John Locke and the Politics of Monetary Depoliticization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12740414 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stefan Eich (0000-0001-5285-1112, Princeton University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-28 |
| Publication date | 2018-06-29 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Intellectual History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1479-2443 • E-ISSN: 1479-2451 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1479244318000185 |
| OpenAlex | W2810555170 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 60 |
During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without devaluation by insisting on silver money's “intrinsick value.” The Great Recoinage has ever since been seen as a crucial step toward the Financial Revolution and it was long regarded as Locke's most consequential achievement. This article places Locke's intervention in the context of the postrevolutionary English state at war and reads his monetary pamphlets as an integral, if largely neglected, part of his political philosophy. Instead of taking Locke's insistence on “intrinsick value” itself at face value, I argue that it was precisely money's fragile conventionality that threatened its role as a societal bond of trust. In response to this fragility and corruptibility, Locke tied money by fiat to an initially arbitrary but unalterable quantity of metal. While Locke's argument contributed to the modern naturalization of money, it arose from a paradoxical political act of monetary depoliticization
Argument (complex analysis · Context (archaeology · Currency · Devaluation · Economics · Law and economics · Monetary economics · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · State (computer science · Value (mathematics · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence
The Ideology of Sovereign Money
Blut- und schmutztriefend«
The City-State of Boston
Trust and Distributive Justice in John Locke's Politics of Money
A Factory Afield
Josiah Child, Interest Rates, and John Locke's “For a General Naturalization”
Credit and the Problem of Trust in the Thought of John Locke, C. 1668–1704
On land, life, and labour
Silver and the Social in Locke's Monetary Thought
The financial revolution in England
Economic thought and ideology in seventeenth century England
The Big Problem of Small Change
Locke, Language and Early-Modern Philosophy
Political Political Theory
Locke
John Locke
John Locke and America
A Discourse on Property
Pufendorf
History of Economic Analysis
Casualties of Credit
An Essay concerning Human Understanding
Wealth and Virtue
Before the Deluge
The Economy of the Word
Liberalism in Empire
Politics in Commercial Society
The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, Vol. 5
Clipped Coins, Abused Words and Civil Government
The Elusive Sovereign
The Market as a Matter of Money
Making Money
Economic Sentiments
Two Manuscripts by Charles Davenant
The Pound Sterling
British Monetary Experiments, 1650-1710
The Great Recoinage of 1696 to 1699
Enclosing in God's Name, Accumulating for Mankind
John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government
The Risks of Political Authority
Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism
Great Transformation
Lowndes and Locke on the Value of Money
Locke, Liberalism and the Natural Law of Money
John Locke, the Great Recoinage, and the Origins of the Board of Trade
The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |