Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money

Transcription

Death of the deodand
Accursed
objects and the money
value of human life
WILLIAMPIETZ
"Whereas the Law respecting the Forfeiture of Chattels
which have moved or caused the Death of Man, and
is unreasonable and inconvenient":
respecting Deodands,
Be itenacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by
and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament
assembled, and by the Authority of the same, That from and
after the FirstDay of September One thousand eight
hundred and forty-six there shall be no Forfeiture of any
Chattel for or in respect of the same having moved to or
caused the Death of Man; and no Coroner's Jury sworn to
inquire, upon the Sight of any dead Body, how the
Deceased came by his Death, shall find any Forfeiture of
any Chattel which may have moved to or caused the Death
of the Deceased, or any Deodand whatsoever; and it shall
not be necessary in any Indictment or Inquisition for
Homicide to allege the Value of the Instrument which
caused the Death of the Deceased, or to allege that the
same
has
no Value.1
in the
the British Parliament,
of 1846, passed "An Act to Abolish Deodands/'
thereby undoing a law that had been in effect in
England for over six centuries. A deodand was "an
accursed
thing."2 The term itself comes from the Latin
phrase deo dandum, which means "that which must be
With
summer
these words
given to God." It is an example of the idea that evil
objects are sacred, that they are charged with divine
In English
power, and that they therefore belong to God.
law prior to 1846, any moveable
material object?more
any piece of personal chattel property?that
specifically,
me to
to Michael
Taussig for inviting
give the talk from
is drawn as part of the Columbia
this essay
University
of Anthropology's
lecture series.
Department
"Angel of History"
so
sent me the
to Shael Herman, who
Cordial
apologies
generously
of a work of scrupulous
that I have used so
manuscript
scholarship
Thanks
which
Thanks also toTomoko
cavalierly
essay and for inviting me to give
Carolina
"Fetishism" conference
a materialist
critique of the work
in this essay.
1. The Statutes of the United
Masuzawa
for her
interest
in this
the talk at the University
of North
that began my
interest in developing
of Georges
has been
Bataille, which
continued
Ireland,
vol.
18, Acts
Kingdom
9 & 10 Victoria
(1846)
1847), p. 233.
Spottiswoode,
2. Oliver Wendell
Holmes,
Brown,
1881), p. 35.
of Great
c. 62
Jr., The Common
Britain
(London:
?aw
and
Little,
caused
of the law of deodand was a relatively
but
minor,
essential, part of a much more sweeping
in British social institutions of the 1840s
transformation
that established
legal structures better suited to capitalist
The abolition
enterprise and liberal society. But the issue it addressed
was far from minor. Fatal accidents are a form of
to any culture. For those who
historical trauma common
love and materially
their
depend on the deceased,
a negatively
lived object, an
which
fixation,
represents a crisis not only
impassioned
in the violated hearts of certain individuals, but in the
general structure of material social relations. Any culture
must establish some procedure of compensation,
disruptive
force becomes
to settle the debt created by
expiation, or punishment
human deaths whose direct cause is not a
unintended
person, but a nonhuman material
morally accountable
in public discourse
object. This was the issue thematized
on
the
the
law
its
debate
of deodand. Moreover, with
by
British legal institutions articulated the
abolition,
solution of liberal capitalist society to the general
to the
problem of the relation of the value of money
value of human life.
Since the proximate
deodand as a social
cause
of the death of the
reality was itself an inanimate
Iwant to begin with an
material object, the locomotive,
event that took place sixteen years prior to the statute of
From consideration
abolition.
of this concrete event, I
am going to indulge in some inexcusably
far-ranging
historical reflections on accursed objects and monetary
I
debt as material embodiments
of national sovereignty.
will, however, conclude with a somewhat more
scholarly
account
The unfortunate
William
Eyre and
(Boston:
the death of an adult human being
deodand and, as an accursed
thing, was held to
in such
be forfeit to God (whose earthly representative
cases was the royal sovereign).
directly
became
of the abolition
death
of deodand
in 1846.
of the Honourable
Huskisson
In September of 1830, the world's first public
its
railroad, the Liverpool and Manchester
line, made
run.
The
been
had
orchestrated
inaugural
day
carefully
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98
RES 31 SPRING 1997
not only as a business promotion,
but as a national
the two great
and
celebration.
Manchester,
Liverpool
cities of the English cotton industry, had arranged for
and a
brass bands, speeches by local dignitaries,
number of allegorical
pageants celebrating
English
and industrial progress. Banners,
nationalism
and archways of flowers were placed at
grandstands,
gathering points along the route. The steam-powered
cavalcade
that set out from Liverpool at a stately 12
each
miles per hour consisted of eight locomotives,
a different colored
and
given striking names
flag
flying
such as the Phoenix and the Rocket. These pulled a train
of curiously upright carriages?their
design was
a
on
wheels?that
coach
that
railroad
of
stage
basically
men
were occupied
of
British
notable
by
industry and
were
four
and
eleven
There
Viscounts,
Lords,
politics.
one Marquis,
the ambassadors
from Austria and Russia,
as well as the owners of the railroad. Among
the
were Sir Robert Peel, the cotton magnate
politicians
the world's
who, as Home Secretary, had just established
a
first modern police force and William
Huskisson,
liberal Tory from Liverpool who,
inspired as a
popular
man
American
French
the
and
Revolutions,
young
by
had been present at the storming of the Bastille but had
a progressive
conservative
and tireless
since become
of free enterprise.
crowds, estimated at half-a-million
people, had
turned out that day not to see any of these men, nor
even the new technological
but rather to catch
wonder,
a glimpse of the Duke of Wellington,
hero of Waterloo
and more recently England's Prime Minister. The crowd
was mostly festive, though a few red republicans
tricolored flags and carrying signs
showed up waving
of voting rights to a larger
extension
the
demanding
the
of
the
Unfortunately,
segment
population.
celebration was disrupted by what the London Times
the
that occurred when
called a "dreadful accident"
advocate
Great
a stop to add water to the locomotives'
procession made
the passengers who got off to stretch
boilers. Among
had walked
Huskisson.
Huskisson
their legs was William
intention
over to the Duke of Wellington's
the
car?with
said) of shaking hands with the great
(so the newspapers
was
man in order to make up "an old quarrel"?and
standing on the tracks chatting with a group of politicians
Let me quote the account of a
and railroad promoters.
next:
for what happened
Times correspondent
Whilst
which,
he was standing with them, the Rocket engine,
like the Phoenix, had to pass the Duke's car, to take
up
its station
at the watering
place,
came
slowly
up,
and
as
the engineer had been for some time checking his velocity,
so silently that itwas almost upon the group before they
observed it. In the hurry of the moment all attempted to get
out of the way. . . . [But Huskisson] hesitated, staggered a
little as if not knowing what to do, then attempted to run
forward, found it impossible to get off the road, on account
of an excavation of some 14 or 15 feet in depth being on
that side of it, on which he was, attempted again to get into
the car, was hit by a motion of the door as he was
mounting a step, and was thrown directly in the path of the
Rocket,
as
that engine
came
opposite
the Duke's
car.
