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The Moral Economy of Money between the Gold Standard and the New Deal
Author(s) -
Feinig Jakob
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/johs.12139
Subject(s) - moral economy , economics , political economy , treasury , currency , odds , democratization , opposition (politics) , politics , democracy , political science , monetary economics , law , medicine , logistic regression
In this article, I show that Depression‐era popular opposition to gold standard orthodoxy had an identifiable impact on New Deal policy. Popular pressure was rooted in a political‐economic vision I call the “moral economy of money.” The moral economy of money included a critique of the gold standard and creditor classes and advocated a democratization of control over money and credit to restore social justice. Against many odds, Roosevelt narrowly defeated congressional majorities connected to popular groups bent on mandating Treasury currency issue. At the same time, he pioneered a discourse that became generalized in the following decades and discouraged a reemergence of the moral economy of money.