Lecturer Gregory Collins has a chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money entitled “Tickets of Despotism’: Edmund Burke on the Assignats, Abstract Theory, and the French Revolution.”
Abstract:
Edmund Burke’s critical treatment of the assignats in the Reflections on the Revolution in France is crucial to understanding his broadside against the French Revolution and his conception of the relation between philosophy and money. The assignats in his view represented fundamental dangers to the economic and political structures of commonwealths: economically, they created vast levels of uncertainty and unpredictability in the execution of market transactions, provoked the rise in hyperinflation, upset creditor-debtor relations, and discouraged industry, commerce, and revenue, all the while sowing distrust among French men and women; politically, they represented an abstract, imprudent form of social relations and statesmanship that fueled the ascent of an oligarchy and widespread social engineering, both of which Burke believed threatened to destroy the ancient customs and institutions of European civilization. The intellectual roots of contemporary criticisms of fiat money can be traced back to Burke’s condemnation of the assignats. The most important lesson Burke teaches, however, is that speculation can dissolve moral sentiment if not disciplined by permanent sources of social order.