This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the intersection between blockchain technology a... more This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the intersection between blockchain technology and the law. Covering EU, US and Asian jurisdictions, it assesses necessities of and opportunities for the regulation of blockchain technology in a range of key legal fields, such as competition law, securities regulation, corporate, insurance, contract, and data protection law. Instead of postulating the disruptive superiority of distributed ledger technology across potential areas of application, however, the volume offers a nuanced treatment of use cases ranging from early applications in finance to ICOs, alternative dispute resolution platforms, and smart contracts. Technological development necessarily relies on social forces, including the law, that promote and constrain their use. Our analysis therefore highlights the socio-technical arrangements influencing the adoption, or non-adoption, of blockchain technology in various sectors of economic activity, and links them both to historical perspectives on the development of money and finance, and to the potential for regulatory intervention. The book hence takes a distinct techno-social perspective in understanding the legal implications of blockchain technology as a possible new General Purpose Technology. The interaction of blockchain technology with the legal system raises key questions concerning governance and government, private order and state authority, and the relationship between different “calculative” spaces for assessing and allocating value. These questions do not only have a long pedigree, they are also acutely relevant to our immediate future. By drawing on technological, political, economic and legal points of view, the volume shows why blockchain matters for our society, and why the law matters for blockchain.
Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his phil... more Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his philosophical project as a secularized response to earlier theological questions. Intellectual historians have meanwhile begun to historicize Rawls's use of contemporary philosophical resources and his engagement with economic theory. In this article I argue that what held together Rawls's evolving interest in postwar political economy and his commitment to philosophy as reconciliation was his understanding of the need for secular theodicy. In placing Rawls in the intellectual context of a postwar political economy of growth as well as in relation to the history of political thought, including his reading of that history, I defend two claims. First, I argue that Rawls's philosophical ambition is best understood as providing a secular reconciliatory theodicy. Second, I suggest that Rawls's theodicy was initially rendered plausible by the economic background conditions of economic growth that were fractured and fragmented just as Rawls's book was published in 1971. This divergence between text and context helps to account for Rawls's peculiar reception and his own subsequent attempt to insist on the applicability of his theory under radically altered circumstances.
For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits ... more For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of currency (nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of justice, and an institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency (nomisma) in analogy to law (nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic. Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, currency becomes unjust and a serious threat to any political community. Aristotelian currency can fail precisely because it contains an important moment of ethical deliberation. This political significance of currency challenges accounts of the ancient world as bifurcated between oikos and polis and encourages contemporary political theorists to think of money as a constitutional project that can play an important role in improving reciprocity across society.
During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without dev... more During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without devaluation by insisting on silver money's “intrinsick value.” The Great Recoinage has ever since been seen as a crucial step toward the Financial Revolution and it was long regarded as Locke's most consequential achievement. This article places Locke's intervention in the context of the postrevolutionary English state at war and reads his monetary pamphlets as an integral, if largely neglected, part of his political philosophy. Instead of taking Locke's insistence on “intrinsick value” itself at face value, I argue that it was precisely money's fragile conventionality that threatened its role as a societal bond of trust. In response to this fragility and corruptibility, Locke tied money by fiat to an initially arbitrary but unalterable quantity of metal. While Locke's argument contributed to the modern naturalization of money, it arose from a paradoxical political act of monetary depoliticization.
This article argues that realist invocations of Weber rely on an unrealistic reading of Weber’s r... more This article argues that realist invocations of Weber rely on an unrealistic reading of Weber’s realism. In order to escape the allure of Weber's dramatic posture of crisis, we place his seminal lecture on “Politics as a Vocation” (1919) in its historical and philosophical context of a revolutionary conjuncture of dramatic proportions, compounded by a broader crisis of historicism. Weber’s rhetoric, we argue, carries with it not only the emotion of crisis but is also the expression of a deeper intellectual impasse. The fatalistic despair of his position had already been detected by some of his closest contemporaries for whom Weber did not appear as a door-opener to a historically situated theory of political action but as a telling and intriguing impasse. Although the disastrous history of interwar Europe seems to confirm Weber’s bleakest predictions, it would be perverse to elevate contingent failure to the level of retrospective vindication.
