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A Critique of Lawson's Social Positioning Ingham
A Critique of Lawson's Social Positioning Ingham
doi:10.1093/cje/bex070
This article challenges Tony Lawson’s claim ( Lawson, 2016) that his ontology of
money as the ‘social positioning’ of ‘prior value’ is more sustainable than prominent
existing theories and is able therefore to reconcile their putative incompatibility.
1. Introduction
‘Strictly speaking, of course, there are no such things as pounds, euros and dollars;
these are mere abstract accounting units and money itself, or the material of money,
I am suggesting, is always rather more concrete (if not always observable) thing or
stuff.’ (Lawson, 2016, p. 984)
‘The eye has never seen, nor the hand touched a dollar. All that we can touch or see
is a promise to pay or satisfy a debt due for an amount called a dollar [which is] intan-
gible, immaterial, abstract.’ (Mitchell Innes, p. 159)
Tony Lawson has recently advanced the bold claim that his ontology of ‘social posi-
tioning’ can resolve an antinomy in the theory of money that has endured since the
Methodenstreit in the social sciences during the early twentieth century.1 Does money
have to be something that already has—in Lawson’s terms—‘prior’, or ‘intrinsic’,
value; or, is it a ‘credit’, or ‘token’, whose denominated value as a prospective means
for settling debt is constituted entirely by its social construction and acceptance? The
dispute was acrimonious because the distinction between money as an exchangeable
commodity and as a token means of payment of debts expressed a deeper opposition
between two quite different social ontologies—the real bone of contention. Unlike
Lawson, I agree with Schumpeter’s opinion at the time that the two theories of money
were by their very nature incompatible (Schumpeter, [1917] 1956, p. 649).
© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
All rights reserved.
2
I shall not deal with Lawson’s discussions of Keynes, Marx and Mitchell Innes, which are presented in
such a way as to support his ontology of ‘social positioning’. Needless to say, these differ in some respects
from my own interpretations.
3
See Ellis (1934).
4
The question of the social conception of value that could have provided the analogue for the monetary
measure cannot be pursued here. See Ingham (2004, pp. 90–93); and the most thorough analysis in Peacock
(2013, ch. 4 and 5).
5
See Ingham (2000) on Keynes’s ‘Babylonian Madness’.
6
Keynes understood that the state theory of money should not be taken literally. He referred to the state
or community and the force of law or custom—i.e., authority—in declaring the unit of account and means
of settlement for contracts.
7
Lawson believes that Keynes’s ‘conception fits easily with the one I am defending’ (2016, p. 983), but
nonetheless pursues his concern with the ‘material’ and ‘concrete’ nature of money.
8
See Knapp’s ([1924] 1973) distinction between ‘valuableness’ and realised monetary ‘value’.
9
For Hicks, all three typical monetary transactions—payment in advance; deferred payment; payment on
the spot—are debt contracts (Hicks, 1989, p. 41).
10
It is significant that units of account often continue to denominate debt contracts even when the extant
form of money has been rejected in favour of payment in kind. For example, see Woodruff ’s (2013) account
of Russia in the 1990s.
11
See Orléan (2014) for a critique of the theory of ‘substance value’ in economics.
12
It has been argued that the inability to impose a uniform unit of account and the persistence of payment
in kind impeded capitalism development in China (Weber, 1951, p. 3; Ingham, 2015).
13
I should not exclude myself from those who have focussed on the list! However, I did pose the question
of whether all functions had to be fulfilled for something to be money, and if not, which ones were specific.
I followed Keynes on money of account (Ingham, 2004, pp. 3–6).
14
Clower ([1967] 1984).
15
See Orléan’s thought experiment (genèse conceptuélle) to demonstrate the necessity of money for multi-
lateral market transactions (Orléan, 2014, pp. 113–20).
16
Economic theory’s claim that ‘higgling and haggling’ in myriad bilateral transactions will eventually
produce a genuine multilateral market based on prices is implausible. It is significant that Walras had to
introduce an auctioneer and a numeraire into his model in order that it could function.
17
Even Menger conceded this point; see Orléan (2014, p. 127, note 32). In a money economy, I know
that my stock of wealth is £1m by referring to current prices. Tony Lawson has a stock of tradable things,
but has no means of establishing his wealth until the barter exchanges have taken place, returning him to
the status quo ante.
18
Derivative contracts are similarly based on ideal or virtual qualities of commodities.
19
Mirowski refers to the ‘working fiction of an invariant standard’ (Mirowski, 1991, p. 579).
20
‘When barter is replaced by money transactions a third factor is introduced between the two parties …
the direct line of contact between them moves to the relationship which each of them … has with the eco-
nomic community that accepts the money’ (Simmel, [1907] 1978, p. 177).
21
In terms of the Lawson–Searle disagreement as summarised by Lawson, it would seem that I must
be with Searle in believing that ‘mere representations are sufficient for the functioning of deontic powers’
(Lawson, 2016, p. 965, footnote 5). To my mind, social representations can never be ‘mere’. Furthermore, it
appears that I might also share Searle’s view on the relationship between ‘brute’ facts or properties and their
social transformation. However, I haven’t given this possibility a great deal of thought.
22
Felix Martin has suggested that the misleading preoccupation with the coinage form of monetary trans-
mission is to some extent at least a consequence of their survival, as opposed, e.g., to tally sticks and other
perishable forms (Martin, 2014, p. 30).
Bibliography
Champ, B. and Freeman, S. 2001. Modeling Monetary Economics, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press
Clower, R. [1967] 1984. A reconsideration of the micro-foundations of money, in Walker, D.
(ed.), Money and Markets, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Davies, G. 1996. A History of Money, Cardiff, University of Wales Press
Einaudi, L. 1953 [1936]. The theory of imaginary money from Charlemagne to the French
Revolution, in F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma (eds), Enterprise and Secular Change, London,
Allen and Unwin, 229-61
Einzig, P. 1966. Primitive Money, London, Pergamon Press
Ellis, H. 1934. German Monetary Theory 1905–1933, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press