He
contrived to move himself a little out of its path before it
came in contact with him, otherwise itmust have gone
directly over his head and breast. As itwas, the wheel went
over his left thigh, squeezing it almost to a jelly, broke the
leg, it is said, in two places, laid the muscles bare from the
ankle, nearly to the hip, and tore out a large piece of flesh,
as it left him. Mrs. Huskisson, who, along with several other
ladies, witnessed the accident, uttered a shriek of agony,
which none who heard itwill ever forget.3
into the Duke of Wellington's
Huskisson was dragged
car and a tourniquet applied to his leg, but itwas clear
the accident was fatal. The Duke and Sir Robert Peel
be canceled
and the train
insisted that the celebration
return to Liverpool. While
the newspapers
reported this
an
as
the
of
humane
expression
admirably
merely
there was far more going on.4 Wellington,
emotion,
led the three factions of a Tory Party
Peel, and Huskisson
that had been the ruling party in England for nearly half
a century but that was now facing complete
collapse.
the national hero, led the conservative
Wellington,
to maintain
Tories who wished
the old political order
an
that relied on a divinely ordained monarch,
church, the army, and unreformed
Anglican
institutions. Peel, the innovative
financial
and
judicial
led those Tories who
and authoritarian Home Secretary,
new
for
institutions to
the
need
strong
recognized
established
maintain
social order and fiscal efficiency. Huskisson,
who had pushed through major reforms as president of
the Board of Trade and then as Colonial
Secretary,
most
in the
Tories
involved
those
deeply
represented
in the principles
and who believed
global economy
free trade and "liberalism" before all else. When
of
3. London Times, September
17, 1830.
4. My characterization
relies on Jonathan
of this political moment
Britain
in
Victorian
Fall
Government
Rise
The
and
of
Liberal
Parry,
(New Haven:
Yale University
Press,
1993).
Pietz: Death of the deodand
had been called upon to form a new
Wellington
in 1828, Huskisson
and other critics of the
government
Duke's "illiberal" policies
(they became known as
had bolted. The Tory coalition had been
Huskissonites)
in 1829 as ultraconservatives
became
further weakened
had reluctantly pushed
bill of Catholic emancipation.
saw a terrible
of 1829-1830
set in.Many hard-pressed workers
infuriated when Wellington
through a heavily hedged
yet, the winter
economic
depression
joined activist Political
Worse
Unions.
Local violence
by the
with
their own
and
poor
surged. This, along
unemployed
sent
into
the
middle
classes
straightened circumstances,
an apocalyptic
itself
fear of social chaos that expressed
in a general demand for a more activist government
and
a
in politicization
of revived religious values whose
focus became
the demand for an immediate abolition of
In June, the
Indian colonies.
slavery in Britain's West
a
new
new
meant
in a
had
elections
and
died,
king
king
an
of
crisis.
The
dire
of
election
such
year
possibilities
in France,
had been played out the following month
when a new election
solidified an opposition
backed by
liberal business groups that, by the end of the month,
had forced the king to abdicate. By September
15, the
was
of
Huskisson's
the
death,
Tory party
facing
day
disaster in next month's election. The only
complete
of
power to an
hope
avoiding a transfer of governmental
new
to
opposition Whig party subject
unprecedented
was
on
to
back
social forces
get the Huskissonites
and Peel saw in
board. Astute politicians, Wellington
this bloody corpse not only a personal tragedy, but a
new political fact whose
ramifications had to be divined
at once. However widely disliked Huskisson may have
been in political circles for his vacillating
unreliability,
fallen leader
any treatment of the liberal Huskissonites
as disrespectful
that might be perceived
had to be
is that theWhigs
of course,
(What happened,
the election of November,
1830, and the way was
for the Reform Act of 1832 that transformed the
opened
of England, which
the Tories had so
political constitution
avoided.
swept
long defended.)
the railroad promoters of Liverpool and
However,
were part of the very social force that
Manchester
to turning a
Huskisson
represented, and they objected
a procession
of
ritual
into
commercial
celebration
great
of political mourning. They insisted thatWellington
and
Peel had a public duty to continue,
that "the success of
so much
the project, on which
they had expended
on
their
[the procession]
capital, might depend
being
99
that if the expectations
regularly finished." They warned
were not
inManchester
of the crowd of spectators
a
riot might ensue:
fulfilled,
The public expected that they would have the satisfaction
of seeing the road opened that day, and the directors were
bound to fulfill their expectations to the best of their ability.
Itwas quite certain that the news of the melancholy
accident which had befallen Mr. Huskisson would reach
Manchester, and that consideration rendered it still more
imperative that the whole procession should move on, to
correct any exaggerated reports of mischief which might get
abroad, and to show the public that the accident which
happened was a mere accident, and had not happened
through any fault of the machinery.5
Wellington
continued,
agreed, and the procession
impression
thereby averting a disastrous
the newborn
railroad industry from being
reluctantly
regarding
made upon
that newly powerful
entity,
political
public opinion.
But there was one more hurdle that had to be
a coroner's jury declare that the
cleared. Would
locomotive
involved deodand? Huskisson's
body was
itwas laid on display in
taken back to Liverpool where
In any such case of
the city's principal public building.
coroner
was required to
suspicious death, the country
a jury of local citizens. The jury was first
impanel
required to view the body and form a personal
impression of the death. They then heard testimony from
and other concerned
eye witnesses
parties, whereupon
a criminal homicide
decided
whether
had taken
they
death. If the latter, their
place or merely an accidental
last act was to decide whether or not an object was at
fault and, if so, to declare the object deodand and
estimate
itsmoney value, which became an amount of
In this case, as the always pro
debt owed to the crown.
railroad Times duly reported, the jury "returned a verdict
of 'Accidental Death,' but affixed no deodand on the
itmay be fairly inferred that they
engine, from which
the
of all blame."6
acquitted
engineers and the machinery
Oliver Wendell
Holmes
on the problem
of the deodand
There are few ideas less rational to a modern mind
than the idea of holding an inanimate object to be
In his book
morally guilty for some effect it has caused.
5.
London
Times,
September
6.
London
Times,
September
17, 1830.
1830.
18,
Emphasis
added.
Emphasis
added.