Regulating Blockchain. Techno-Social and Legal Challenges, OUP, 2019
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentr... more Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentralize money and thereby liberate it from centralized governance structures and the political tentacles of the state. This is misleading on several counts. First, electronic currencies cannot leave the politics of money behind even where they aim to disavow it. Instead we can understand their impact as a political attempt to depoliticize money. Secondly, the dramatic price swings of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin challenge their claims to be currencies and place them more persuasively as speculative assets. Ironically, while the preferential tax and regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies hinges on their nominal status as currencies, their success as speculative assets has undermined precisely such claims. Thirdly, far from heralding a radical break with the past, electronic currencies serve as a reminder of the still unresolved global politics of money of the 1970s. To support these three interrelated theses this chapter places the rise of cryptocurrencies in the historical context of the international politics of money since the 1970s and the response to the Financial Crisis of 2008.
The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the questio... more The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the question of what Europe is. Radical nationalism returned in the Balkans to challenge western Europe’s belief that it had overcome such old demons, while Eastern enlargement and Turkey’s quest for membership in the European Union (EU) revived old debates about where Europe ends. Debates about Europe’s exterior boundaries have intersected with discussions about the nature of European identity, European constitutionalism, and the formation of a European single market and currency union. Embattled debates over European identity dovetailed with a return of age-old discussions of Christian Europe and its Islamic other. Today, echoes of the EU’s self-image as a bastion of humanitarian reason and a beacon of democracy find their test in the refugee crisis. Stuck between seemingly perennial austerity and managed inhospitability, the EU’s “thin cosmopolitanism” appears all too content with integrating markets and merely fulfilling minimalist human rights norms. In a painful twist of irony, the only ones who still appear to take seriously the preamble of the failed European Constitution that described Europe as “a special area of human hope” are the refugees landing on Europe’s shores or, more often, drowning in the Mediterranean. While Europe’s politicians are working hard to discourage potential asylum seekers and appear determined to prove that Europe is not a special area of human hope, refugees are voting with their feet for a life in Europe.
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Lutz Raphael, and Thomas Schlemmer (eds.), Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart. Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016)
As the 20th century ended, a reappraisal began of the 1970s as a crucial turning point in moderni... more As the 20th century ended, a reappraisal began of the 1970s as a crucial turning point in modernity. For some historians the 1970s were marked as the moment “after the boom”. For others the epoch was defined by the shock of the global. For cultural historians it was an age of fragmentation. The 1970s were clearly an age of economic crisis, but this too could be understood in different ways. Deindustrialization and the end of Fordism were two options. Globalization another. The discovery of the limits to growth provided a resonant phrase to announce the environmental age. But, for economists and policy-makers, the 1970s stood for another type of epochal break, a revolution in monetary affairs. The end of Bretton Woods between 1971 and 1973 marked the universalization of fiat money. From the 1970s onwards, for the first time since the invention of money, nowhere, anywhere in the world was money directly anchored on gold. How would monetary systems be managed without this anchor? What would be tested in the 1970s and 1980s was a fundamental institutional question of the modern world: the relationship between capitalism, fiat money and democratic policy-making. If it is the double ending both of the postwar boom and the Great Inflation that defines our present, the history of anti-inflationism was never as simple as it appeared in narratives of a “great moderation” designed to legitimate currency policy. In light of recent events we conclude that it is time to revisit the history of the Great Inflation – both the events of the epoch and the stories told about them – and to pose the question put to modernity by Alexander Kluge. Was the refoundation of democratic capitalism through the overcoming of inflation a “a learning-process with a fatal outcome?”
David Kinley: Necessary Evil. How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxf... more David Kinley: Necessary Evil. How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii, 268).
Samuel Moyn: Not Enough. Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 277).
