Conclusion
One finds a similar logic among the physiocrats and their allies on the one hand, and their adversaries on the other hand: men, destined to live in society, will join together to satisfy their first need, that of providing for their preservation.
But Rousseau, Mably and Linguet questioned the ability of self-interest to produce harmony and, moreover, they opposed all institutions that violate or reinforce inequalities. The rise in grain prices that followed free exportation went, according to them, against the happiness of the people and emphasised the inequalities between the class of owners and that of non-owners. The natural right to provide for one’s preservation was thus violated rather than sustained by this policy. For the physiocrats, the physical order was nothing other than the economic order. This assimilation expresses the idea of natural economic laws whereas Rousseau, Mably and Linguet distinguished clearly between what belongs to the physical sciences and the moral sciences. Moralists and politicians must reflect on much more complex questions than those that belong to the physical sciences. The critique of legal despotism, shared by political economists such as Turgot and Condorcet, thus can be read in terms of this conclusion. Since, according to most of their critics, the physiocrats’ political theories reinforce inequalities between the different social classes and do not create a public welfare, they must be rejected. Far from legal despotism, or from the so-called natural laws of political economy, Rousseau and Mably imagined assemblies of citizens where the confrontation of self-interest in debates was the sole means of bringing common interests to the fore.