RES 31 SPRING 1997
100
of 1881, The Common
Holmes
Law, Oliver Wendell
traced the basic concept of deodand back to ancient
laws that required the
Roman, and Biblical
surrender
sacrificial
of any
destruction
and
physical
was
a
noxious
it
whether
knife
lethally
thing,
directed by the hand of a murderer or some
purposefully
German,
legally inanimate object that killed a person apart from
the intention of its owner. The ox that gored a neighbor
to death, the wagon
that ran over a stranger in the
or
the slave who killed a citizen must be
marketplace,
this
surrendered, although experts disagreed whether
as
a
for
of
the
sin
functioned
mode
expiation
primarily
tainted owner or as a way to satisfy the demand for
revenge on the part of the victim's family and thereby
avoid a blood feud. Holmes agreed with the latter view,
since early law pursued the guilty thing itself even when
its ownership
had passed from the hands of its owner at
the time of the death. As Holmes put it, "the liability
seems to have been regarded as attached to the body
in an almost physical sense."7 This
doing the damage,
was
in accord with Holmes's general view that "all law
to the
to conditions
of things manifest
on
the opening
senses."8 Hence his famous statement
Law: "The life of the law has not
page of The Common
is directed
been
it has been
Holmes explained
experience."9
as well as his larger
his understanding
of deodand,
claim that the impulse for revenge was the origin of law,
lived response,
by locating its origin in an immediately
of
retaliation
"the
desire
against the
specifically
as
in the angry desire
itself,"
exemplified
offending
thing
one has to kick a door that has pinched one's finger.10
The reason why the apparently antiquarian problem
of "the liability of inanimate things" was a central
in his effort to rethink modern
problem for Holmes
between
law
is
illustrated
by the confrontation
liability
and
the
industrial
nineteenth-century
capitalism
English
logic;
that is the subject of this essay. Earlier in
the nineteenth
century, jurists had tried to frame a legal
to the new industrial world by
theory adequate
law. Such a
the
principles of contract
generalizing
law of deodand
that
well enough for controversies
in terms of intentional agreements
be understood
between voluntary parties. But the new technologies
framework worked
could
(see note 2), p. 11.
Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 1.
Ibid., pp. 34, 11.
7. Holmes
8.
9.
10.
also multiplied
inwhich
the sorts of events
occurred as an unintended
of
consequence
and
of
the
law
that
the
torts,
is,
operations,
accidental wrongs occurring
compensating
injury
mechanical
body of laws
outside any
contractual
relation, had grown from a minor
preexisting
to
contract
law to a separate field of equal
supplement
But
the
importance.
principles of tort law were far from
In The Common
certain.
to
Law, Holmes attempted
establish these principles
through what could be termed
a historical
of material sensibilities
(in
phenomenology
to
excessive
the
formalism
and
opposition
Hegelianism
that dominated the legal theory of his day). The task of
jurist was thus to discover the "anthropology
in the history of law."11 Influenced especially
by the work of E. B. Tylor, Holmes
sought to ground
in
law
of reasonable
standards
liability
culturally specific
the modern
contained
in turn rested on what he called the
of a particular historical moment.
However, Holmes
ultimately
rejected this as a
to
solution
the
crisis in
satisfactory
nineteenth-century
the understanding
of civil and criminal
liability.12 The
as
drawback of a method of cultural phenomenology
behavior, which
"felt necessities"
is its failure to
legal anthropology
effects of the multiple
conceptual
institutions whose
power
political
discourse of a society. This iswell
iswhen any man by misfortune
Deodande
or
a cart,
by
or
by anie
other
the
competing
shapes the legal
illustrated by the
itself. A law dictionary
the term thus:
of deodand
inadequately defines
concept
horse
into account
take
and often
thinge
of 1579
is slaine by an
that moveth,
then
this thing that is cause of his death, and which at the time
of the misfortune mooved, shall be forfayte to the Queene,
and that is called deodande, and that perteyneth to the
Queenes Almener for to dyspose in almes and in deedes
of
charities.13
event for deodand was
the paradigmatic
Although
indeed that of a material object that killed a person by
its physical motion,
this definition overlooks
the fact that
in concrete decisions
about deodands,
the operative
11. Ibid., p. 37.
as the standard
12. The reasons why Holmes
custom
abandoned
in liability law are discussed
for reasonableness
J. Horwitz,
by Morton
inAmerican
in The
"The Place of Justice Holmes
Legal Thought,"
(Stanford:
Jr., ed. Robert W. Gordon
Holmes,
Legacy of Oliver Wendell
Stanford University
Press, 1992), pp. 31-71.
13. John Rastel I,An Exposition
of Certaine Difficult
and Obscure
Words
Press,
and Termes
1969),
of the Lawes
p. 62.
of this Realme
(Amsterdam:
Da Capo
101
was the feudal, institutional one between
real
and personal property. Real property formed a landed
estate; the division or transfer of such property fell under
the normal jurisdiction of the king's courts. Moveable
objects that were personal chattel property, however,
were transferred either through sales falling under the
law merchant or through inheritance after a natural
courts. The
death, which was handled by ecclesiastical
violence
that made a chattel deodand was thus an
distinction
to the normal division of property
laws, since
a case involving personal property under the
between
It is the distinction
jurisdiction of the sovereign.
exception
it placed
real and personal property that explains the oddity that a
bell that fell and killed someone was not ruled deodand,
cause of death
despite the fact that itsmotion was the
as
was
it
real
classified
(because
property, part of an
the
lethal
fall of a man off a
On
other
the
estate).
hand,
could make the wagon deodand,
stationary wagon
its lack of motion
(because a wagon was chattel
despite
is thus more accurately defined as
property). Deodand
of
personal chattel is the immediate occasion
the death of any reasonable creature."14 (The latter
indicates that the death of an infant, who
qualification
lacked reason and free will and hence the capacity for
for a judgment
sin, could not be the occasion
expiable
of deodand.)
a historical materialist phenomenology
of the
While
"whatever
in The Common
Law is
attempted
to
it seems that
the
idea
of
the
deodand,
necessary
grasp
itmust be combined with a historical analysis of the
theoretical discourse
forged by a society's political
sort Holmes
In the case of the English law of deodand,
institutions.
the political theory established
this means examining
a
state.
Christian
legitimate
The pious use value of accursed
body of the Christian sovereign
objects
to
and the fiscal
The English law of deodand differed from earlier
to guilty
Germanic
and Mediterranean
laws pertaining
was
since
it
and
feudal
objects
shaped by Christian
institutions. The deodand
that was forfeit to
political
God was
not destroyed
in a public sacrifice but was
rather surrendered for what the Church called "pious
use." That is, itsmaterial use value was transferred from
the private economy
14.
Jacob's
of material
Law Dictionary,
vol.
life to what we might
2 (New York: Riley,
1811),
p. 245.
of charity and
call the Christian economy
more
accursed
often, an amount
thing or,
to
the
of that thing,
value
monetary
equal
surrendered by the owner to the state for
salvation.
