Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Chapter One The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe
- Chapter Two The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision
- Chapter Three The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation
- Chapter Four Against the Chinese Model: The Debate on Cultural Facts and Physiocratic Epistemology
- Chapter Five “Le superflu, chose très nécessaire”: Physiocracy and Its Discontents in the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate
- Chapter Six François Véron de Forbonnais and the Invention of Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Seven Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Forbonnais's ‘Est modus in Rebus’ Vision
- Chapter Eight Physiocrat Arithmetic versus Ratios: The Analytical Economics of Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin
- Chapter Nine Galiani: Grain and Governance
- Chapter Ten “Live and Die Proprietors and Free”: Morellet Dismantles the Dialogues and Defends the Radical Liberal Break
- Chapter Eleven “Is the Feeling of Humanity not More Sacred than The Right of Property?”: Diderot's Antiphysiocracy in His Apology of Abbé Galiani
- Chapter Twelve De facto Policies and Intellectual Agendas of an Eighteenth-Century Milanese Agricultural Academy: Physiocratic Resonances in the Società patriotica
- Chapter Thirteen Sensationism, Modern Natural Law and the “Science of Commerce” at the Heart of the Controversy between Mably and the Physiocrats
- Chapter Fourteen ‘One Must Make War on the Lunatics’: The Physiocrats’ Attacks on Linguet, the Iconoclast (1767–1775)
- Chapter Fifteen The Grain Question as the Social Question: Necker's Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Sixteen Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
- Chapter Seventeen Spain and the Economic Work of Jacques Accarias de Serionne
- Chapter Eighteen Captured by the Commercial Paradigm: Physiocracy Going Dutch
- Chapter Nineteen Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies
- Chapter Twenty No Way Back to Quesnay: Say's Opposition to Physiocracy
- Chapter Twenty-One “A Sublimely Stupid Idea”: Physiocracy in Italy from the Enlightenment to Fascism
- Chapter Twenty-Two Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
- Index
Chapter Nine - Galiani: Grain and Governance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Notes on Contributors
- Chapter One The Economic Turn in Enlightenment Europe
- Chapter Two The Physiocratic Movement: A Revision
- Chapter Three The Political Economy of Colonization: From Composite Monarchy to Nation
- Chapter Four Against the Chinese Model: The Debate on Cultural Facts and Physiocratic Epistemology
- Chapter Five “Le superflu, chose très nécessaire”: Physiocracy and Its Discontents in the Eighteenth-Century Luxury Debate
- Chapter Six François Véron de Forbonnais and the Invention of Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Seven Between Mercantilism and Physiocracy: Forbonnais's ‘Est modus in Rebus’ Vision
- Chapter Eight Physiocrat Arithmetic versus Ratios: The Analytical Economics of Jean-Joseph-Louis Graslin
- Chapter Nine Galiani: Grain and Governance
- Chapter Ten “Live and Die Proprietors and Free”: Morellet Dismantles the Dialogues and Defends the Radical Liberal Break
- Chapter Eleven “Is the Feeling of Humanity not More Sacred than The Right of Property?”: Diderot's Antiphysiocracy in His Apology of Abbé Galiani
- Chapter Twelve De facto Policies and Intellectual Agendas of an Eighteenth-Century Milanese Agricultural Academy: Physiocratic Resonances in the Società patriotica
- Chapter Thirteen Sensationism, Modern Natural Law and the “Science of Commerce” at the Heart of the Controversy between Mably and the Physiocrats
- Chapter Fourteen ‘One Must Make War on the Lunatics’: The Physiocrats’ Attacks on Linguet, the Iconoclast (1767–1775)
- Chapter Fifteen The Grain Question as the Social Question: Necker's Antiphysiocracy
- Chapter Sixteen Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
- Chapter Seventeen Spain and the Economic Work of Jacques Accarias de Serionne
- Chapter Eighteen Captured by the Commercial Paradigm: Physiocracy Going Dutch
- Chapter Nineteen Cameralism, Physiocracy and Antiphysiocracy in the Germanies
- Chapter Twenty No Way Back to Quesnay: Say's Opposition to Physiocracy
- Chapter Twenty-One “A Sublimely Stupid Idea”: Physiocracy in Italy from the Enlightenment to Fascism
- Chapter Twenty-Two Epilogue: Political Economy and the Social
- Index
Summary
“No bread, no politics” (Ange Goudard)
“All politics begins with a grain of cereal” (Mirabeau)
“A dog showed up suddenly in the salon where the Prince of Conti was having tea served. He did his business on the floor in the presence of his Most Serene Highness, with no respect at all for the august company present. An usher rushed to beat him and chase him away with blows from his stick. “Stop,” uttered the Prince, “liberty, liberty, total liberty,” mocking in this way the favorite word of the économistes, their sect and their system.”
This essay stems from a colloquium devoted to “Antiphysiocracy”: this very notion pays grudging homage to the intellectual notoriety and the manifest influence of a group of determined thinkers who forged a doctrine, founded on putatively scientific premises, which advocated urgent and profound changes necessary to right the course of a nation-kingdom utterly adrift. The Physiocratic conception derived from a study of the “natural order” apprehended largely through a deductive epistemological lever called “évidence,” a certitude so clear and manifest that no mind could spurn it. This examination revealed that the “imprescriptible,” “inviolable,” and “holy” right of property and the concomitant faculty to dispose of it with “total” and “absolute” liberty were the formative principles, anterior to all manner of social and political life, from which all relations, activities and institutions developed. “Évidence” demonstrated that everything in the “moral” sphere flowed from the “physical” world that was nature's peculiar domain. Physiocracy's integral, dynamic analysis of economic mechanisms showed that the land was the unique source of national wealth. The discovery of nature's laws showed men the range of their options—what they could do through positive law—and the scope of their errors—what they must undo in to make the best use of their lives, individually and collectively. As a result of their study, the économistes—the title to which the Physiocrats loftily claimed a monopoly—proposed ideas for deep changes in economic practices, financial administration, modes of political governance, education and the structure of society. Virtually all of the major threads of their thinking converged on the question of grain, the overwhelmingly dominant sector of the old-regime economy.
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- The Economic TurnRecasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, pp. 221 - 304Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019