The financial crisis of 2008 prompted a renewed critical interest in the moral limits and the
sense of justice inherent in the market economy. But while the valuable pursuits of political
theorists have enabled them to speak more directly to the economic dimension of our lives they
only rarely touch on the political roots of the central institution of all market
economies-money. In The Currency of Politics political theorist Stefan Eich responds to this
blind-spot by offering an intellectual history of money as the concept was developed over time
through the insight of some key political philosophers. Showing the ways in which money is an
inherently political institution Eich examines six key moments of monetary crisis and the
political reflection they elicited from Aristotle and the invention of coinage to the Great
Inflation of the 1970s and the subsequent disappearance of discussions of money from political
theory. What ties the moments together he argues is a set of recurring concerns with monetary
politics that unfold as a conversation across time constantly offering revisionist assessments
of prior crises. Whether we know it or not these layers of crisis have come to define the way
we look at money and they continue to reverberate today. In surveying the history Eich
responds to the most pressing political questions about money which arise from within the long
history of political thought and maps out several possible paths for thinking politically about
the governance of money--
