How Sensible is the Left-wing Criticism of Money, Exchange and Contract?
| DOI | 10.1177/096466391102000406 |
| Date | 01 December 2011 |
| Published date | 01 December 2011 |
| Author | David Campbell |
| Subject Matter | Dialogue & Debate |
How Sensible is the Left-wing Criticism
of Money, Exchange and Contract?
David Campbell
University of Leeds, UK
In the part of The Currency of Justice that principally addresses the law of contract, Pat
O’Malley (2009: 114–123) stresses the qualities which the capitalist economy displays
as a result of making, not literal enforcement, but money damages quantified on the basis
of compensating plaintiffs for net loss the default remedy for breach of contract. This is
examined in terms initially derived (O’Malley, 2009: 114–117, 123) from Durkheim’s
(1893/1984: bk 1) distinction between ‘repressive’ and ‘restitutive’ sanctions which evi-
dence the existence of consciences collective based on, respectively, ‘mechanical’ and
‘organic’ solidarity. What O’Malley says should be considered by all who are interested
in the law of contract, and has, in fact, a particular interest at the moment.
For though the example of CHS Fifoot (1932: vii) gave an early indication that the
highest contract scholarship might be combined productively with an awareness of the
historical and social context of the law, ignorance or disregard of his example has been
central to formalism in contract and, particularly, in remedies. Nothing could more
amply demonstrate the handicap that blackletter legal scholarship incurs by its disregard
of social science than the current argument (Jackman, 1989: 302) that it is necessary to
strengthen the ‘performance interest’ in contract in order to avoid the ‘institutional harm’
of erosion of confidence in the institution of promising, which apparently is made in
ignorance of Durkheim’s argument about the organic nature of contractual solidarity,
though this is one of the most important arguments in social theory.
However, I wish to address this article,not to the Durkheimian elements of O’Malley’s
discussionof contract,but to the great servicehe has done socio-legalscholarshipby drawing
attentionto, in my opinion, one of the mostsuccessful defences of moneythat has ever been
made:that of Georg Simmel in The Philosophyof Money, about which t here is general i gnor-
ance even amongstsocio-legal scholarsand sociologists(Deflem, 2003).
1
O’Malleygives a
very clear synopsis of the core of Simmel’sthinking about money in Chapter 1 of his book,
which I will not repeat. I will discuss the effective ‘reversal’ (Berger, 1986: 109) of Karl
Marx’sviews on moneywhich Simmel’s thinkingconstitutesin order to addressthe question
that formsthe title of this article andto invite O’Malley’s response to that question. It is my
oft-statedbelief (Campbell,2003a: 9) that Marx’s isthe only absolute rejectionof the use of
money,and with this of exchangeand contract, thathas any substantial claimto plausibility,
and by bringing to our attention Simmel’s critique of Marx, O’Malley allows us to pose a
fundamentalquestion about left-wing theories of economic regulation: how sensible isthe
overwhelmingly negative left-wing attitude to money, exchange and contract?
528 Social & Legal Studies 20(4)
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