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of Bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought, 2019
In March 1994, Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, stepped in front of the Europe... more In March 1994, Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, stepped in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and issued a passionate plea for opening up the European Union (EU) toward the East. Nothing less was expected. What captured his audience, however, was his unexpectedly harsh criticism of the emotional poverty of European integration. In his speech, Havel called for an urgently needed “Charter of European Identity” that would clearly set out the ideas and values Europe was intended to embody. The Maastricht Treaty, which then had been in force for only three months, may have been a ground-breaking constitutional document setting out a daring institutional path toward integration. But it lacked an ethical dimension. The Treaty, Havel explained, had engaged his brain, but failed to address his heart. The single most important task facing the EU now was to reflect on what it might mean to speak of a European identity and to “impress upon millions of European sou...
Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentr... more Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentralize money, thereby liberating it from centralized governance and the political tentacles of the state. This is misleading on several counts. First, electronic currencies cannot leave the politics of money behind even where they aim to disavow it. Instead, we can understand their impact as a political attempt to depoliticize money. Second, the dramatic price swings of cryptocurrencies challenge their self-fashioning as a new form of money and reveal them instead as speculative assets and securities in need of regulation. While the preferential tax and regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies hinges on their nominal currency status, it is ironically precisely their success as speculative assets that has undermined these claims. Finally, far from heralding a radical break with the past, electronic currencies serve as a reminder of the unresolved global politics of money since the 1970s. T...
Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his ... more Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his philosophical project as a secularized response to earlier theological questions. Intellectual historians have meanwhile begun to historicize Rawls's use of contemporary philosophical resources and his engagement with economic theory. In this article I argue that what held together Rawls's evolving interest in postwar political economy and his commitment to philosophy as reconciliation was his understanding of the need for secular theodicy. In placing Rawls in the intellectual context of a postwar political economy of growth as well as in relation to the history of political thought, including his reading of that history, I defend two claims. First, I argue that Rawls's philosophical ambition is best understood as providing a secular reconciliatory theodicy. Second, I suggest that Rawls's theodicy was initially rendered plausible by the economic background conditions of e...
This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the intersection between blockchain technology a... more This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the intersection between blockchain technology and the law. Covering EU, US and Asian jurisdictions, it assesses necessities of and opportunities for the regulation of blockchain technology in a range of key legal fields, such as competition law, securities regulation, corporate, insurance, contract, and data protection law. Instead of postulating the disruptive superiority of distributed ledger technology across potential areas of application, however, the volume offers a nuanced treatment of use cases ranging from early applications in finance to ICOs, alternative dispute resolution platforms, and smart contracts. Technological development necessarily relies on social forces, including the law, that promote and constrain their use. Our analysis therefore highlights the socio-technical arrangements influencing the adoption, or non-adoption, of blockchain technology in various sectors of economic activity, and links them both to historical perspectives on the development of money and finance, and to the potential for regulatory intervention. The book hence takes a distinct techno-social perspective in understanding the legal implications of blockchain technology as a possible new General Purpose Technology. The interaction of blockchain technology with the legal system raises key questions concerning governance and government, private order and state authority, and the relationship between different “calculative” spaces for assessing and allocating value. These questions do not only have a long pedigree, they are also acutely relevant to our immediate future. By drawing on technological, political, economic and legal points of view, the volume shows why blockchain matters for our society, and why the law matters for blockchain.
Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his phil... more Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his philosophical project as a secularized response to earlier theological questions. Intellectual historians have meanwhile begun to historicize Rawls's use of contemporary philosophical resources and his engagement with economic theory. In this article I argue that what held together Rawls's evolving interest in postwar political economy and his commitment to philosophy as reconciliation was his understanding of the need for secular theodicy. In placing Rawls in the intellectual context of a postwar political economy of growth as well as in relation to the history of political thought, including his reading of that history, I defend two claims. First, I argue that Rawls's philosophical ambition is best understood as providing a secular reconciliatory theodicy. Second, I suggest that Rawls's theodicy was initially rendered plausible by the economic background conditions of economic growth that were fractured and fragmented just as Rawls's book was published in 1971. This divergence between text and context helps to account for Rawls's peculiar reception and his own subsequent attempt to insist on the applicability of his theory under radically altered circumstances.