The
of money
was
use
in relief of
activities.
the poor and other charitable
Things that
the rightful
had caused a human death became
property of the sovereign and were given over to the
king's high almoner.
for sudden death were
The deodands
responsible
classified under a legal category of sovereign property
source of royal revenue.
that included any catastrophic
were
ashore from
cargo washed
in
seized
and
chance discoveries
war,
shipwrecks, prizes
of hidden treasure or gold mines. Various events of
and fortuitous encounter
sudden violence
(what miners
used to call a "lucky strike") produced a type of wealth
if these
that was held to belong to the sovereign
Other
examples
territorial jurisdiction;
within the sovereign's
the
fell
outside
normal
privileges and protections
they
in
real
and
personal property against the power
inhering
owner
state.
of such wealth was not the king
The
of the
as
a
in his status
mortal person, but rather the monarch
occurred
in his or her identity as the immortal body of the
in his
nation's sovereignty. As Kantorowicz mentions
The
book on medieval
King's Two
political theology,
not through the modern
Bodies, this was conceived
the private sphere and the public
between
but
rather
sphere,
through the peculiar medieval
the king feudal and the king fiscal.
distinction between
individual
The king feudal was a particular mortal
distinction
placed at the top of the hierarchy of voluntarily
contracted
feudal relationships. The king fiscal was the
immortal king as the sovereign "crown." The latter, in
Latin, was also called the res fisci (literally, "the fiscal
thing"). The fiscal sovereign consisted of those
in the world of secular time by
materialities
sacralized
to those objects
mundane
historical events, as opposed
sanctified through the divine salvational power that had
that
entered the world through Christ. The wealth
as a
became part of the king's fisc was conceived
of the sovereign,
inalienable component
permanent,
unlike the property that belonged to the king in his
capacity as a mortal feudal lord, which could be sold off
at need. As the fourteenth-century
legal theorist,
Bracton,
wrote:
A thing quasi-sacred is a thing fiscal, which cannot be
given away or be sold or transferred upon another person
by the Prince or ruling king; and those things make the
RES 31 SPRING 1997
102
crown what it is, and they regard to common utility [what
moderns would call "the public good"] such as peace
and
justice.15
feudal ideology produced what Kantorowicz
"that seemingly weird antithesis or parallelism of
Christus and //sci/s."16The Christus, the ecclesiastical
its
that is, the church with
body of Christ in this world,
This Christian
calls
present Christ, its divinely empowered
eucharistically
its
sacramental objects, was concerned with
and
priests,
immortal souls. The fiscus, the
the salvation of people's
fiscal body of the crown, that is, the king in his divine
his officers, and the quasi-sacred
right as monarch,
that were
the sovereign's wealth, was?in
theory,
law of
with enacting God's
Christian charity in the historical world of mortally
the use of wealth
life. (Imight note that while
embodied
in heaven
for the purpose of salvation
and money
most
the
and
church,
corrupted
delegitimated
objects
at least?concerned
in the practice of selling indulgences,
the
and money
for the purpose of charity on
earth successfully
legitimize both the modern
helped
to
state and the charitable
institutions, such as hospitals,
spectacularly
use of wealth
the state granted special privileges.)
In the late twelfth century, the responsibility
for
coroner.
new
the
office of
deodands
became part of the
is derived from
As is implied by the name itself, which
corona, the Latin word for crown, the coroner was the
which
in
of the sovereign
direct agent and chief accountant
local affairs. The coroner's duty was to safeguard the
rights of the crown by impaneling juries and holding
courts of inquest into such things as shipwrecks,
death that might
and any unexplained
to the crown.17 As I have already
in late medieval
times revenue derived from
mentioned,
took
the form of the money
deodand
judgments usually
value of the accursed object rather than the thing itself.
In the terminology
of English common
law, this meant
liable for an action of debt,
that the thing had become
since the term "debt" referred to a specifically monetary
treasure-trove,
bring revenue
obligation.
vols.,
This also meant
De
1957), p. 173.
(see note 15), p. 173.
A History
17. William
S. Holdsworth,
of English
(London: Methuen,
1903), pp. 82-85.
Princeton
16.
object
4
et consuetudinibus
Angliae,
legibus
(New Haven: Yale University
Press,
in The King's
fol. 14, translated by Ernst H. Kantorowicz
Political
A Study inMedieval
(Princeton:
Theology
15. Henry of Bracton,
ed. G. E.Woodbine
1915-1942),
Two Bodies:
that if the deodand
University
Kantorowicz
since itwas the
the debt was canceled,
destroyed,
was
not
If the
its
that
the
debtor.
owner,
itself,
thing
use of the
owner wished
the continued
guilty object,
then the money owed for its killing of a person was
determined
by the value of that particular object, be it a
an
ox, a slave, or even, once such things came
sword,
was
a locomotive.
into existence,
The incorporation of capitalist debt into the
sovereign
body
I need to
turning to the abolition of deodand,
two important changes affecting the relation
debt that
between deodand
judgments and monetary
One
need only
occurred prior to the nineteenth
century.
a
be noted: the institution of the coroner had undergone
that altered it from being a
transformation
democratic
direct agent of the crown in local affairs to being a
Before
mention
representative of the local interests that was able to use
the powers of the crown. This occurred not only
because
local citizens made up coroner's juries, but also
the coroner himself became a locally elected
because
official. The other, however,
requires a longer discussion;
a fundamental
the fiscal body of the state underwent
a
transformation by its incorporation of
capitalist system
of debt.
as the
Since the time of the emergence
of Christianity
state religion of Rome in the fourth century, the law of
Christian states had been characterized
by an absolute
to
that is, to
commercial
debt,
ideological opposition
loans. The
trade credit in the form of interest-bearing
no
matter
how
for
of
small, was
money
profit,
lending
as usury, as a violation of the fundamental
condemned
Christian principle of caritas (charity). As Shael Herman
notes in his book, Medieval
Usury and the
of Feudal Bonds, the main scriptural
Commercialization
authority for this injunction was Luke 6:35, "Lend:
in return."18 This position had only been
expect nothing
law
of European canon
reinforced with the development
in the twelfth century:
Assuming money had immutable and absolute value, the
Church apparently considered the idea of the time value of
money as heretical as the teachings of Galileo and
The
Copernicus.
established
autonomous
system
of canon
law
by Gratian about 1142 had as one of its
Press,
Law, vol.
1
18.
Feudal
Shael
Bonds
Herman,
Medieval
(Berlin: Dunker
Usury and
and Humblot,
the Commercialization
1993),
p.
14.
of
stones
foundation
an absolute
ban
on
usury.
