to set the stage for the mercantilist era. They developed a detailed notion of monetary economics as a specialized discipline, and above all they placed money and economic policy in the context of a multi-national system of commercial states. In so doing, they sought to comprehend and control not just money but the modern state itself.Early modern money was perched uncomfortably between commodity and fiat. Bewildering varieties of coins circulated, composed of all sorts of alloys. The government assigned a face value for each coin which it authorized to circulate in the abstract accounting unit called the "money of account." 11 This value was almost always greater than... (shrink)

Against the background of the contemporary debate about financialisation, the paper conceptualises the capitalist labour economy as fundamentally a monetary system. It argues that money is not a capitalist means of organising its labour economy but that it is rather a capitalist end. The argument examines and finds wanting conceptions of money in political economy, including Keynesianism and neoliberalism, and argues that the debate about financialisation is fundamentally based on the propositions of political economy. It holds that Marx’s (...) critique of political economy conceives of money as the form of value and expounds money-making as the purpose of the capital labour economy. Thus, the labour theory of value is fundamentally a monetary theory of value, labour is the means of valorisation, and that is, of money in process, and as such capital. Making money out of money is capital as its most rational. In the form of credit, money posits wealth as a claim on future surplus value. (shrink)

This article argues that major cases of electoral reform across democracies in Asia in recent years can be explained as institutional measures aimed at curbing corruption and . More specifically, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand rid themselves of their extreme candidate-centered electoral systems as a means to encourage politicians to invest in collective party labels, while Indonesia discarded its extremely party-centered electoral system to increase the accountability of individual politicians. The article thus disagrees with scholars who argue that recent electoral reform (...) should be understood as part of a wider project by Asian governments to engineer a majoritarian form of democracy. Instead, the comparative analysis shows that democracies across Asia, in line with global trends in institutional design, have been their electoral systems, moving them closer towards the ideal of electoral. (shrink)

More and more people would like to migrate, but find that every state places barriers in their way. At the same time, most governments not only permit but court foreign investment. Can this difference between the treatment of people and the treatment of money be justified? This book asks this question from the point of view of five different ethical perspectives: liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, Marxism, natural law and political realism. -- FROM BOOK JACKET.

Following the catastrophic events of the 2008 global financial crisis, an anonymous hacker released Bitcoin to claw back power from commercial and central banks. Its underlying architecture, blockchain, is now championed for delivering a decentralised global economy--a world free from hierarchy and control. Money Code Space shatters these emancipatory claims by revealing acute geographies of power that lie behind blockchain networks. Drawing on first-hand experience in cryptocurrency communities and start-up companies from Silicon Valley to London, Jack Parkin untangles the (...) complex web of culture, politics, and economics that truly drive decentralisation. (shrink)

SUMMARY The apothecary occupied a liminal position in early modern society between profit and healing. Finding ways to distance their public image from trade was a common problem for apothecaries across Europe. This article uses the case of a Bolognese apothecary, Filippo Pastarino, to address the question of how early modern apothecaries chose to represent themselves to political authorities and to the wider public. ‘Mercy’, alongside ‘craft’, was a pillar of apothecaries’ social identity. By contrast, no matter how central financial (...) transactions (‘money’) were to their activity, apothecaries did not want to be perceived as merchants. Thus, the assistance and advice apothecaries provided to patients and customers resulted as central aspects of their social role. In this context, Bolognese apothecaries aimed to defend their current status, which had been challenged by naturalist Ulysses Aldrovandi, city authorities and local monasteries. However, Pastarino's claims can also be seen as antecedents to the self-legitimizing strategy that seventeenth-century artisans deployed when faced with the need to enhance their new status as natural philosophers. The present study attributes a name, a date of birth and a shop to Filippo Pastarino, revising previous interpretations. More broadly, by focusing on how these artisans defended their position in the city it enriches our understanding of the self-representation of apothecaries. (shrink)

