Political economy as a moral and political science
Physiocracy thus deals with a large spectrum of topics, from economic theory to morals and politics, an aspect also often criticised by its opponents. When Quesnay and his disciples considered explicitly the way by which an agricultural kingdom should be governed, they relied on the idea that the various classes of the kingdom have the same interest, provided that the policy indicated by the Tableau Economique is implemented.
Even the commercial class would have benefited from it, once the “systeme des commer^ants” is abandoned. On this basis, Quesnay and Le Mercier de la Riviere were able to reject both Montesquieu’s and Rousseau’s views on government and society (Charles and Steiner 1999). On the one hand, Montesquieu proposed building a moderate government following the “checks and balances” system: but this was irrelevant, since this political architecture supposes a difference in the interests of the various classes of the kingdom. Furthermore, instead of relying on reason, Montesquieu’s views were based on the passions of the citizens. On the other hand, Rousseau was in favour of a government relying on the virtue of the citizens, something that was not necessary when, as Quesnay and Le Mercier de la Riviere argued, interested behaviour was the main driving force behind economic and political life.However, in the physiocratic literature, it is possible to find two views on how to conceive the working of a government based on the identity of interests. (i) There was first the “expert” version, endorsed by Quesnay in “Despotisme de la Chine” and by Le Mercier de la Riviere in L 'ordre naturel et essentiel des societes politiques: according to this view, the King’s decisions should be examined by magistrates in full command of the laws of the natural order, assessing whether these decisions comply with the laws (Le Mercier de la Riviere 1767, 95-109).
But the term “despotisme legal” that Quesnay and Le Mercier de la Riviere employed proved extremely counterproductive. As early as 1767, Friedrich Melchior Grimm pointed out semantic excess as well as naivety: the belief that the method of “evidence” was a sufficient guarantee for a perfect government in which the sovereign would have nothing more to do. An identical criticism was made in the same year by Rousseau, who compared the government of evidence to a utopia similar to that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre; and in the following year (1768) in a more detailed way, by Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, who pointed out the limits of a government of reason due to the play of passions, questioning the idea of a social order deriving from the physical order and governed by immutable and natural laws, seeing in legal despotism a despotism of the net product. Bearde de l’Abbaye (1770) found the idea of a despot subject to laws contradictory. Finally, Turgot himself categorically rejected the term and the idea of a tutelary authority which, according to him, dishonoured the physiocratic doctrine, since free men did not need tutors. (ii) For the second view, endorsed by Mirabeau, Du Pont and Le Trosne, the identity of interests was supposed to work at the level of local elected assemblies where landowners determine the level of taxes and the administration of the economy.These two approaches are not incompatible, since they both rely on the same hypothesis: the identity of interests. Accordingly, in De l'administration provinciate et de la reforme des impots (1779), Le Trosne offers a synthesis of the two different strands of the Physiocratic doctrine of taxation, administration and politics. In line with the Physiocratic theory of legal despotism, his solution emphatically proposes an enlightened government, and thus lends an active role to (economic) expertise. However, this top-down system of governance is associated with local administration, as strongly advocated by Mirabeau in his “Memoire sur les Etats provinciaux” - published in 1758 the fourth part of L'ami des hommes, and so at the beginning of his intellectual career.
The role of this administration would have been to distribute the tax burden among the landowners, whatever their social status (nobility, clergy or the third estate).In both views, education, and notably economic education, is a key element of the new political and economic organisation of the nation:
the nation should know the general laws of the natural order that evidently render the government clearly the most perfect. The study of human jurisprudence is not enough for educating statesmen; it is necessary that those intending to work in the administration are obliged to study the natural order most advantageous to men living in society.
(Quesnay 1767-1768b, 566)
Quesnay expressed the same idea in “Despotisme de la Chine”, when he stressed the role of instruction in the effective functioning of this political system (Quesnay 1767, 1072). Thus instruction and public opinion on the one hand, and identity of interests on the other, were combined to build a political view that could regenerate the kingdom.
During the second stage of the development of physiocracy, authors were aligned with this view and attempted to diffuse their broad understanding of political economy. This is particularly the case with Baudeau when he converted to physiocracy, and put his journal - Les Ephemerides du citoyen, ou Chronique de l,esprit national - at the service of the school. This important physiocratic journal for the first time brought together political economy and moral and political sciences, as in the subtitle of the first volume in 1767: Les Ephemerides du citoyen ou bibliotheque raisonnee des sciences morales et politiques. In his introductory text, Baudeau puts forward a series of questions - on the rules of reasonable action, the laws of moral order, the rights and usefulness of the sovereign authority, the formation of the political order, the rules of state administration and the relations between states - before explaining that “the development of and solutions for these great and sublime questions form the moral and political sciences, the most useful and august part of philosophy” (Ephemerides du citoyen, 1767, vol.
1, 6). And it is remarkable to see that when it comes to evaluating the Tableau Economique, this major intellectual construction that modern historians consider to be the foundation of economics, he does so by linking it with the moral and political sciences:The Tableau Economique takes moral and political sciences a long way towards perfection, because it makes up all the rules of the order and all their consequences sensible and palpable. In its wonderful simplicity all the necessarily effective causes of the power of sovereigns, the prosperity of States, the bliss of nations and the general good of humanity are presented openly and placed in their natural order.
(Baudeau, Ephemerides du citoyen, 1767, vol. 1, 23-4)
With Baudeau, Les Ephemerides du citoyen conveyed the idea of a general social science, of which political economy was a part. But afterwards the phrase lost some of its appeal within the school. Du Pont chose to name Quesnay’s principal texts Physiocratie when he reissued them in 1768. And in the Nouvelles ephemerides du citoyen, published during the brief period when Turgot was Comptroller General of Louis XVI, the subtitle of the publication was changed: the journal was then presented as a “reasoned library of history, morality and politics” (Nouvelles ephemerides du citoyen, vol. 1, 1774), thus losing the more definitive and striking character of its former name.
Nevertheless, this approach survived the hollowing out of the school. In 1795, during the French Revolution, a Class of Moral and Political Sciences was created within the new Institut National. This class was short-lived - it was suppressed in 1803 by Buonaparte - but it reappeared in 1832 as the Academie des sciences morales et politiques, under the aegis of Franςois Guizot’s government. The conception was diffused in the course of the nineteenth century to many European countries, including Spain, Belgium and Italy, when physiocracy was no longer an active element in political economy.
4.