Condorcet et les assignats : présentation

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Manuela Albertone, Jean-Nicolas Rieucau, Marcel Dorigny and François Hincker : Condorcet and the assignats. This dossier is made up of three studies centred around a single theme, namely Condorcet' s attitude towards the paper money issued by the Constituent Assembly. The three approaches proposed here offer quite different interpretations of this question and open up a debate concerning the nature of assignats and the significance of the divisions between the revolutionaries on this point. Manuela Albertone recalls the doctrinal elements of Condorcet' s initial opposi¬ tion to the creation of money assignats ; it was above all the formation of his economic thought and his experience as an Inspector of the Mint which prevented him from supporting this type of fiduciary currency. As his thinking was influenced first by the Physiocrats and then by Turgot and Smith, he could not imagine a non-metallic money with no universally accepted intrinsic value. Jean-Nicolas Rieucau, on the other hand, emphasizes the fact that Condorcet refused assignats not so much from a doctrinal attachment to quantitativist theory or from a superstitious attachment to precious metals, as from certainty concerning the imperfect nature of assignats which were incapable of completely fulfilling the role of 'true money'. His refusal was based on an awareness that the assignat was unsatisfactory as a complete means of payment. Paradoxically, this analysis led Condorcet to ask for a generalisation of small assignats which could play an almost perfect monetary role, at least for everyday transactions. Marcel Dorigny and François Hincker note that Condorcet did not stick rigidly to his initial hostility, but became by the end of 1791 one of the most fervent partisans of money assignats ; they describe the different stages of this about-turn and try to explain its causes.