References and further reading

After the death of Condorcet, his widow Marie-Louise Sophie de Grouchy edited the (Eurres completes de Condorcet with the collaboration of A.-A. Barbier and the ideologues P.J.G.

Arrow, K.J. (1963), Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edn, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Badinter, E. and R. Badinter (1988), Condorcet. Un intellectuel en politique, revised edn 1990, Paris: Fayard. Baker, K.M. (1975), Condorcet. From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Barry, B. (1964), ‘The public interest’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. vol. 38, 1-18, as in A. Quinton (ed.) (1977), Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 112-26.

Barry, B. (1965), Political Argument, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, New York: Humanities Press. Black, D. (1958), The Theory of Committees and Elections, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1785), Essaisur l’application de l’analyse a laprobabilite des decisions rendues a la pluralite des voix, Paris: Imprimerie Royale. (The important ‘Discours preliminaire’ is reproduced in M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet (1986), Sur les elections et autres textes, Paris: Fayard, pp. 9-177.)

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1804), (Eurres completes de Condorcet, 21 vols, Brunswick and Paris: Vieweg and Heinrichs.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1847-49), Euvres, eds A. Condorcet-O’Connor and F. Arago, 12 vols, Paris: Firmin Didot.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1883), Correspondance inedite de Condorcet et de Turgot, 1770-1779, ed. C. Henry, Paris: Charavay.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1986), Sur les elections et autres textes, Paris: Fayard. (Note that the important table on pp. 606-7 is erroneously reproduced.)

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1994a), Condorcet. Arithmetique politique: textes rares ou inedits (1767-1789), ed. with comments B. Bru and P. Crepel, Paris: INED.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (1994b), Condorcet. Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory, trans. and eds I. McLean and F. Hewitt, Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT, USA: Edward Elgar.

Condorcet, M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de (2004), Tableau historique desprogres de l’esprit humain. Projets, esquisse, fragments et notes (1772-1794), ed. with comments J.-P. Schandeler, P. Crepel and the Groupe Condorcet, Paris: INED.

Crepel, P. (1988), ‘Condorcet, la theorie des probabilites et les calculs financiers’, in R. Rashed (ed.), Sciences a l’epoque de la Revolution frangaise: etudes historiques, Paris: Blanchard, pp. 267-325.

Crepel, P. (1989), ‘A quoi Condorcet a-t-il applique le calcul des probabilites?’, in P. Crepel and C. Gilain (eds), Condorcet: mathematicien, economiste, philosophe, homme politique, Paris: Minerve, pp. 76-86.

Crepel, P. (1998), ‘Mathematical economics and probability theory: Charles-Franςois Bicquilley’s daring con­tribution’, in G.

Crepel, P. and C. Gilain (eds) (1989), Condorcet: mathematicien, economiste, philosophe, homme politique, Paris: Minerve.

Crepel, P. and N. Rieucau (2005), ‘Condorcet’s social mathematics, a few tables’, Social Choice and Welfare, 25 (2-3), 243-85.

Daston, L. (1988), Classical Probability in the Enlightenment, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dodgson, C.L. (1876), Suggestions as to the best method of taking votes, where more than two issues are to be voted on, in D. Black (1958), The Theory of Committees and Elections, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 222-34.

Estlund, D.M., J. Waldron, B. Grofman and S.L. Feld (discussion between) (1989), ‘Democratic theory and the public interest: Condorcet and Rousseau revisited’, American Political Science Review, 83 (4), 1317-40.

Faccarello, G. (1989), ‘Introduction’ (‘Condorcet: au gre des jugements’) to Part III (Economics), in P. Crepel and C. Gilain (eds), Condorcet: mathematicien, economiste, philosophe, homme politique, Paris: Minerve, pp. 121-49.

Faccarello, G. (2006), ‘An “exception culturelle”? French Sensationist political economy and the shaping of public economics’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 13 (1), 1-38.

Granger, G.-G. (1956), La mathematique sociale du marquis de Condorcet, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Grofman, B. and S.L. Feld (1988), ‘Rousseau’s general will: a Condorcetian perspective’, American Political Science Review, 82 (2), 567-76.

Guilbaud, G.-T. (1952), ‘Les theories de l’interet general et le probleme logique de l’agregation’, Economie Appliquee, 5, 501-51; reprinted 2012 in Revue Economique, 63 (4), 659-720; English trans. 2008, Journ@l electronique d’histoire des probabilities et de la statistique, 4 (1), accessed May 2015 at http://www.jehps. net/.

Hacking, I. (1975), The Emergence of Probability.

