In Locke’s philosophy money is ‘naturalised’ and thus ostensibly removed from political contestation. Locke has been criticised for marginalising monetary politics, and thus downplaying the conventional character of money that could potentially allow for democratic monetary reform. Drawing on Marx’s writings, this paper shows that money is indeed a social convention, but its inherent economic functioning restricts its susceptibility to political contestation. There are limits to the democratic reform of money in a capitalist economy that spring from money’s own nature.

Specifically, the politics of money is rooted in the tension between money as measure of value and money as unit of account. The state draws political power from setting the unit of account, but the measurement of value occurs spontaneously among commodity producers, thereby generating tension that curbs monetary politics. In contemporary conditions, this is typified by central banks having the freedom to manage the unit of account but subject to heavy economic constraints rooted in value measurement. In this light, democratic monetary reform requires restricting the spontaneous measurement of value, thus intervening at the heart of the capitalist economy. For money to be democratic it needs to have a much narrower range of economic functioning.