Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets

Abstract

In contemporary debates over blocked exchanges, there is a tendency to become fixated on the essentially tradeable or untradeable nature of given goods or practices without entering into the wider constitutional questions raised by the issue of where and when market logic should obtain. This article offers some perspective on contemporary commodification debates by examining an eighteenth-century conversation over ethical and legal limitations on market activity. In particular, it examines Montesquieu’s contribution to debates about the venality of office and the laws prohibiting noble participation in commerce. Montesquieu made some counter-intuitive arguments about which exchanges should be blocked and which permitted in a monarchical regime: he championed blocking noble participation in commerce, and he supported the sale of office. Both positions were controversial in his time and strike many today as patently absurd. But Montesquieu’s thought on the limits of commerce in a monarchy can inform contemporary debates on the ethical and political significance of commodification. The question of how far market logic should extend is ultimately a question of the type of political regime that one is considering. This article contributes to non-ideal political theory by suggesting that commodification debates need to go beyond abstract ethical reflections on markets and become more attuned to the particular constitutional contexts of any given blocked-exchange debate.