Social-Contractarian Money

Abstract

Abstract State capacity, stable currencies, and well functioning financial systems seem to be ‘package deals’ – one cannot have one without having all. I show that the intimate functional links among states, monies, and financial systems, ubiquitous across history and geography as they are, are not accidental. I do so by analytically ‘deriving’ first law and the polity, then money and finance, from a temporally extended implicit covenant that is both grounded in and facilitative of ongoing joint agency among persons. This lends to state and money alike their shared normative and, once formally systematized, legal character. I indicate throughout how this shared genesis, function, and normative character keep state, money, and ultimately finance practically ‘joined at the hip’, and manifest how polity and economy, indeed our very political and productive selves, are thus joined as well. To recognize and to ‘own’ this, I conclude, is not only to see that ‘the public’ must take a far more explicit role in finance, but also in a sense finally to own our own selves.