Civilizing Money , livre ebook

Civilizing Money
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Clipped Coins, Abused Words, and Civil Government: John Locke s Philosophy of Money George Caffentzis


Caffentzis has been the philosopher of the anti-capitalist movement from the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. A historian of our own times, he carries the political wisdom of the twentieth century into the twenty-first. Here is capitalist critique and proletarian reasoning fit for our time.
-Peter Linebaugh, author of The Magna Carta Manifesto
Civilizing Money
Hume, his Monetary Project, and the Scottish Enlightenment
George Caffentzis
Foreword by Peter Linebaugh
First published 2021 by Pluto Press
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Copyright © Constantine George Caffentzis 2021
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material in this book. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in this respect and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions.
The right of Constantine George Caffentzis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Foreword
An Autobiographical Preface
Introduction: Who is a Philosopher of Money?
PART I: HUME AND HIS CLASS S PROBLEMATIC
1. On the Scottish Origins of Civilization
2. Civilizing the Highlands: Hume, Money and the Annexing Act
3. Hume s Monetary Education in Bristol
PART II: HUME S PHILOSOPHY AND HIS STRATEGY
4. Why was Hume a Metallist?
5. Did Hume read Berkeley s The Querist ? Notions and Conventions in their Philosophies of Money
6. Fiction or Counterfeit? Specie or Paper?
7. Wages and Money: Pegasus Mirror
Conclusion: Locke, Berkeley and Hume as Philosophers of Money
Coda: A Critique of Marx s Thesis 11 on Feuerbach
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1.1 Contemporary engravings showing the Gordon Riots and burning of Newgate: An engraving published by Alexander Hogg circa 1781 in London
1.2 Contemporary engravings showing the Gordon Riots and burning of Newgate: A satirical print condensing many events from the riots published in London in 1781
1.3 Sawney Bean the Cannibal from the Newgate Calendar
1.4 The Battle of Culloden/Blàr Chùil Lodair and its aftermath: Scotch Pride Humbled or the Rebellion Crushed
1.5 The Battle of Culloden/Blàr Chùil Lodair and its aftermath: The final confrontation of the Jacobite uprisings in 1745 as represented by David Morier in 1746
1.6 The Annexing Act: The frontispiece of the Act for annexing certain forfeited estates in Scotland to the crown unalienably
1.7 The Annexing Act: The first page of the Act for annexing certain forfeited estates in Scotland to the crown unalienably
1.8 The Highland Dress Act and Disarmament Act: Images of Highland soldiers in regimental garb published in London in 1743
1.9 The Highland Dress Act and Disarmament Act: Images of Highland soldiers in regimental garb published in London in 1743
1.10 The Highland Dress Act and Disarmament Act: The abstract for An Act for the more effectual securing the peace of the Highlands
1.11 Satirical anti-Jacobite broadsides from1745: The personification of industry is abandoned by Britannia
1.12 Satirical anti-Jacobite broadsides from1745: An image of Prince Charles in Roman armor with a foolscap and tartan leggings
3.1 Sawny Weatherbeaten or Judas Iscariot
3.2 Sawney in the Bog House
3.3 Sawney in the Bog House : A Highlander come to London using the bog-house for the first time
3.4 From 1745 through the 1790s, the motif of Sawney appears frequently in popular print
3.5 Hume in Bristol: The façade of 8 Queen s Street in Edinburgh
3.6 Hume in Bristol: The equestrian statue of King William III
3.7 The Sugar Trade: Barbarities in the West Indies
4.1 Scottish paper and metallic currency: An early paper currency issued by the Bank of Scotland in 1723
4.2 Scottish paper and metallic currency: The front and back of a 1602 Silver Thistle Merk from the reign of James VI (1567-1625)
4.3 A View of the Deluge of Scotch paper Currency for English Gold, an anonymous engraving from 1772
5.1 The canonizing of Hume: David Hume s statue, sculpted by Alexander Stoddart ( Sculptor in Ordinary to the Queen in Scotland ) in 1995
5.2 The Querist : The fourth printing of the Dublin edition of Bishop Berkeley s The Querist from 1750
6.1 This engraving and the following image indicates something of the contentious public debate surrounding the use of paper currency
6.2 Midas, Transmuting all into Gold Paper : A satirical print by James Gillray from 1797
8.1 The clipping of coins: Two examples of clipped silver shillings: a 1652 Pine-Tree Shilling from Massachusetts and a Shilling from the reign of Charles XII in Sweden (1697-1718)
TABLES
2.1 Diagram of Hume s theory of the transition of energetic states
6.1 Table summarizing Hume s conception of natural and artificial fictions
7.1 Chart showing the relation between the self, money and the wage in Locke, Berkeley and Hume
8.1 A chart showing the relative positions of Locke, Berkeley and Hume
Acknowledgments
First, I must acknowledge my Midnight Notes collective friends and comrades who would not let me abandon the project of completing the trilogy on the Philosophy of Money when I was tempted to do so. Every time we got together, some one would ask, How is the Hume book going? Thanks for asking!
I thank the members of the Kress Seminar on the History of Economics, especially Paul Wendt, for their useful comments on an earlier version of the chapter on Why Was Hume a Metallist?
The project of completing Civilizing Money and the trilogy of books on the philosophy of money needed new energy, but my meeting with Arlen Austin changed all that. He brought passion, humor and technological capacity to the project that got me over the moat of authorial inertia. A thousand thanks, Arlen, for your generosity with your energy and knowledge!
Finally and inevitably, I thank Silvia Federici for her thoughtful advice throughout the Philosophy of Money project. She is a philosopher who is a walking and talking counter-example to Marx s Thesis 11 on Feuerbach.
The following essays have been previously published and are reproduced by permission :

