PAGE
[BOOK I: THE FOUNDERS]
CHAPTER I: THE PHYSIOCRATS (M. Gide)[1]
I
I.The Natural Order[5]
II.The Net Product[12]
III.The Circulation of Wealth[18]
II
I.Trade[27]
II.The Functions of the State[33]
III.Taxation[38]
IV.Résumé of the Physiocratic Doctrine. Critics and Dissenters[45]
CHAPTER II: ADAM SMITH (M. Rist)[50]
I.Division of Labour[56]
II.The “Naturalism” and “Optimism” of Smith[68]
III.Economic Liberty and International Trade[93]
IV.The Influence of Smith’s Thought and its Diffusion. J. B. Say[102]
CHAPTER III: THE PESSIMISTS (M. Gide)[118]
I.Malthus[120]
The Law of Population[121]
II.Ricardo[138]
1.The Law of Rent[141]
2.Of Wages and Profits[157]
3.The Balance of Trade Theory and the Quantity Theory of Money[163]
4.Paper Money, its Issue and Regulation[165]
[BOOK II: THE ANTAGONISTS]
CHAPTER I: SISMONDI AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CRITICAL SCHOOL (M. Rist)[170]
I.The Aim and Method of Political Economy[173]
II.Sismondi’s Criticism of Over-production and Competition[178]
III.The Divorce of Land from Labour as the Cause or Pauperism and of Crises[186]
IV.Sismondi’s Reform Projects. His Influence upon the History of Doctrines[192]
CHAPTER II: SAINT-SIMON, THE SAINT-SIMONIANS, AND THE BEGINNINGS OF COLLECTIVISM (M. Rist)[198]
I.Saint-Simon and Industrialism[202]
II.The Saint-Simonians and their Criticism of Private Property[211]
III.The Importance of Saint-Simonism in the History of Doctrines[225]
CHAPTER III: THE ASSOCIATIVE SOCIALISTS[231]
I.Robert Owen (M. Gide)[235]
1.The Creation of the Milieu[237]
2.The Abolition of Profit[239]
II.Charles Fourier (M. Gide)[245]
1.The Phalanstère[246]
2.Integral Co-operation[248]
3.Back to the Land[251]
4.Attractive Labour[252]
III.Louis Blanc (M. Rist)[255]
CHAPTER IV: FRIEDRICH LIST AND THE NATIONAL SYSTEM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY (M. Rist)[264]
I.List’s Ideas in relation to the Economic Conditions in Germany[266]
II.Sources of List’s Inspiration. His Influence upon subsequent Protectionist Doctrines[277]
III.List’s Real Originality[287]
CHAPTER V: PROUDHON AND THE SOCIALISM OF 1848 (M. Rist)[290]
I.Criticism of Private Property and Socialism[291]
II.The Revolution of 1848 and the Discredit of Socialism[300]
III.The Exchange Bank Theory[307]
IV.Proudhon’s Influence After 1848[320]
[BOOK III: LIBERALISM]
CHAPTER I: THE OPTIMISTS (M. Gide)[322]
I.The Theory of Service-Value[332]
II.The Law of Free Utility and Rent[335]
III.The Relation of Profits to Wages[340]
IV.The Subordination of Producer to Consumer[342]
V.The Law of Solidarity[344]
CHAPTER II: THE APOGEE AND DECLINE OF THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL. JOHN STUART MILL (M. Gide)[348]
I.The Fundamental Laws[354]
II.Mill’s Individualist-Socialist Programme[366]
III.Mill’s Successors[374]
[BOOK IV: THE DISSENTERS]
CHAPTER I: THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL AND THE CONFLICT OF METHODS (M. Rist)[370]
I.The Origin and Development of the Historical School[381]
II.The Critical Ideas of the Historical School[388]
III.The Positive Ideas of the Historical School[398]
CHAPTER II: STATE SOCIALISM (M. Rist)[407]
I.The Economists’ Criticism of Laissez-faire[410]
II.The Socialistic Origin of State Socialism. Rodbertus and Lassalle[414]
1.Rodbertus[415]
2.Lassalle[432]
III.State Socialism—Properly so called[436]
CHAPTER III: MARXISM (M. Gide)[449]
I.Karl Marx[449]
1.Surplus Labour and Surplus Value[450]
2.The Law of Concentration or Appropriation[459]
II.The Marxian School[465]
III.The Marxian Crisis and the Neo-Marxians[473]
1.The Neo-Marxian Reformists[473]
2.The Neo-Marxian Syndicalists[479]
CHAPTER IV: DOCTRINES THAT OWE THEIR INSPIRATION TO CHRISTIANITY (M. Gide)[483]
I.Le Play’s School[486]
II.Social Catholicism[495]
III.Social Protestantism[503]
IV.The Mystics[510]
[BOOK V: RECENT DOCTRINES]
CHAPTER I: THE HEDONISTS (M. Gide)[517]
I.The Pseudo-Renaissance of the Classical School[517]
II.The Psychological School[521]
III.The Mathematical School[528]
IV.Criticism of the Hedonistic Doctrines[537]
CHAPTER II: THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS (M. Rist)[545]
I.The Theoretical Extension of the Concept Rent[545]
II.Unearned Increment and the Proposal to Confiscate Rent by Means of Taxation[558]
III.Systems of Land Nationalisation[570]
IV.Socialist Extensions of the Doctrine of Rent[579]
CHAPTER III: THE SOLIDARISTS (M. Gide)[587]
I.The Causes of the Development of Solidarism[587]
II.The Solidarist Thesis[593]
III.The Practical Application of Solidarist Doctrines[601]
IV.Criticism[607]
CHAPTER IV: THE ANARCHISTS (M. Rist)[614]
I.Stirner’s Philosophical Anarchism and the Cult of the Individual[616]
II.Social and Political Anarchism and the Criticism of Authority[619]
III.Mutual Aid and the Anarchist Conception of Society[629]
IV.Revolution[637]
CONCLUSION (MM. Gide and Rist)[643]
INDEX[649]

