Adam Müller on Money

The economic thought of politician and poet Adam Müller (1779–1829) has often been dismissed. Portrayed as heavily reactionary, philosophically unsubstantial, and internally inconsistent, Müller’s views have been rejected by thinkers across the political spectrum, from Karl Marx to Carl Schmitt. But in this paper, I argue that Müller’s economic thought deserves rediscovery. This is because Müller’s economic writings prove surprisingly prescient when it comes to one of their most prominent topics: the issue of money. Anticipating contemporary views long before they received wide-spread recognition, Müller argues that the essence of money is debt, and that the earliest human exchanges relied on credit, rather than, as many have claimed, on “truck and barter.” Indeed, defying many of his own contemporaries, Müller defends paper money and refutes calls for a return to precious metals as only medium of exchange. Müller, hence, despite many shortcomings, deserves to be recognized as an unlikely pioneer in the philosophy of money whose views still merit our attention today.