Money and Violence
In this post, I’d like to discuss the section on violence in Nigel Dodd’s (2014) first chapter on the origins of money. This section basically discusses the works of Michel Aglietta and Andre Orléan. It strikes me as odd that this section is independent of the “Tribute” section (state theories of money) because in much of the literature in the anthropology of the state, state and violence are inseparable entities. Nevertheless, in the arena of money, Dodd writes, “mainstream theories of money posit violence as extrinsic to money… For this reason, violence usually features only on the periphery of monetary scholarship” (43). Let’s look at what Dodd writes about Aglietta and Orléan (heretofore AO).
AO root their theory of money in Rene Girard’s work. Girard posited that humans basically cannot choose something they want on their own. As fundamentally social creatures, we choose that which others around us want to possess. Our desires, therefore, come from wanting to possess what others want. Put more simply, we want to imitate others, what Girard called “mimetic desire.”
The problem here is that if we desire what others desire, we position ourselves as rivals to others around us. This is a pretty interesting claim because it smuggles in another assumption about humanity: that we are somehow inherently inclined to conflict with one another. So, we are social creatures because our desires arise from our relations with others, and because of those desires, we invariably rival one another. This is a pretty bold claim and strikes me as rather Hobbesian with regards to human nature. Be that as it may, AO decide to root their entire framework on Girard’s “mimetic desire.”
Money enters here as a mediator for human rivalry, but this is insofar as money is a product of an outside authority: “As a symbol of an authority that originates beyond the market and that can nevertheless enforce marketplace rules, money diverts mimetic desire and deflects violent struggle by channeling rivalry into contract” (44). As an outside force, money regulates rivalry insofar as it is generally accepted as legitimate, but as it enters into social relations, it can be used to deploy violence (because violence is inseparable from social relations). All monetary systems have this central tension between, on the one hand, centralization and homogenization, and on the other hand, fragmentation and individualization. As Dodd writes, “This is the tension between fractionnement and centralization, two contradictory tendencies that must be reconciled in any viable monetary system” (45).
This is actually a pretty fun approach and appears to suggest two versions of sovereignty. Sovereignty is a loaded term and gets thrown around a lot these days. Perhaps the most common meaning of sovereignty refers to a government’s control over the territory within its borders. We also often see it today in blockchain literature when there’s talk of self-sovereign individuals who have independent control over their personal data, money, and other forms of private property. But the forms of sovereignty I see in AO refer to notions of sovereign power that emerged in political philosophy and related disciplines.
First, there’s the notion of a state with the power to make law while simultaneously standing outside the law. Correspondingly, AO’s state is one that regulates social relations in markets with money but is also independent of markets themselves. This is essentially divine sovereignty, a form of power that figures like Bataille, Bodin, Machiavelli, Schmitt proposed: a sovereign — prince or otherwise — that can make law and break it whenever they want. Foucault would later describe this as the right to kill or let live. A contemporary example of this would be capital punishment: the state can prohibit murder and legitimately commit murder at the same time. It would seem at least that AO conform to this kind of version of the state as one that regulates society yet exists outside society.
The second version of sovereign power shows itself in money. As a product of the state, money stands outside society, and because of this, it carries great potency. As it enters social relations, those that wield money can also become associated with the potency of money and exercise a certain degree of sovereign power over society.
Marshall Sahlins (2008) proposed this form of sovereign power in his observation that a large number of kings across history and geography have been foreign — “stranger-kings.” He suggests a principle to explain this phenomenon, one based on structural theories between the inside and the outside. Society needs the outside to survive (think of resources, people, etc.) but it cannot control the outside and therefore fears it. The stranger-king is a carrier of the outside — a place of necessity yet danger, and therefore bears potency and power over society. Sahlins’ argument is not really about stranger-kings but more about reflecting on the potency of the outside, or the foreign. As a more immediate example, we can refer to what it means to be “global” — a position that carries considerable prestige. Likewise, foreign products in many cases contain something additional about them than local products might. This is the potency of the outside. With respect to money, as something that arises from an extrinsic place to society, those within society that can wield money — individuals, corporations, etc. — can imbue themselves with the potency of the outside and exercise greater consequences across society.
REFERENCES
Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The Social Life of Money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sahlins, Marshall. 2008. “The Stranger-King Or, Elementary Forms of the Politics of Life.” Indonesia and the Malay World 36 (105): 177–99.