BOOK I: THE FOUNDERS

CHAPTER I: THE PHYSIOCRATS

Political Economy as the name of a special science is the invention of one Antoine de Montchrétien, who first employed the term about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Not until the middle of the eighteenth century, however, does the connotation of the word in any way approach to modern usage. A perusal of the article on Political Economy which appeared in the Grande Encyclopédie of 1755 will help us to appreciate the difference. That article was contributed by no less a person than Jean Jacques Rousseau, but its medley of politics and economics seems utterly strange to us. Nowadays it is customary to regard the adjective “political” as unnecessary, and an attempt is made to dispense with it by employing the terms “economic science” or “social economics,” but this article clearly proves that it was not always devoid of significance. It also reveals the interesting fact that the science has always been chiefly concerned with the business side of the State, especially with the material welfare of the citizens—“with the fowl in the pot,” as Henry IV put it. Even Smith never succeeded in getting quite beyond this point of view, for he declares that “the object of the political economy of every nation is to increase the riches and the power of that country.”[5]

But the counsels given and the recipes offered for attaining the desired end were as diverse as they were uncertain. One school, known as the Mercantilist, believed that a State, like an individual, must secure the maximum of silver and gold before it could become wealthy. Happy indeed was a country like Spain that had discovered a Peru, or Holland, which, in default of mines, could procure gold from the foreigner in exchange for its spices. Foreign trade really seemed a quite inexhaustible mine. Other writers, who were socialists in fact though not in name—for that term is of later invention—thought that happiness could only be found in a more equal distribution of wealth, in the abolition or limitation of the rights of private property, or in the creation of a new society on the basis of a new social contract—in short, in the foundation of the Utopian commonwealth.

It was at this juncture that Quesnay appeared. Quesnay was a doctor by profession, who now, when on the verge of old age, had turned his attention to the study of “rural economy”—the problem of the land and the means of subsistence.[6] Boldly declaring that the solution of the problem had always lain ready to hand, needing neither inventing nor discovering, he further maintained that all social relations into which men enter, far from being haphazard, are, on the contrary, admirably regulated and controlled. To those who took the trouble to think, the laws governing human associations seemed almost self-evident, and the difficulties they involved no greater than the difficulties presented by the laws of geometry. So admirable were these laws in every respect that once they were thoroughly known they were certain to command allegiance. Dupont de Nemours cannot be said to have exaggerated when, in referring to this doctrine, he spoke of it as “very novel indeed.”[7]