Cryptocurrency, the Reactionary Impulse, and the Human Nature of Exchange | The American Spectator

For decades, commentators dismissive of conservatism have found much to criticize in our movement’s seeming inability to define itself past a reactionary — some would say regressive — attitude. (Here, Corey Robin’s critically titled book The Reactionary Mind comes to mind). Luminaries from Edmund Burke to G.K. Chesterton to Russell Kirk have devoted much time and detail to showing that a conservative is more than just a man who dislikes present innovations and novelties. Or, at least as Chesterton in particular envisioned, to coherently situate such an attitude within a palatable philosophical framework.

This observation isn’t intended to necessarily propose the existence of a fallacy within the thought of these beloved thinkers, or to suggest a privation within the “conservative mind,” however liminally such an ethos might be defined. Rather, it is intended to argue that in the context of a particular topic — cryptocurrency and its implications — this caricature-esque conservative attitude is more valuable precisely because of its mystifying qualities. Detractors abhor the temperamental obstinacy of conservatives, and their refusal to abandon cherished ways in the face of self-proclaimed new and improved methods. But today, this reactionary attitude is precisely what we need to cultivate.

When the idea of cryptocurrency is discussed, it’s often within utilitarian parameters. Is Bitcoin, for example, more fungible than gold? Does crypto solve the portability problem inherent to precious-metals-based currency? Is Bitcoin’s decentralized nature superior to that of traditional fiat currencies at mitigating inflationary devaluation? Questions of this caliber are probably blasé to most crypto-enthusiasts, and, like the Nakamoto Institute’s Daniel Krawisz, many proponents would likely answer them in the affirmative, based on pure practicality. (RELATED: What Does the Great Gold Spike Signify for the World Economy?)

This default mode of inquiry and discussion was supplemented a few months ago with the publication of a book by Crisis Magazine’s editor-in-chief, Eric Sammons. The work, titled Moral Money: The Case for Bitcoin, isn’t the first examination of Bitcoin from a religious/ethical standpoint. That honor is given to the 2024 documentary God Bless Bitcoin. But Mr. Sammons’s contribution is uniquely important in that it (quite cogently, I might add), attempts to situate Bitcoin within the moral tradition of the Natural Law, arguing that it is, accordingly, the “most moral monetary system ever conceived.”

When Mr. Sammons’s book was first released earlier this year, I covered it for the New Oxford Review, in a piece they published last month. My intent isn’t to duplicate any observations I made previously; rather, it’s to clarify some intricacies that were beyond the scope of my initial analysis — considerations which I believe are of grave importance to us as conservatives in both temperament and in reasoning.

See, the reactionary impulse common to so many conservatives is really, at its core, a bias toward the present (and the past). It’s an attitude premised implicitly on the observation that once we relinquish a belief, practice, or even physical item which helps bind us as a culture — as we’ve discovered time and again — it becomes nearly impossible to regain it.

Mr. Sammons directs a proportionate amount of rightful indignation at the injustice and immorality of the modern fiat-currency system, which has settled like a black cloud of financial malaise upon much of the West. He’s right to argue that there is nothing much to conserve within the hollow shell of modern financial exchange. But what he misses (or, perhaps, fails to address with full candor), is the cultural and essentially human component that remains a functioning relic of our current system.

In spite of its myriad flaws, our present monetary system still has something that no cryptocurrency can ever replace: Tangibility. By virtue of its very nature, Mr. Sammons’s beloved Bitcoin has nothing that can satisfy the human desire to receive something created in exchange for another created material thing. The Dominican father Gerald Vann cautioned, nearly a century ago, against precisely such an idea — what he cautioned against regarding an excessive division of labor can only be applied more fully with regard to labor’s physical store: currency. As he wrote,

The Thomistic idea is founded on the principle of operatio sequitur esse, [which states] that labor should be the exteriorization of the personality, [and] that labor of any description should be art.… The division of labor has made vast economic progress possible, but excessive division of labor must lead to a lack of interest, to loss of responsibility, to the robot. The result has been that the idea of creation is ceasing to exist.

Will not cryptocurrency further deaden the ideal of creation? If currency values, stores, and measures labor’s creative output, then to remove its incarnational component is to remove, in some sense, its essentially human foundation. Local communities, incarnational transactions — the type of exchanges Patrick Deneen praises as essential to building culture, and which foster the most primary form of community within Aristo-Thomistic political economy — are what stand to be lost if the notion of value is abstracted any further from its already denatured physical form. This doesn’t mean that our modern fiat system is perfect, or even that it is just. But it does mean that it has something cryptocurrency lacks — and will conceivably lack forever — a tangible, irreplaceably human, transactional power.

Is the proper function of the reactionary impulse to stymie all manner of innovation through every conceivable avenue? Not exactly. Instead, reactionaries get it right when they refuse to relinquish those things they have received until being convinced that what is good and noble about the status quo will be preserved or enhanced by any new paradigm. If novelty cannot maintain what is fundamentally good about the present, it must be rejected, even at the cost of efficiency and perceived utility. This realization is the primary fruit of the reactionary impulse, and it indicates the proper and courageous role its disciples ought play — confronting artificial intelligence, analyzing emergent biotechnology, and yes, even critiquing the way we organize our transactions and exchange.

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Frederick Woodward is a research fellow in political economy, Hillsdale College. He is also director of research and investigations for Politylitics, a legal analyst with the Michigan Fair Elections Institute, and an editor at the Hillsdale Forum.