In 1139,
was
the
Second Lateran Council deprived the unrepentant usurer of
church sacraments and barred his burial in sacred ground.19
it
Lending money at interest was sacrilege because
a power akin to unholy magic. Money was
exercised
tool of the great magician
himself, the figure of the
Antichrist, Simon Magus, when he tried to buy the
the
that made
corruption by the unholy power of money
term
from
Simon
derived
the central
(a
simony
Magus)
issue in the Gregorian
reformation of the Catholic
the church, whose priests held a
Church.20 Outside
on the power of the Holy Spirit, piety in the
monopoly
in the act of charitable
secular world was expressed
was the most
it
giving. Charity
godly of acts because
came closest to God's mode of action, the gift of the
natural world that God created. The realm of secular
temporality was itself a gift. As Karl Pribram has written,
"Time was regarded as a common property given to all
men as a free
its natural
gift."21 The gift of time, with
in the form
fruitfulness, came under man's stewardship
of real property (farmland and durable goods able to
the power
produce new things because
they embodied
of nature). But consumer goods and other movable
lacked such productive
personal property
capacity; their
"intrinsic goodness"
could only be consumed
by the
owner or given away for another to consume.
Since
money
goods. Money
was
properly
had been classed among the consumer
could only be spent or lent, and lending
giving
since
money
was
naturally
barren.
The usurer who
lent money at interest was corrupting
the holy gift of time in the same way that Simon Magus
to acquire the power of the Holy
tried to use money
interest was thus not
Spirit from Saint Peter. Charging
an
use
itwas a quasi
of money;
unnatural
merely
act
magical
entailing spiritual pollution.
Given
structures
the inevitable need for legitimate institutional
to accommodate
the monetary
credit-debt
crucial to the development
of any widespread
relations
a number of
states developed
medieval
commerce,
creative evasions of the ban on usury. One, of course,
19.
Ibid., p. 24.
Colin Morris,
The Papal Monarchy:
The Western
1050 to 1250 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1989), p. 101.
21. Karl Pribram, A History
of Economic
Reasoning
20.
Johns Hopkins
University
Press,
1983),
p. 18.
for loans. This
in England in the curious
office called the Exchequer of the Jews. Another evasion,
one available to land-rich monasteries
and Christian
land
lords, was the ruse of subinfeudation;
agricultural
received
institutional
form
transferred as a nontenurial
lease to a
nominally
as
to
in
his
the
vassal
lender,
borrower, so that a
guise
as rent
loan given to a feudal debtor could masquerade
and the interest on the loan paid to the creditor could
as direct income earned by a feudal vassal
masquerade
from agricultural production.22
By the fifteenth century, laws against interest-bearing
and European
loans had been sufficiently undermined
commerce
had reached a sufficiently critical mass so
that the greatest among the financiers providing
services to commercial
intermediation
enterprises
able to draw enough currency from the web of
from
(Baltimore:
were
debt values realized in bills of exchange
financial credit instruments to begin making
very large loans to the sovereigns of Europe. Monarchs
of the sixteenth century
like Charles V fought their wars
on credit supplied by
bankers like the Fuggers
bourgeois
and the Medici. Moreover,
they increasingly fought
these wars with weapons
bought on credit from
monetarized
and other
commercial
industrial enterprises
located in free cities.
or contraction of the monetary
The expansion
value
in the form of capitalized
realized by private merchants
on
debt and trade credit became precariously
dependent
the fortunes of war and the victory or defeat of the
lender or materials
sovereign a money
to
had
decided
back.
That
is, prior to the great
supplier
overseas expansion
that opened a vast field for
investment in colonial adventures and slave
speculative
their
great merchant
plantations,
capitalists wagered
on
war.
who
money
great
surplus
sovereigns
waged
particular
In sixteenth-century
Europe, the institutional
linkage
between
the monetary
values produced by commercial
credit and those arising from public debt was still rather
inchoate. My favorite example of this concerns a
to Genoese merchant
shipload of bullion belonging
bankers that was
intended as a loan to the Spanish
forces in the Netherlands who were fighting against
revolt of the Protestant
22.
Church
as agents
was
miraculous
power of the Holy Spirit from Saint Peter (in
Acts 8:9-22).
Itwas the need to preserve the holy power
in the sacrament of the Eucharist from
actualized
Aristotle,
the use of non-Christians
103
Dutch.
The dangers
the
of the high
of leasing have seen a great revival since
and other Western
in conjunction
with
banks,
inMalaysia
and the Gulf states, began to invent
methods
of "Islamic banking."
Christian
Like medieval
Elaborate
notions
1995, when Citibank
financial
institutions
the accounting
law, Islamic Shari'a
law bans
the charging
of
interest.
104
RES 31 SPRING 1997
the ship to take refuge in an English port,
she
Elizabeth seized the treasure, which
to
for
her
efforts
the
Dutch
needed
support
desperately
against the Spanish. Her seizure was
legitimate
to the medieval
law of sovereignty
that I
according
seas forced
and Queen
have already discussed,
but Elizabeth, for practical
to
treat this money as a loan,
chose
reasons,
political
that is, as a debt owed to the bankers of Genoa who
have to be repaid. The Italian financiers
would
accepted this shift of sides in their funding of the
war. They couldn't do
anything about it
anyway and, after all, the money was not lost, only lent
to an unexpected
borrower.23
in the fiscal body of the
The crucial transformation
at
the
end of the following
occurred
English sovereign
continental
had become
long after European monarchs
on
The great
commercial
credit.
thoroughly dependent
event was the founding of the Bank of England in 1694
national debt.
and the creation of the first modern
century,
state debts, the British national debt
previous
Revolution was
intended as a
that secured the Glorious
never
was
to
be
that
permanent
entity
paid off.
Unlike
Individuals
invest
could
in this debt by buying what we
bonds, from which
they derived
call government
interest payments
specified
would
which
they could
cash
at specified
times and
in at any time, making
it a
floating debt that came to be funded by all of the
monied
political
between
economic
a
in the English nation.
It thus became
for building a national alliance
hostile agricultural and commercial
previously
that
vehicle
interests, as well as an economic
the new British
the public money with which
classes
vehicle
provided
state could build a navy whose
and
purpose was the protection
overseas commercial
empire.24
England was also the dominant
primary
political
of an
expansion
Since the Bank of
source of private
this institution for the first
business
loans in the nation,
time enabled a functional
of the body of
unification
in
the
of
values
form
monetary
private trade
existing
and the body of
credit within a national economy
monetary
the other
23.
mentioned
This
values
created
fiscal activities
little-noted
in J. E. Neale,
aspect
Queen
through public borrowing
state. This
of a sovereign
of the famous
affair"
Elizabeth
(Garden
"ship money
I:A Biography
176, 183-184.
