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The Blood of the Commonwealth
War, the State, and the Making of World Money
In: Historical MaterialismInsisting on the status of money as a creature of both the market and the state, this article challenges dualistic understandings of capitalist imperialism as entailing two fundamentally distinct logics, one capitalist, the other territorial. In opposition to the dual-logics position, the article argues for the distinctiveness of capitalist money in terms of a complex but unitary socio-economic logic. The social dynamism of this logic involves the spatial-territorial extension of the domain of modern value relations, embodied in fully-capitalist money. Departing from the development of coinage in ancient Greece, the article proceeds to identify the 1690s in Britain as the decisive moment in the emergence of a new and distinctively capitalist form of (world) money, institutionally based upon the Bank of England, in which state debt was thoroughly integrated with private financial markets. The crucial role of the Bank of England in this new monetary system is shown to have pivoted on its capacities to finance Britain’s inter-colonial wars. Colonialism, war, slavery and dispossession underline the omnipresence of ‘blood and dirt’ (Marx) in the development and reproduction of capitalist impersonal power as expressed in world money. Undoing the impersonal power characteristic of bourgeois money thus entails undoing the economic dispossession of the labouring poor, which forms the basis of their ‘possession’ by capital.
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1
Hegel 1991, p. 23.
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3
As is argued powerfully in Seaford 2004.
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4
Howgego 1995, pp. 47–8, 97; Kraay 1976, pp. 73–4. ‘Archaic’ owls were first produced around 525 bce; the ‘classical’ variant emerged about fifty years later.
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7
Grierson 1977, p. 16. Ingham 2004, p. 4, insists on beginning with the ‘unit of account’ function of money. While this does refer to money’s operations as a measure of value, his account is a formalist and nominalist one having to do with how a specific standard of measure (unit of account) is selected, rather than with the social conditions which establish relations of commensuration and exchangeability in the first place.
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8
Grierson 1977, pp. 16–17. On archaic Greece, see Finley 1965, p. 67. For medieval and early-modern Europe, see Einaudi 1953.
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11
Innes 2004, p. 31.
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13
Polanyi 1968, p. 198.
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14
Grierson 1977, pp. 21–2. Some systems of fines were also governed by the social rank or status of the injured individual.
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15
Gerriets 1985, pp. 333–5. Interestingly, the cumal became a pure unit of account by the eighth century, when female slaves seem not to have been used as means of payment even though the unit, cumal, was used to measure fines, which would then be translated into amounts of silver, grain or cattle.
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16
Patterson 1982, p. 148.
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18
Patterson 1982, p. 178.
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19
Finley 1983, p. 75.
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21
Patterson 1982, pp. 25–6. See also McNally 2006.
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23
Melville-Jones 2005; Kraay 1964; Cook 1958, p. 261; Herodotus 2003, Book 1, Chapters 26–94.
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25
Dickson 1967, p. 399.
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28
Clapham 1966, p. 1.
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29
Brewer 1989, pp. 29, 38, 114, 40, 137. See also Jones 1988.
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32
Clapham 1966, p. 26.
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33
Clapham 1966, p. 101.
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35
Davies 2002, p. 282.
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37
Dickson 1967, pp. 254, 260, 273, 285.
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38
See Gerstenberger 2007, who tends, however, to underplay the centrality of what I have called ‘the autonomous power of money’ to the emergence of the impersonal bourgeois state-form.
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39
See Roberts 1977, pp. 59–76, and Roseveare 1991, p. 47.
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41
Li 1963, p. 53.
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42
Li 1963, p. 51; Horsefield 1960, p. 26.
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44
Wennerlind 2004, p. 147. So zealous was Newton in the cause of the death penalty as monetary policy that he had himself made a Justice of the Peace in order to oversee prosecutions personally.
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45
Craig 1963, p. 129. See also Gleick 2004, pp. 160–1; and Levenson 2009.
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47
For details see Levenson 2009, pp. 140–3.
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49
Locke 1824a, p. 84. This edition of Locke’s Works can be found online at <http://oll.libertyfund.org/people/john-locke>.
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50
Locke 1824b, pp. 191–2, 169–70, 158, 144.
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51
Locke 1824a, pp. 22, 6.
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52
Locke 1824b, p. 195.
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53
Locke 1824b, p. 169.
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54
Locke 1824a, pp. 49, 50.
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55
Vilar 1984, p. 205.
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56
Caffentzis 1989, p. 119, in a book that deserves a much wider readership in the literature on Locke, classical political economy and the rise of capitalism.
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57
Hobbes 1968, p. 300.
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59
Gleick 2004, pp. 142–5.
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60
Thomas 1997, pp. 199–201, 235–41.
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62
See Laslett 1957, who describes Locke’s colonialism as ‘a striking paradox’ (Laslett 1957, p. 371). For the argument that Locke’s position was anything but paradoxical, see McNally 1989, pp. 17–40.
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65
Roseveare 1991, p. 47.
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66
McNally 1993, Chapter 1.
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67
Beattie 2001, pp. 328–9.
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68
Valenze 2006, p. 234.
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69
Craven and Hay 1994, pp. 71–101.
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70
Rogers 1994, pp. 102–13.
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71
Jordan 1968, pp. 47–8.
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72
Valenze 2006, p. 240.
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73
Marx 1973, p. 326. Patterson 1982, pp. 24–6, explores these overlapping relations of slavery and wage-labour. The crucial intervention on these points is Banaji 1977, now reprinted in Banaji 2010.
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74
Locke 1963, 1.130.
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75
McNally 2012, Chapter 1.
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76
See Valenze 2006, pp. 72, 78–88, 161; and Flint 1998, p. 212.
-
77
Valenze 2006, p. 202.
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78
Harvey 2003, p. 27.
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79
Lefebvre 1991, pp. 86–8.
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80
Marx 1976, pp. 919, 922.
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81
Marx 1976, p. 925.
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84
Marx 1971, p. 253.
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85
See Anderson 2010.
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The Blood of the Commonwealth
War, the State, and the Making of World Money
In: Historical MaterialismInsisting on the status of money as a creature of both the market and the state, this article challenges dualistic understandings of capitalist imperialism as entailing two fundamentally distinct logics, one capitalist, the other territorial. In opposition to the dual-logics position, the article argues for the distinctiveness of capitalist money in terms of a complex but unitary socio-economic logic. The social dynamism of this logic involves the spatial-territorial extension of the domain of modern value relations, embodied in fully-capitalist money. Departing from the development of coinage in ancient Greece, the article proceeds to identify the 1690s in Britain as the decisive moment in the emergence of a new and distinctively capitalist form of (world) money, institutionally based upon the Bank of England, in which state debt was thoroughly integrated with private financial markets. The crucial role of the Bank of England in this new monetary system is shown to have pivoted on its capacities to finance Britain’s inter-colonial wars. Colonialism, war, slavery and dispossession underline the omnipresence of ‘blood and dirt’ (Marx) in the development and reproduction of capitalist impersonal power as expressed in world money. Undoing the impersonal power characteristic of bourgeois money thus entails undoing the economic dispossession of the labouring poor, which forms the basis of their ‘possession’ by capital.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 862 | 271 | 13 |
| Full Text Views | 642 | 91 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 981 | 214 | 7 |