Chapter 1 On the Scottish Origins of Civilization was originally published in Silvia Federici (Ed.), Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and its Others (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1995).
Chapter 2 Civilizing the Highlands: Hume, Money and the Annexing Act was originally published in Historical Reflections 37 (2005): 51-60.
An earlier version of Chapter 4 Why Was Hume a Metallist? was originally published as Hume, Money, and Civilization; Or, Why Was Hume a Metallist? Hume Studies 27(2) (2001): 301-335.
Chapter 5 Did Hume Read Berkeley s The Querist ? was originally published in Timo Airaksinen and Bertil Belfrage (Eds.), Berkeley s Lasting Legacy: 300 Years Later (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011)
An earlier version of Chapter 6 Fiction or Counterfeit? Specie or Paper? was originally published as Fiction or Counterfeit? David Hume s Interpretations of Paper and Metallic Money, in Carl Wennerlind and Margaret Schabus (Eds.), David Hume s Political Economy (London: Routledge, 2008).
Foreword
1.
Caffentzis writes that his project of the philosophy of money began in August 1971, when President Nixon severed the link between the dollar and gold. He further developed the project through SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and URPE (Union of Radical Political Economics). It began to take form in his writing with Zerowork (when our paths crossed). Did the end of gold mean the end of work and did the end of work mean the end of capitalism? It achieved a major breakthrough with the Wages for Housework campaign. Owing to the crisis of the oil market and then the dangers of nuclear energy, he formulated an approach to the philosophy of money in which class analysis was combined with philosophical epistemology and the specifics of historical conjuncture. The first volume of what was to become a trilogy was completed in Calabar, Nigeria, at the time of structural adjustment under the IMF (International Monetary Fund). 1 Political presentism and autobiographical reflection enliven the philosophic pages. He has venerable examples of such combination from Clarendon s The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1702-1704) to Gibbon s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1789).
The approach in all three studies-Locke, Berkeley and Hume-could not be more different than what we were taught in school. Traditional teaching had it that these three formed in the eighteenth century a coherence of empiricism, which could take its prideful place alongside Newton s Principia or Bacon s Essays of the seventeenth century. Known as British empiricism in contrast to the rationalist philosophers of the continent (Leibniz, Spinoza), it found its place in the Anglo-American curriculum, and became one of the means through wh