For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits ... more For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of currency (nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of justice, and an institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency (nomisma) in analogy to law (nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic. Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, currency becomes unjust and a serious threat to any political community. Aristotelian currency can fail precisely because it contains an important moment of ethical deliberation. This political significance of currency challenges accounts of the ancient world as bifurcated between oikos and polis and encourages contemporary political theorists to think of money as a constitutional project that can play an important role in improving reciprocity across society.
During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without dev... more During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without devaluation by insisting on silver money's “intrinsick value.” The Great Recoinage has ever since been seen as a crucial step toward the Financial Revolution and it was long regarded as Locke's most consequential achievement. This article places Locke's intervention in the context of the postrevolutionary English state at war and reads his monetary pamphlets as an integral, if largely neglected, part of his political philosophy. Instead of taking Locke's insistence on “intrinsick value” itself at face value, I argue that it was precisely money's fragile conventionality that threatened its role as a societal bond of trust. In response to this fragility and corruptibility, Locke tied money by fiat to an initially arbitrary but unalterable quantity of metal. While Locke's argument contributed to the modern naturalization of money, it arose from a paradoxical political act of monetary depoliticization.
This article argues that realist invocations of Weber rely on an unrealistic reading of Weber’s r... more This article argues that realist invocations of Weber rely on an unrealistic reading of Weber’s realism. In order to escape the allure of Weber's dramatic posture of crisis, we place his seminal lecture on “Politics as a Vocation” (1919) in its historical and philosophical context of a revolutionary conjuncture of dramatic proportions, compounded by a broader crisis of historicism. Weber’s rhetoric, we argue, carries with it not only the emotion of crisis but is also the expression of a deeper intellectual impasse. The fatalistic despair of his position had already been detected by some of his closest contemporaries for whom Weber did not appear as a door-opener to a historically situated theory of political action but as a telling and intriguing impasse. Although the disastrous history of interwar Europe seems to confirm Weber’s bleakest predictions, it would be perverse to elevate contingent failure to the level of retrospective vindication.
Regulating Blockchain. Techno-Social and Legal Challenges, OUP, 2019
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentr... more Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentralize money and thereby liberate it from centralized governance structures and the political tentacles of the state. This is misleading on several counts. First, electronic currencies cannot leave the politics of money behind even where they aim to disavow it. Instead we can understand their impact as a political attempt to depoliticize money. Secondly, the dramatic price swings of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin challenge their claims to be currencies and place them more persuasively as speculative assets. Ironically, while the preferential tax and regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies hinges on their nominal status as currencies, their success as speculative assets has undermined precisely such claims. Thirdly, far from heralding a radical break with the past, electronic currencies serve as a reminder of the still unresolved global politics of money of the 1970s. To support these three interrelated theses this chapter places the rise of cryptocurrencies in the historical context of the international politics of money since the 1970s and the response to the Financial Crisis of 2008.
The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the questio... more The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the question of what Europe is. Radical nationalism returned in the Balkans to challenge western Europe’s belief that it had overcome such old demons, while Eastern enlargement and Turkey’s quest for membership in the European Union (EU) revived old debates about where Europe ends. Debates about Europe’s exterior boundaries have intersected with discussions about the nature of European identity, European constitutionalism, and the formation of a European single market and currency union. Embattled debates over European identity dovetailed with a return of age-old discussions of Christian Europe and its Islamic other. Today, echoes of the EU’s self-image as a bastion of humanitarian reason and a beacon of democracy find their test in the refugee crisis. Stuck between seemingly perennial austerity and managed inhospitability, the EU’s “thin cosmopolitanism” appears all too content with integrating markets and merely fulfilling minimalist human rights norms. In a painful twist of irony, the only ones who still appear to take seriously the preamble of the failed European Constitution that described Europe as “a special area of human hope” are the refugees landing on Europe’s shores or, more often, drowning in the Mediterranean. While Europe’s politicians are working hard to discourage potential asylum seekers and appear determined to prove that Europe is not a special area of human hope, refugees are voting with their feet for a life in Europe.