Medieval coin plays an essential role in the imagined history of money: it figures as the primal "commodity money" — a natural medium, spontaneously adopted by parties in exchange who converge upon a metal like silver to represent the value of other goods. As a natural medium with a price objectively established through trade, commodity money appears to offer an independent means of measure in the market. But as the history offered here reveals, medieval money was (...) nothing like its imagined alternative. England’s early coin became a medium when the government began to spend and tax in that unit of account, took coin as a mode of payment, and allowed it to be transferred between people in the meantime. Individuals participated in the arrangement, paying for coin in exchange for the unique quality — liquidity — that set money apart from a commodity. That quality was orchestrated by the very channels that brought public and private together in the project of making a medium. In fact, insofar as the English equated money with the commodity it contained, they engineered instability into the heart of their medium. Depreciating coin — diluting its commodity content — offered a cure. It also confirmed that coin had never been the "commodity money" imagined in later accounts. Coin was, instead, a constitutional medium, one that related the government to its participants and thus helped to configure the world it appeared merely to measure. (shrink)

This essay responds to “Money as Art: The Form, the Material, and Capital” by the Marxist economist Costas Lapavitsas with refer-ence to the triple manifestation of crisis in the United States dur-ing the spring months of 2020. By triangulating the role of money in the COVID-19 pandemic, the ensuing mass unemployment, and the historical nationwide revolt in response to the police mur-der of George Floyd predicated on a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, Nicholas Huber makes a three-part claim. First, that (...) acceptance of the Marxist theory of fetishism forecloses the possibility of conceiv-ing of capitalist money as art in the sense developed by Lapavitsas, insofar as the latter tends toward transhistorical concepts of both art and money. Following from this, any aesthetic function of mon-ey in the capitalist mode of production is inseparable from its total social function; that is, capitalist money is at once an economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic mediation unlike any other. Finally, Huber draws on Louis Marin’s typology of the frame in correspond-ence with Erik Olin Wright’s integrated class analytic framework to argue that the question of whether money is art or not leads us to a dead end. Huber suggests that a crisis such as the one unfolding in 2020 raises instead the more challenging question of what social system must come into being, such that a theory of capitalist money as art becomes intelligible. (shrink)

In the context of Spinoza's psychological and political theory, money appears as a profound social problem. I agree with Frédéric Lordon and André Orléan that Spinoza's psychological theory can explain how multiple agents can converge on a single monetary good as a means of payment. I disagree, however, with their further claim that this convergence brings an end to rivalrous conflict among those agents. Instead, I argue, it intensifies and concentrates this rivalry, threatening the very bonds that hold society (...) together. Yet money is, on Spinoza's account, necessary for commerce, and commerce is necessary for humans to live together. The social problem that thus arises is that of ensuring that money can play its vital role in supporting commerce without giving way to destructive rivalries that can destroy society. My interpretation of Spinoza on these points is influenced by the theory of René Girard, with which Spinoza's account has some striking parallels. (shrink)

Japan and China have long resisted the Western trend of organ transplantation from brain‐dead patients, based on a ‘Confucian’ respect for integrity of ancestors’ bodies. While their general publics continue to harbor grave doubts about such practices, their medical and political elites are hastening towards the road of organ‐harvesting and organ‐marketing, largely for economic reasons. This report illustrates the ways that economics is motivating brain‐death legislation in Japan and criminal executions in China.

It is no exaggeration to say that American health policy is frequently subordinated to budgetary policies and procedures. The Affordable Care Act was undeniably ambitious, reaching health care services and underlying health as well as health insurance. Yet fiscal politics determined the ACA’s design and guided its implementation, as well as sometimes assisting and sometimes constraining efforts to repeal or replace it. In particular, the ACA’s vulnerability to litigation has been the price its drafters paid in exchange for fiscal-political (...) acceptability. Future health care reformers should consider whether the nation is well served by perpetuating such an artificial relationship between financial commitments and health returns. (shrink)

The debate in the Oxford Union on 29 January 2010 was on the motion "This House believes that in politics, money talks loudest". Ted Honderich's speech in support of the motion was followed by those of Stuart Wheeler, known for his contribution of £5,000,000 to the Conservative Party, and of Hugo Rifkind, a columnist for The Times and The Spectator . The motion was opposed by Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute, Lord Oakeshott the Liberal Democrat Treasury (...) spokesman, and Dr. Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. In the vote at the end, the motion was carried. The debate took place the evening of the day when Tony Blair appeared to defend himself in the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war. (shrink)