ABSTRACT
This chapter’s aim is to provide a genetic account of Steuart’s theory of money. By genetic account I mean a historical explanation-as distinct from an analytical reconstruction-of his views about money as a moral, political and theoretical problem, of their background, and the solution he proposed. His theoretical achievement in the field of monetary analysis is today universally appreciated. But the more the significance of Steuart’s monetary theory is recognized, the more difficult it becomes to understand it in all its facets, which comprise a number of metallistic assertions. The importance of the latter for Steuart’s view of the relation between monetary reform and economic development was reasserted at the Vizille conference (Eltis 1995), while other papers argued that Steuart contested both commodity and sign theories of money (Gérard-Varet and Rosio 1995). I would submit that a historical reconstruction of the way Steuart’s theory of money was connected to his general political system and the tradition of discourse within which he wrote-which was the Platonic, as against the Aristotelian, Machiavellian or Ciceronian, side of British civic humanism-can account for apparently inconsistent statements. In so doing I shall have to redefine Schumpeter’s taxonomy of metallism and cartalism, either practical or theoretical, which is in any case my starting point.