1957), pp.
City, New Jersey: Doubleday,
24.
For an excellent
discussion
of this, see
and the English
of Power: War, Money
Harvard University
Press, 1990).
(Cambridge:
Sinews
John Brewer, The
1688-1783
State,
and
is
innovation
not only transformed
the nature of the fiscal
of the state, but it set the stage for the
sovereignty
modern
history of money.
has traditionally been defined as currency,
Money
as payment for
that is, as anything generally accepted
and
services
for
of debts. A
the
and
settlement
goods
particular commodity,
gold (along with other precious
as
functioned
the
metals)
primary world currency from
the beginning of the European colonial expansion
until
meant
1970s.
This
the
and
the
that
hence the
supply
value of money was dependent
upon the chance
discovery of precious metal mines and new techniques
for refining these metals, because
they affected the
of
But the
value
the
substance.25
currency
commodity
British invention of the modern central bank made the
creation
and fluctuation of monetary
debt values
in the capitalist accounting
practices of private
business enterprises an increasingly
causal
recognizable
factor affecting the value of money.
Italso made the
ability of states during crises, primarily wars, to issue
is
that ismoney whose
paper fiat money,
acceptance
coerced by the state as legal tender and whose
value is
realized
only by the general credit of the state, a third
obvious determining
factor. The creation and fluctuation
of monetary
value in capitalist societies
thus appears to
secured
be triangulated between
the changing market values of
commodities
and commodity
the private
currencies,
debt
values
created
trade
credit
and bank
monetary
by
loans, and the standing public debt and issues of credit
That the value of
money of sovereign nation-states.
has become
money
increasingly determined
by the
in intermediated
values created
credit-debt
monetary
relations, both private and public, rather than in the
is hardly
of commodities,
direct commercial
exchange
news to economic
models of
historians. But economic
the origin of monetary
value do not take into account
and other torts as an origin of novel debt
values. To do so
liabilities and hence of new monetary
of
that death, the destruction
would be to acknowledge
an
of
the
antithesis
life,
very
economically
productive
fatal accidents
event,
sometimes
creates
money.
then current; the idea that
referring to theories of money
was not
in truth more
influenced
growth
by population
For
economic
century.
part of orthodox
theory prior to the nineteenth
see
a brilliant survey of price movements
and their determinants,
and the
Price Revolutions
David Hackett
Fischer, The Great Wave:
25.
prices
Rhythm
Iam
were
of History
(New York: Oxford
University
Press,
1996).
The abolition
immortal
life and
the money value of human
bodies without
sovereignty
of deodand:
is still usefully referred to as the
During what
Industrial Revolution,
enterprise
capitalist manufacturing
its dynamic drive toward technological
extended
and supply of wars
innovation beyond the production
It is undeniable
that many of
and colonial adventures.
the new objects
in the world of early
civil
society were notable for their
nineteenth-century
even plate-glass
Gas
lighting, heavy machinery,
danger.
became a new source not only of economic
windows
it produced
these
death. Among
but also of accidental
one with the greatest lethal potential was
the
objects,
In 1769 the inventor
transportation.
steam-powered
prosperity,
Cugnot drove the world's first steam-powered
into a wall. (He was thrown into a French
land vehicle
a
on the road.) In 1801 at the
for
prison
being
danger
run
first
the engine
of the
trial
English locomotive,
a
two
demonstration
overturned and caught fire, while
a
boiler explosion
and four
years later had ended with
Nicolas
deaths.
Huskisson
death of William
Ihave described
the accidental
on the occasion
of the opening of the first
public railroad in 1830.
in Huskisson's
death
That no deodand was declared
was important at the time, since powerful forces
the fledgling railroad industry. In those days a
opposed
and Liverpool Rail
such as the Manchester
corporation
Road had to receive a special charter from Parliament.
The fight to win this had been hard, since established
interests, notably the owners of the canals with whom
for the domestic
the railroads would compete
carrying
were
called
trade,
adamantly opposed. As a publication
a
of
The Anti-Rail-Road
Journal argued
years
couple
and Liverpool, which had turned a
later, the Manchester
it had received a
in
its
first
years only because
profit
a
tax
benefited
exemption,
relatively small
special
number of investors, in contrast to canals, which had a
far more extensive base of investors. The establishment
the property value of
inevitably diminished
the canals inwhich many of the rural middle and upper
classes had invested their capital, and these latter were
the principal consumers who had created a prosperous
internal market in England. This forecast of dire
had a certain
for the general economy
consequences
resonance
in the depressed
of the early 1830s.
economy
interests warned
The antirailroad
that a new and socially
of railroads
destructive principle had been
politics of corporations:
introduced
into the
105
It is now to be laid down as a principle on which
is to be
Parliament intends to act, that encouragement
afforded to every scheme which shall profess to be
beneficial to its proprietors contrary or to the injury
to property
occasioned
already
in existence.26
1830s and 1840s do, in fact, represent the moment
of the legal revolution that created modern corporations.
a special
had concerned
law of corporations
The ancient
a charter to
state
in
the
the
form
of
privilege granted by
some socially
in and usually monopolize
engage
The
or charitable?activity.
of a capitalist economy
The emergence
required instead
a private right
that incorporation be a routine procedure,
in civil society rather than a special privilege granted by
be
the sovereign state. Italso required that corporations
terms
rather
than
in
of
market
competition
legitimized
a theoretical
monopoly
privilege. This entailed
the right of property owners to
contradiction
between
in the stable value of the
enjoy a settled expectation
beneficial?whether
profitable
interests and the right
inwhich
they had vested
objects
in free enterprise through
of business owners to engage
inwhich property values are always
market competition
in flux and inwhich
there are supposed to be both
winners
and losers (in this case, the railroad owners
were
the winners
and the owners
of canals
and
the
between
turnpikes the losers). This contradiction
and
market
of
property
ownership
principles
the
competition was a fundamental problem underlying
later transformation of legal theory by such thinkers as
Oliver Wendell
In this new
Holmes.27
institutional context, a parallel
in the sphere of public law; the
contradiction
emerged
state had a duty to protect the property and contracts of
private individuals, but it also had a duty to act for the
good of society as a whole. This often
of private property under
confiscation
of eminent domain or the diminishment
values through state regulation, which
and
make some social groups winners
involved
the
the state's power
of property
to
happened
others
losers.
determine
the argumentative
Indeed these contradictions
structure of legitimized politics within capitalist
and
The logic of legitimate economic
democracies.
26.
Detected,
Mechanic's
27.
R. Cort, The Anti-Rail-Road
Journal; or, Rail-Road
Impositions
an answer
to the Edinburgh
Review
contains
and
(London: W. Lake, 1835), p. 52.