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Lutz Raphael, and Thomas Schlemmer (eds.), Vorgeschichte der Gegenwart. Dimensionen des Strukturbruchs nach dem Boom (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016)
As the 20th century ended, a reappraisal began of the 1970s as a crucial turning point in moderni... more As the 20th century ended, a reappraisal began of the 1970s as a crucial turning point in modernity. For some historians the 1970s were marked as the moment “after the boom”. For others the epoch was defined by the shock of the global. For cultural historians it was an age of fragmentation. The 1970s were clearly an age of economic crisis, but this too could be understood in different ways. Deindustrialization and the end of Fordism were two options. Globalization another. The discovery of the limits to growth provided a resonant phrase to announce the environmental age. But, for economists and policy-makers, the 1970s stood for another type of epochal break, a revolution in monetary affairs. The end of Bretton Woods between 1971 and 1973 marked the universalization of fiat money. From the 1970s onwards, for the first time since the invention of money, nowhere, anywhere in the world was money directly anchored on gold. How would monetary systems be managed without this anchor? What would be tested in the 1970s and 1980s was a fundamental institutional question of the modern world: the relationship between capitalism, fiat money and democratic policy-making. If it is the double ending both of the postwar boom and the Great Inflation that defines our present, the history of anti-inflationism was never as simple as it appeared in narratives of a “great moderation” designed to legitimate currency policy. In light of recent events we conclude that it is time to revisit the history of the Great Inflation – both the events of the epoch and the stories told about them – and to pose the question put to modernity by Alexander Kluge. Was the refoundation of democratic capitalism through the overcoming of inflation a “a learning-process with a fatal outcome?”
David Kinley: Necessary Evil. How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxf... more David Kinley: Necessary Evil. How to Fix Finance by Saving Human Rights (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xiii, 268).
Samuel Moyn: Not Enough. Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 277).
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of Bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of block... more This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.
The Cambridge History of Modern European Thought, 2019
In March 1994, Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, stepped in front of the Europe... more In March 1994, Václav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, stepped in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and issued a passionate plea for opening up the European Union (EU) toward the East. Nothing less was expected. What captured his audience, however, was his unexpectedly harsh criticism of the emotional poverty of European integration. In his speech, Havel called for an urgently needed “Charter of European Identity” that would clearly set out the ideas and values Europe was intended to embody. The Maastricht Treaty, which then had been in force for only three months, may have been a ground-breaking constitutional document setting out a daring institutional path toward integration. But it lacked an ethical dimension. The Treaty, Havel explained, had engaged his brain, but failed to address his heart. The single most important task facing the EU now was to reflect on what it might mean to speak of a European identity and to “impress upon millions of European sou...
Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentr... more Cryptocurrencies are frequently framed as future-oriented, technological innovations that decentralize money, thereby liberating it from centralized governance and the political tentacles of the state. This is misleading on several counts. First, electronic currencies cannot leave the politics of money behind even where they aim to disavow it. Instead, we can understand their impact as a political attempt to depoliticize money. Second, the dramatic price swings of cryptocurrencies challenge their self-fashioning as a new form of money and reveal them instead as speculative assets and securities in need of regulation. While the preferential tax and regulatory treatment of cryptocurrencies hinges on their nominal currency status, it is ironically precisely their success as speculative assets that has undermined these claims. Finally, far from heralding a radical break with the past, electronic currencies serve as a reminder of the unresolved global politics of money since the 1970s. T...
Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his ... more Rediscovery of John Rawls's early interest in theology has recently prompted readings of his philosophical project as a secularized response to earlier theological questions. Intellectual historians have meanwhile begun to historicize Rawls's use of contemporary philosophical resources and his engagement with economic theory. In this article I argue that what held together Rawls's evolving interest in postwar political economy and his commitment to philosophy as reconciliation was his understanding of the need for secular theodicy. In placing Rawls in the intellectual context of a postwar political economy of growth as well as in relation to the history of political thought, including his reading of that history, I defend two claims. First, I argue that Rawls's philosophical ambition is best understood as providing a secular reconciliatory theodicy. Second, I suggest that Rawls's theodicy was initially rendered plausible by the economic background conditions of e...
During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without dev... more During the Coinage Crisis of 1695, John Locke successfully advocated a full recoinage without devaluation by insisting on silver money's “intrinsick value.” The Great Recoinage has ever since been seen as a crucial step toward the Financial Revolution and it was long regarded as Locke's most consequential achievement. This article places Locke's intervention in the context of the postrevolutionary English state at war and reads his monetary pamphlets as an integral, if largely neglected, part of his political philosophy. Instead of taking Locke's insistence on “intrinsick value” itself at face value, I argue that it was precisely money's fragile conventionality that threatened its role as a societal bond of trust. In response to this fragility and corruptibility, Locke tied money by fiat to an initially arbitrary but unalterable quantity of metal. While Locke's argument contributed to the modern naturalization of money, it arose from a paradoxical political a...
For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits ... more For Aristotle, a just political community has to find similarity in difference and foster habits of reciprocity. Conventionally, speech and law have been seen to fulfill this role. This article reconstructs Aristotle’s conception of currency ( nomisma) as a political institution of reciprocal justice. By placing Aristotle’s treatment of reciprocity in the context of the ancient politics of money, currency emerges not merely as a medium of economic exchange but also potentially as a bond of civic reciprocity, a measure of justice, and an institution of ethical deliberation. Reconstructing this account of currency ( nomisma) in analogy to law ( nomos) recovers the hopes Aristotle placed in currency as a necessary institution particular to the polis as a self-governing political community striving for justice. If currency was a foundational institution, it was also always insufficient, likely imperfect, and possibly tragic. Turned into a tool for the accumulation of wealth for its own ...
Uploads
Books by Stefan Eich
Technological development necessarily relies on social forces, including the law, that promote and constrain their use. Our analysis therefore highlights the socio-technical arrangements influencing the adoption, or non-adoption, of blockchain technology in various sectors of economic activity, and links them both to historical perspectives on the development of money and finance, and to the potential for regulatory intervention. The book hence takes a distinct techno-social perspective in understanding the legal implications of blockchain technology as a possible new General Purpose Technology.
The interaction of blockchain technology with the legal system raises key questions concerning governance and government, private order and state authority, and the relationship between different “calculative” spaces for assessing and allocating value. These questions do not only have a long pedigree, they are also acutely relevant to our immediate future. By drawing on technological, political, economic and legal points of view, the volume shows why blockchain matters for our society, and why the law matters for blockchain.
Articles by Stefan Eich
Chapters by Stefan Eich
Book Reviews by Stefan Eich
Samuel Moyn: Not Enough. Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 277).
Other by Stefan Eich
Papers by Stefan Eich
Technological development necessarily relies on social forces, including the law, that promote and constrain their use. Our analysis therefore highlights the socio-technical arrangements influencing the adoption, or non-adoption, of blockchain technology in various sectors of economic activity, and links them both to historical perspectives on the development of money and finance, and to the potential for regulatory intervention. The book hence takes a distinct techno-social perspective in understanding the legal implications of blockchain technology as a possible new General Purpose Technology.
The interaction of blockchain technology with the legal system raises key questions concerning governance and government, private order and state authority, and the relationship between different “calculative” spaces for assessing and allocating value. These questions do not only have a long pedigree, they are also acutely relevant to our immediate future. By drawing on technological, political, economic and legal points of view, the volume shows why blockchain matters for our society, and why the law matters for blockchain.
Samuel Moyn: Not Enough. Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 277).