Abstract

Abstract Rhetorical analysis of John Locke's monetary arguments reveals that Locke relied on a core enthymeme that deployed several rhetorical devices (including a narrative diegesis, a dissociation and hierarchization of terms, and several metaphors) to synthesize two contradictory and common beliefs about money's value—money's value is determined by supply and demand; money's value is determined by substance. Moreover, this analysis revitalizes the conversation between economists and rhetoricians by presenting rhetorical analysis as a way to discover causal mechanisms. Finally, locating causal mechanisms allows an historical understanding of how debates have been shaped by the available means of persuasion. Acknowledgments Special thanks to James Aune, Martin Medhurst, and the editor and anonymous RSQ reviewers for their feedback at various stages in this article's production. Notes 1The stalled nature of the conversation is nowhere better captured than in Fabienne Peter's “Rhetoric Vs. Realism in Economic Methodology.” 2For another social-scientific discussion of causal mechanisms, see Sayer 105–117. 3My description of a “deep-seated” mechanism depends on the assumption that a social formation can be productively imagined as a stratification of numerous causal powers, some deeper and more pervasively effective. What we immediately witness at the top of a formation is thus “overdetermined” by the causal mechanisms layered beneath. For a fuller exploration of this concept, see Andrew Collier's “Stratified Explanation and Marx's Conception of History.” 4For a fuller explanation of how England's various parties formed into a “military-financial state,” see Dickson (chs. 1–3) and Carruthers (chs. 2–3). 5Aristotle asserts that “an ability to aim at commonly held opinions [endoxa] is a characteristic of one who also has a similar ability to regard the truth” (33). Pierre Bourdieu differentiates between orthodoxy and heterodoxy (Outline 164–171). According to Bourdieu, crises can disrupt all the rhetorical resources available to a population, both the heterodox and the orthodox, creating a space for an allodoxia, a new, potentially revolutionary, set of assumptions (Language 132–133). 6For more on the term “crisis of representation” and its relation to seventeenth-century England, see Poovey 6. 7Although they disagreed about recoinage, Locke and Nicholas Barbon believed that commodities' values are set by the intersection of supply and demand (Barbon Trade 15–19; Locke Some Considerations 66). 8James Thompson contends that Locke made an “ontological” appeal to the “ineluctable being of silver,” thus strictly emphasizing its substance value (63). Thompson, on the other hand, also notices that Locke accredited the socially constructed forces of supply and demand with value creation (61). He therefore concludes that Locke contradicted himself. 9Vaughn dubs Locke's model a “proportionality theory of money,” but given the overwhelming use of the term “quantity” in post-Lockean monetary theory, I choose this term to emphasize the model's persistence in subsequent arguments. 10James Thompson rightly notices the central importance of security in Locke's monetary theory. Locke wanted a stable monetary system that guaranteed transmission of value: “The return is always the same, for the ideal is an exchange system, or a system of debit and credit, in which one receives what he gave” (58). Karen Vaughn notes that Locke was an unusual metalist because he did not believe in money's ontological value, while he did believe that the substance (silver) was necessary to guarantee stability (35). 11For further treatment of Locke's economic writings and his theory of natural law, see Appleby; Finkelstein 165–170; and Vaughn 131. For a dissenting perspective, an argument that money had no place in Locke's imagined state of nature or in his theory of natural law, see Tully 149. 12In this paragraph, I rely on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's explanation of dissociation, hierarchy, and the topic of order (80–83, 93–94, 411–415). 13For a fuller review of the Bill, its enactment, and its effects, see Horsefield (61–70) and Feavearyear (135–149). 14Marx contended that Locke emphasized one side of money's contradictory composition, its substance (Contribution 159). Eli Heckscher similarly contended that Locke accepted the mercantilist equation of metal and value, saying that Locke confused Juno for the cloud, money for what money represented (209). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMark Garrett Longaker Mark Garrett Longaker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, PAR 3, Mailcode B5500, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.