Thomas Boccon-Gibod & Alban Mathieu (dir.), Monnaie, souveraineté et démocratie
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1Can there be a truly democratic money, and if so, under what conditions? This question runs as a leitmotiv through the collective volume Monnaie, souveraineté et démocratie edited by Thomas Boccon-Gibod, associate professor of philosophy at the university of Grenoble, and Alban Mathieu, holder of a doctorate in economics. The volume brings together thirteen scholars from economics, philosophy and sociology in what is a timely and readable contribution to the time-honored debate about the nature and purpose of money.
- 1 Mitchell-Innes Alfred, « The Credit Theory of Money », The Banking Law Journal, vol. 31, Dec.-Jan., (...)
2At the center of the different chapters is an investigation into the tensions and complementarities between three central concepts of Western political thought: money, sovereignty and democracy. To some extent, this problematization places Monnaie, souveraineté et démocratie within well-chartered territory, since the mutually defining relation between state power and money has been a recurring theme in the social sciences for at least a century. Indeed, as of the early 20th century, a number of theorists, perhaps most famously Georg Friedrich Knapp and Alfred Mitchell-Innes, argued that the value of money is ultimately anchored in the sovereign power of the state1. Furthermore, the state’s capacity to issue its own money has for long been considered to be a defining feature of its sovereignty. Acknowledging this fundamental interweaving between money and sovereignty, the contributors to the volume move however one step further by asking how money and monetary sovereignty relate to democracy, thereby raising the question of the democratic legitimacy of different monetary regimes.
3The book is divided into three thematic sections each of which approaches the conceptual triad mentioned above from different angle. The first thematic section is dedicated to answering the question whether there is a fundamental incompatibility between sovereignty and money on one hand and democracy on the other. In this endeavor, the authors discuss a wide array of topics ranging from Michel Foucault’s work on monetary thought in Ancient Greece (Marie Cuillerai), Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari’s writings on the State (Quentin Badaire) to the conditions of possibility for a genuine transnational democracy in the era of economic globalization (Colin Crouch) and the structural constraints that monetary unions impose on sovereign states with respect to their economic policy (Alban Mathieu).
4The epistemic potential of the volume’s original research question is arguably most obvious in this part of the book. The potentially antagonistic relation between monetary sovereignty and democracy is particularly well depicted in Benjamin Lemoine’s contribution to this section. In a fascinating chapter, drawing on numerous examples, Lemoine shows how state bureaucrats actively redefine what “sovereignty” means through their interactions with international private law firms and financial actors. The outcome of this process is that civil servants come to understand “sovereignty” as the state’s capacity to raise funds from private actors and that the demands of creditors vis-à-vis the State progressively outweigh those of the citizenry. It becomes therefore obvious that scholars studying money and finance should not unreflexively equate an increase in monetary sovereignty thusly conceived with a movement towards a more democratic economy. In this way, the chapter provides an interesting counterpoint to much of the critical literature on contemporary financial capitalism where the unifying normative horizon is a more or less unqualified call for a return of the state.
- 2 For an example of research within this tradition, see for instance the work of Stephanie Kelton: St (...)
5The second thematic section of the volume is dedicated to the questions of whether and how monetary policy can contribute to the establishment of a more democratic social order. To this end, Thibault Laurentjoye provides a brief summary and history of one of the most prominent intellectual endeavors to democratize money and to reclaim monetary sovereignty in recent years: the elaboration and popularization of Modern Monetary Theory2, a heterodox school of thought in monetary economics. In their contribution, Mathieu Dufour and Alban Mathieu ponder on the economic and institutional conditions that determine a state’s capacity to control the emission, distribution and circulation of money, in other words, its monetary sovereignty, which is itself a prerequisite for the implementation of democratic economic policy. Thomas Boccon-Gibod tackles the issue on a more fundamental level. Through an investigation into the history of the notion of “sovereignty” in public law, he discusses the tension, if not ultimate incompatibility between two different conceptions of sovereignty: sovereignty in a legal sense and the sovereignty of money, an idea developed notably in French institutional economics.
6Turning the section’s general theme upside down, Jean-Francois Ponsot shows how the loss of monetary sovereignty on behalf of the state can actually be an engine of economic democratization. According to Ponsot, such has been the case in Ecuador where the US-Dollar officially replaced the Ecuadorian Sucre as legal tender in 2000. In a surprising turn of events, policymakers in Ecuador, having lost control over their domestic currency, did manage to maintain some control over the national economy. Furthermore, and even more surprisingly, the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy has limited the potential for collusion between corruptible central bankers and domestic economic elites and thus remedied some of the economic inequities in the country.