Magazine
The argument
of this paragraph
and the one that follows
on Robert Meister's
still unpublished
study of American
heavily
constitutional
law.
relies
106
RES 31 SPRING 1997
inAnglo-American
political action that emerged
legal
culture during the nineteenth
century represented
into two spheres, the public and the
society as divided
The
private.
public sphere of the sovereign state was
as a realm of coercive force that was justified
conceived
only if it protected private
on them only
encroached
rights in general and
for reasons of the good of the
in a manner
that deliberately
society and not
redistributed wealth or power from one social group to
as a realm of
another. The private sphere was conceived
whole
voluntary
established
agreeing
realized
association
between
private parties who
by freely
explicit reciprocal obligations
to enter into contracts. One thing Marx
in his studies of revolution
France at the end of the 1840s was
political
conflict
between
struggle
that the discourse of
groups in a modern
different
representing one's own
represented only their own
these.
and
the
public good outweighed
partial interests,
arose
controversies
from
these
of
Many
wrongful
legal
in unintentional
accidents.
injuries and deaths caused
Within
this new institutional and ideological context,
there are two developments
directly related to the
new
a
of
the debt liability arising
of
model
emergence
of such
death. One was the civilization
from accidental
sense
the
in
"civilization":
of
the
word
the
debt,
original
land owners
or farmers
that became
transfer of social controversies
justiciable
cases from the criminal
law of the state to the civil law
of private individuals. The other was the institutional
of a new kind of (legally) immortal person:
production
the modern
limited liability corporation.
death was the issue that
The civilization
of accidental
in 1846 as being
led to the abolition of deodand
and inconvenient." The 1840s was
"unreasonable
in England as the decade of the "Railway
network of
By the early 1840s a disjointed
over
led to a
This
lines
had
England.
railway
spread
a
increase
and
in
accidents
railroad
proportionate
known
Mania."
growing number of deodand
a very expensive
locomotives,
judgments
capital
against
asset. These
theoretical
accident
resulted
for railroad corporations
and
courts.
for
law
For
instance, a fatal
problems
on the Eastern Counties
in 1840 had
Railway
in four deaths and a judgment of deodand on a
problems
locomotive valued at 500 pounds; but did this mean that
the company owed the crown a total of 500 pounds or
did itmean that it owed 500 pounds for each death?
One way or another deodand
judgments on locomotives
tended to get appealed
all the way up to the Queen's
bench, where
they were almost invariably overturned.
towns and farms had been
But local juries whose
invaded by the new reality of mechanized
transportation
were
in
and class
group as acting
society
in the interests of the whole
and
society
opposing
groups as acting in the interest of only their own part of
society. Similarly, in legal disputes, a state's donation of
land to the railroad industry, or a court's refusal to hold
a railroad corporation
liable for the burned wheat fields
of farmers that had been ignited by a spark thrown from
could be justified by
the wheel of a passing
locomotive,
and
other
embodiments
of
that
railroads
arguing
as
whereas
industrial progress benefited
whole,
society
involved
economic
to use the power of deodand
to do
continuing
as
no
was
it.
understood
There
other
way to
justice
they
an
cases
a
In
fatal
accidental
where
compensate
injury.
or
was
or
sue
maimed
he
she
could
mutilated,
person
But in the case of accidental
for damages.
death, the
no
one
to
ceased
had
exist,
injured party having
standing to file a civil lawsuit. Itwas
"Fatal Accidents Act" of 1846, which
that Parliament
it necessary
of deodand.
in Parliament emphasized
The debate
the irrationality
as a remnant of primitive
law that should
have passed away long ago. Deodands,
said Lord
Denman, were "a remnant of a barbarous and absurd
of deodand
the great law reformer of his day,
law."28 Lord Campbell,
stated that certain doctrines of the revered common
law
were "not applicable
to the present state of society. One
of these doctrines was, that the life of a man was so
valuable
that they could not put an estimate upon it in
case of a death by accident."29 That is, the irrationality of
deodand was that, in holding the value of human life to
was
be infinite and hence unmeasurable,
"compensation
to the extent of the injury inflicted,
made, not according
to the value of the instrument of injury."30
but according
note raised in the debate came from
The only cautionary
a
who
mused
that, although he "was no
politician
it
for the absurdity of the law of deodand,"
advocate
to the
seemed to him that "a simple compensation
Crown was a very ready means of getting at the
compensation
which
was
due
to the injured party."31
3d ser., vol. 87 (1846), col.
Hansard's
Debates,
Parliamentary
of the United
(Sixth session of the fifteenth parliament
Kingdom,
House of Lords, 7 May
1846).
29.
Ibid., col. 968 (24 April 1846).
28.
974.
30.
raised
found
to pass the
would allow this,
to abolish
the law
in order
31.
Ibid., col.
S.Wortley
626
(11 August
1846).
in ibid., col. 625 (11 August
1846).
This was
a reference to the Scottish
law of deodand,
under which
the state remained the party conducting
the money due, but the state
lawsuit and collecting
would
were
the
to the closest relative of
the money
institution. The
rather than to a charitable
not be the
of deodand meant that itwould
state that sued railroads and other corporations
then deliver
the deceased
abolition
powerful
for compensations,
but rather the relatives of the fatally
injured person.32
There were a number
of forces other than the modern
industrial corporation
that were working
for the
abolition of deodand. One of these was modern medical
in the person of the coroner of Middlesex
science,
one of the great medical
County, Thomas Wakely,
reformers of the time. As editor of the journal Lancet
and as a member of Parliament, Wakely
tirelessly
pressed for the reform of legal institutions in the name of
modern
science.33 Wakely
medical
pushed the abolition
as part of his
in the House of Commons
of deodand
effort to restructure the office of the public coroner
into
a modern medical
to
that
of
examiner.
closer
something
We should recall that this was an age still shocked by
the scandalous
activities of Burke and Hare, who robbed
to provide corpses for doctors and
in
order
graves
medical
researchers.34 The transformation of the
institution of the coroner
into that of medical
examiner
was of some cultural importance, since it shifted the
framework that provided
authority and the conceptual
the reasons explaining why a particular death occurred.
Juries of ordinary citizens were basing their judgments of
liability for death upon their response to the viewing of
a dead body and their understanding
of witnesses'
narratives of what happened.
Reformers
likeWakely
32.
The debates
also offer one
class
harbinger of the coming
for accidental
death when
Lord
compensations
starts joking with the Lord Chancellor:
"There is one
Campbell
to these Bills which
I have heard.
It has been said, 'Suppose
objection
were
to meet with an untimely
the Lord Chancellor
end by a railway
which we all pray may never occur, how would
the Jury
accident,
as the value
estimate
the loss to his family? What would
be considered
differential
of the tenure
in monetary
(The LORD CHANCELLOR:
Hear, hear!)
a fair compensation
to be awarded
to his
for
loss?"'
