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 Sixteen - Physiocracy in Sweden: A Note on the Problem of Inventing Tradition
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
Dugald Stewart, the successor of Adam Fergusons's chair in moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and an admirer of Adam Smith, was ready to admit that Smith's views especially on the freedom of trade and enterprise coincided remarkably with the French économistes (in which he most presumably included both Mirabeau and the Physiocratic school). However, at the same time he strongly pointed out that Smith was much less dogmatic in his views. Above all Smith differed very much with the Physiocrats regarding method. He admitted the importance of general principles, Stewart argued, but believed very little in their accuracy or practical application: ‘… in what manner the execution of the theory should be conducted in particular instances, is a question of a very different nature, and to which the answer must vary, in different countries, according to the different circumstances of the case’.
However in what should turn out to become the standard ‘great tradition’, or canon, of doctrinal history of economics this hesitance on behalf of someone who was very well placed to identify Smith's general views and methodological mores was very soon forgotten. Hence at least from the middle of the nineteenth century Smith was not only depicted as a doctrinaire free trader, a believer in general principles and – on this occasion the most important – someone who had been deeply influenced by the Physiocratic school, directly or indirectly through Turgot. Certainly the differences between Smith and the Physiocrats concerning agriculture or industry as a source of economic growth was noted. However, Smith's insistence upon a free trade (for example in corn), and the existence of sterile classes in society (servants, priests, etc.), has often been regarded as a consequence of the influence which Francois Quesnay and others bestowed upon Smith when he in the 1760s visited Paris. Ronald Meek and other scholars have also—most accurately so—drawn attention to the similarities between Turgot and the Scottish enlightenment concerning the so-called ‘four stages theory’ of economic and social development.
However, when such similarities are used in order to construct a historical sequence of doctrinal development emphasizing how the ‘old’ mercantile system was systematically criticised first by the Physiocrats and then by Adam Smith leading on to Ricardo and Classical political economy to – eventually – becoming part of the modern ‘neoclassical synthesis’, this is by large a false invention of tradition.
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- The Economic TurnRecasting Political Economy in Enlightenment Europe, pp. 585 - 606Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019