Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2025

Published In

The Review Of Politics

Abstract

Eich’s book is a tour de force. It takes us through six episodes in which the history of political theory and the history of political economy intersect through the topic of money. From Aristotle to Locke and Fichte and then through to Marx and Keynes before a final episode costarring Hayek, Rawls, Habermas, and Walzer, we are treated to a fascinating set of reflections on what money is and should be, each articulated in the face of a particular historical crisis. This approach gives us a new way of thinking about what is salient in the history of political thought, but it also helps us think about the present. Eich hopes to move us beyond narrow debates over the depoliticization of money by insisting that money is always already political even when it announces itself as antipolitical, so that the real question is which conception of political life—which values but also which underlying social theory—we want to be embedded in monetary institutions. In explicitly tethering his patient, detailed historical scholarship to the broader goal of stimulating and invigorating reflection on one of the central issues of our own day, Eich tries to overcome the divide between historical work and contemporary debate.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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