173
their
col.
(7
1846).
Ibid.,
family
May
see S. Squire
33. For the important social contributions
of Wakely,
Times
The
Life
and
of
Thomas
(1899;
Sprigge,
reprint, New
Wakely
York: Krieger, 1974).
34. The role of British medical
science
in revising
the
institutions
and ideology
in the decades
dealing with death
prior to
What
the
would
of his office?
be considered
in the Anatomy
1840s, culminating
in Death,
discussed
by Ruth Richardson
Destitute
(London:
1988).
Penguin,
Act
of
1832, has been
Dissection
and the
107
a scientific
revaluing the reasons for death within
framework of purely physical causality from which
moral considerations
were, quite properly, removed.
The other important new social authority on death at
this time that had an interest in the abolition of deodand
was the insurance industry. The abolition of deodand
of the Fatal Accidents Act meant that
for
death was now a matter for civil
compensation
remedies. These companies
had such a remedy, a
and the passage
profitable
one,
in the form of life insurance and personal
Itwas the insurance industry that
injury policies.
articulated
the modern
the proper
ideology explaining
for human life from a capitalist
compensation
I have found of this
The best statement
perspective.
appears in a fascinating book called The Money Value of
Man that was published by two statisticians
in
monetary
with the Metropolitan
Life Insurance
a
The
book
with
historical
review of
Company.
begins
a
on
modes
for
human
value
money
primitive
placing
life. One of these is compensation
based of the value of
noxious objects, as in the law of deodand. The other is,
of course, human slavery. But the modern?and
we are assured,
is to view "man as a
correct?approach,
collaboration
or salaried worker."35 Using actuarial tables
life expectancy
and the likely career
income of a person in a given
trajectory and wage
can
one
calculate
the amount of lifetime
occupation,
lost by an individual killed in an accident
wage earnings
wage-earner
of average
his natural time. In a capitalist society, this is
a life, and
the correct logic for compensating
obviously
we may note the class
it
involves;
specificity
people
with different levels of income have differently valued
lives. (The democratic wild card to this is the jury award
a practice the insurance
of punitive damages,
industry is
still ferociously
fighting today.)
before
While medical
reform and the rise of for-profit social
insurance companies were
important in the abolition of
far
the
deodand,
greatest social force arose from the
by
owners who managed
and invested in corporations.
The
was the moment when
mid-1840s
the heterogeneous
of rail lines built in the 1830s were gathered
assemblage
under the control of a few large corporations
and when
all
the
of
nearly
liquid capital
England began to flow
into railroad investment.36 The reason for this was not
35.
Louis
I.Dublin
and Alfred J. Lotka, The Money
Value of Man,
(New York: The Ronald Press, 1946), p. 3.
36. C N. Ward-Perkins,
'The Commercial
Crisis of 1847,"
in
vol. 3, ed. E. M. Carus-Wilson
(New York:
Essays in Economic
History,
rev. ed.
108
RES 31 SPRING 1997
only high profit rates but also financial security. While
railroads were a notably dangerous
enterprise for their
offered
customers,
unparalleled
safety to their
they
contrast to older
in
investors. This is because
railroads,
and liabilities, the balance of capital value that is owed
as debt to outside creditors.
It is debt that knits together
the economic
relations of different corporate entities and
as itself an asset in the balance
that becomes
recognized
had been granted the privilege of limited
corporations,
liable for the debts of
liability.37 That is, investors were
the business entity inwhich
they had invested only up
(and in
and
industrial enterprises). That is, monetary
debt, as
constructed within
this historically
specific cultural
is the fundamental
system of economic
accounting,
to the amount
invested.
of money
they had actually
once
of
unlimited
has
again been
liability
danger
in the recent phenomenon
of "debt
demonstrated
sheets of banks and other financial corporations
in commercial
the form of accounts
receivable
(The
medium
who
invested in Lloyd's of London during
millionaires"
and fraud.) In
its recent period of excessive
speculation
the 1840s and 1850s, the advantage of the limited
form became evident to most
liability corporation
investors, and a series of parliamentary
corporations
acts were passed that established
limited liability
general
as an essential quality of the modern corporation.
Iam adopting
From the anthropological
perspective
of a new
the
cultural
here, this represents
production
a person in
is
kind of transhuman person (a corporation
the eyes of the law) not subject to human mortality. The
are owned by this entity
material assets of a corporation
and
of capitalist social relations.
can fully establish
itself as the structuring
Capitalism
a
to
extent that
of
social
the
system
reality only
sense
a practical
in
this
becomes
debt
monetary
logic
in everyday social interactions.
and "felt necessity"
It
be
that
the
historical
limits
of
relations
may
capitalist
appear in those traumatic events that fall outside the
economic
realm of commercial
and
exchange
but
whose
material
agreement,
impact on
individual human lives, in cases of accidental
injury,
in the form of war,
and on whole
peoples,
nevertheless
valorizes new debt relations that the
modern
social order must somehow
realize in the form
contractual
of monetary
value. If there is a logic to the accumulation
Ibelieve
it has yet to be
of such monetary
values,
theorized.
adequately
to be should any, or all, of its human
and continue
are true
owners die. In this, modern corporations
immortal spiritual beings, as much as any god or
it is precisely
their private status,
sovereign. However,
the absence of the divinely
legitimated power and the
that
of sovereignty,
duties
public
quasi-religious
immortal
them.
That
these
beings are
distinguishes
to the
relation
their
constituted
monetary
through
own
to anyone
is
obvious
income-producing
things they
balance sheet;
who knows how to read a double-entry
assets are represented as monetary
values on
productive
one side of the sheet, while
of
the mortal ownership
these assets appears as an equal amount of monetary
into what
value on the other side. The latter are divided
is called
monetary
"owner's
value
equity," the portion of capitalized
that belongs to the corporation's
owners,
Baxter states that the capital
1966), p. 264. R. Dudley
in railroads at this time was "more than half as
invested
speculatively
debt" so that railroads became
"virtually
large as the national
to the debenture
and preference
"Railway
capitalist."
mortgaged
St. Martin's,
Extension
and
M. Carus-Wilson
vol. 3, ed.
in Essays in Economic
History,
(New York: St. Martin's,
1966), p. 37.
...
to hamper
their freedom.
had no old traditions
its Results,"
E.
It
"Railways
limited liability."
of general
the acceptance
the railways that won
in Essays in
Limited Liability,"
of General
"The Coming
H. A. Shannon,
vol. 1, ed. E. M. Carus-Wilson
Economic
(New York: St.
History,
37.
was
Martin's,
1966),
pp. 375-376.

Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money

Transcription

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