Money’s abstract promises require trust that excludes others’ unpredictable interference

Evidence

The individual must be able to work on the basis that, when he holds the money symbol in his hand, he also really possesses the possibilities which it promises, so that he can confidently put off his decision about the final use of the money and can enjoy or make best use of the complexity of the possibilities it represents in abstract form. This is where at the junction of the temporal and social dimensions the contours of the general problem of trust are clearly displayed. A rational search for advantage by indirect means, renouncing gratification, deferments or advances which may be implied, can only be capable of motivation if the disturbing interference of other people’s free and incalculable actions can be excluded by trust. The question is how such trust, which is quite independent of whatever material value serves as support to the money symbol, can be built up and maintained. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 211

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — money is the archetypal symbolic token that lets actors defer decisions without facework; also connects to the reader’s Ishiguro thesis via Stevens’s deference to the institutional symbol.
• DEFINE: Defines the junction of temporal and social dimensions where system trust operates — the core Luhmannian move the reader needs for their comparative argument.