7The third and final thematic section is a somewhat eclectic collection of four texts that tackle the issue of utopian forms of money as well as emerging technologies and their relation to the sovereign state and democracy. Here, regarding new technologies, the authors tend to emphasize in particular the challenges to sovereignty and democracy that they pose. Thus, Thierry Ménissier, in a general reflection on the implications of the abundance of digital data and the ever-faster progress being made in the field of artificial intelligence, points out that certain technology corporations progressively come to resemble political communities akin to the state, both in terms of the size of their user communities and regarding their functions. The ambition of Meta to issue its own currency has probably served as a wake-up call to many with respect to these developments. Mathieu Montalban, whose chapter dives into the political dynamics of cryptocurrencies, also signals that they defy the state’s sovereignty, the informatic code of the digital currency essentially coming to assume the role of traditional law. A bit of an outlier because only indirectly concerned with money, sovereignty or democracy, the contribution of Massimo Amato presents the work of Italian economist Claudio Napoleoni and in particular his philosophy of technology which lays the groundwork for a fundamental critique of economic orthodoxy.
- 3 See for instance this OECD Report on the regulation of personalized pricing practices in the digita (...)
- 4 Ibid., p. 12.
8This reader was particularly interested in Mathieu Amat’s contribution to the section about Georg Simmel’s monetary utopia, because it resonates unexpectedly with our contemporary situation. As Mathieu Amat makes it clear, Simmel’s utopian money is supposed to perform two potentially contradictory functions: it should serve the furthering of individuality for each of its users, – which is a feature of money in general as compared to other means of payment in kind according to Simmel –, while also preserving a significant degree of economic equality between the members of a given monetary community. For this to be the case, Simmel argues that monetary prices of goods and services would have to take into account the individual situation and the resources of the buyer. In other words, the more money one owns, the more one pays. With this built-in feature, money would be used as a means of exchange rather than being considered an end in itself, something to be accumulated for its own sake, since having more money would no longer increase one’s purchasing power. Interestingly, a distant cousin of Simmel’s equalizing money resurfaces in current discussions around “personalized pricing” where regulatory bodies and consumer groups voice the concern that e-commerce platforms might use big data analytics to offer different prices to consumers depending on their purported willingness to pay3. This time around, however, such differences in consumer prices are considered a danger to “liberal democracy”, not a means to achieving it4.
9As a whole, Monnaie, souveraineté et démocratie offers a wealth of insights and stimulating ideas about the politics of money. This is in no small part due to the thoughtful problematization formulated in the introduction which allows for a fruitful dialogue between political theory and political economy. Rather than providing a unified framework to study the relation between sovereignty, money and democracy, the volume traces a series of possible and sometimes diverging paths to approach the topic. As a side effect, the reader might sometimes feel at loss as to how certain chapters relate to the book’s initial aim and research question. To some extent, this is of course due to the nature of the book, bringing together a number of scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds working on a large variety of topics. Nevertheless, a longer introductive chapter as well as a conclusion recapitulating the main ideas would have helped the author of these lines to better follow the argumentation.
- 5 Eich Stefan, The currency of politics: The political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes, Prin (...)
10In spite of this minor reservation, Monnaie. souveraineté et démocratie brings an original and convincing perspective to the conversation around money, monetary systems and finance in the social sciences and humanities. This reader hopes that further research in the field will take seriously Thomas Boccon-Gibod and Alban Mathieu’s call for a stronger dialogue with certain strands of political philosophy and democratic theory. Such a dialogue might be particularly urgent in the present circumstances as we are living through a moment of “monetary interregnum”, as political scientist Stefan Eich suggested in a work published earlier this year5: many of our commonly held assumptions about money have been invalidated by the succession of crises over the last fifteen years. However, a new generally accepted conception of money has yet to emerge. The present volume could help to elaborate such a conceptual framework for a truly democratic money.
Notas
1 Mitchell-Innes Alfred, « The Credit Theory of Money », The Banking Law Journal, vol. 31, Dec.-Jan., 1914, p. 151-168; Knapp Georg Friedrich, Staatliche Theorie des Geldes, Munich, Duncker & Humblot, 1905. In France, this idea is probably most commonly associated with the writings of Michel Aglietta and André Orléan whose work several authors in the volume draw on: Aglietta Michel, Orléan André (dir.), La Monnaie souveraine, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1998.
2 For an example of research within this tradition, see for instance the work of Stephanie Kelton: Stephanie Kelton, Le mythe du déficit. La Théorie moderne de la monnaie et la naissance de l'économie du peuple, Paris, Les Liens qui libèrent, 2021, review by Ramzi Kebaïli for Lectures: https://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/lectures/50134.
3 See for instance this OECD Report on the regulation of personalized pricing practices in the digital era from 2018: https://one.oecd.org/document/DAF/COMP/WD(2018)150/en/pdf.
4 Ibid., p. 12.
5 Eich Stefan, The currency of politics: The political theory of money from Aristotle to Keynes, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2022.
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Tim Salzer, « Thomas Boccon-Gibod & Alban Mathieu (dir.), Monnaie, souveraineté et démocratie », Lectures [En línea], Reseñas, Publicado el 13 septiembre 2022, consultado el 11 diciembre 2024. URL : http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/lectures/57908 ; DOI : https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.4000/lectures.57908
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