CSPT is pleased to announce the winner for the 2024 Prize:

Stefan Eich, Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University, for his book The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes (Princeton University Press, 2022)

​

The following is the Prize Committee’s commendation for the book:

​

Stefan Eich’s The Currency of Politics compellingly argues that money is not merely a medium of exchange but a foundational site of political struggle. Challenging the long-standing assumption that the topic of monetary policy belongs to economics rather than political theory, Eich shows that money has always been a site of political contestation and a medium through which competing visions of freedom, justice, and equality are institutionalized. Like international law, security, or violence, money not only reflects but constitutes social and global orders. With rare breadth and precision, Eich excavates layers of political thought, offering original and often surprising readings of Aristotle, Locke, Fichte, Marx, and Keynes. These historical reconstructions shed new light on the postwar international order, as well as our contemporary moment. The Currency of Politics is both ground-clearing and generative: it maps the historical mechanisms by which money has been depoliticized and recovers its latent democratic possibilities. It offers a powerful conceptual framework for understanding money as a political institution—and an urgent invitation for political theorists to take the politics of monetary systems seriously.​

​

2024 Prize Committee: 

Murad Idris (Chair)

Lida Maxwell

Alison McQueen

​​

​

See past Spitz Prize winners here. 

​

​

​