Hald, A. (1990), History of Probability and Statistics and their Applications before 1750, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Kintzler, C. (1984), Condorcet, [’instruction publique et la naissance du citoyen, Paris: Minerve; reprinted 1987, Paris: Gallimard.

McLean, I. (1995), ‘Independence of irrelevant alternatives before Arrow’, Mathematical Social Sciences, 30 (2), 107-26.

McLean, I. and F. Hewitt (1994), ‘Introduction’, in M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet, Condorcet. Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory, trans and eds I. McLean and F. Hewitt, Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT, USA: Edward Elgar, pp. 1-90.

McLean, I. and A.B. Urken (1997), ‘La reception des and Legislation (hereinafter IPML), printed in 1780 although published only in 1789, he laid down the groundwork of utilitarian philosophy. The latter is based on the “greatest happiness principle” (GHP), according to which both individuals in their private sphere and governments in the public sphere ought to promote “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” (Bentham 1983: 309-10). This ethical doctrine is based on the assumption that individuals seek pleasure and avoid pain. Therefore, an action is morally right and morally obligatory if and only if it promotes the greatest amount of pleasure and minimizes the pain of those who are affected by it, inde­pendently of any other quality they may have (principle of impartiality). This implies that individuals must be able to calculate the “value” of pleasures and pains. In chapter 4 of IPML Bentham argued that such a value depends on various “circumstances”, including intensity, duration, probability, propinquity, number of persons affected, and the second­ary dimensions of “fecundity” and “purity” (meaning, respectively, the amount of either pleasure or pain that follows an initial pleasure, or vice versa the amount of either pain or pleasure that follows an initial pain) (see Schofield 2009).

After visiting his brother Samuel in White Russia between 1785 and 1788, Bentham devoted most of his energies to promoting the “Panopticon”, a circular model prison based on the “inspection principle”, according to which convicts were constantly under the eye of a gaoler who could watch them without being seen. This “simple architectural idea” would ensure, according to him, the “moral reform” of prisoners. The project was initially supported by William Pitt’s government, but Bentham was left alone in bat­tling for it until, in 1803, the new Addington administration decided to drop the plan. Interpreters indicate in the bitter disappointment Bentham experienced at that time one of the main causes of his political evolution towards radicalism (see Semple 1993). In the last 30 years of his long life (Bentham died on 6 June 1832), the “recluse” of Queen’s Square Place denounced the corruption and waste of the British government and became an active supporter of parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage and annual elections (see Schofield 2006).

Since the beginning, Bentham’s “genius” for the science of legislation included an interest in political economy. Unfortunately, pending the announced new critical edition of Bentham’s (1748-1832) Writings on Political Economy as part of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham (Bentham, forthcoming), and in the light of the critiques addressed by various scholars to Werner Stark’s edition of Jeremy Bentham’s Economic Writings (1952-54), any interpretation of Bentham’s economic thought at the time of writing may be subject to rapid obsolescence.

Beyond this problem, Bentham’s place in the development of classical political economy has always been a puzzle. Since Schumpeter (1954: 408-9), the prevailing opinion has been that his influence was limited to the supposed utilitarian credo of classical economists. However, if the Mills, father and son, and Jean-Baptiste Say became in their own way partisans of utilitarianism, the same cannot be said of David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus.

Bentham’s contributions to political economy were partially published during his life, and to a larger extent remained unpublished until recently. To the set of published works, aside from DU, belong a series of texts composed by the philosopher in his youth, and published in 1811 by his editor, Etienne Dumont, as Book 4 of Theorie des peines et des recompenses, under the title of Manuel d’economie politique (hereafter Manuel). At the outbreak of the French Revolution, Bentham wrote a series of works he addressed to the French National Assembly and Convention. Among them there was a pamphlet entitled Emancipate your Colonies!, privately printed in 1793 and published only in 1830. Another draft written for the French was reformulated and published in 1795 under the title Supply without Burthen; or Escheat vice Taxation: being a proposal for saving in taxes by an extension of the law of escheat; including strictures on the taxes on collateral succession. Another tract, A Protest against Law Taxes was printed in 1793 and pub­lished in 1795 together with Supply without Burthen. The only other published essays on an economic subject are the twin essays respectively entitled Defence of Economy against the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, and Defence of Economy against the Right Honourable George Rose, both written in 1810 although published only in 1817. All these publications went through various editions along Bentham’s life, and he attached a great importance to them in his correspondence with various economists. Defence of Usury and Manuel were translated in various languages and contributed to Bentham’s reputation as a partisan of laissez-faire. However, many other papers remained in manu­script, as is the case of a series of practical proposals on monetary and banking issues composed between 1799 and 1801, and of some tracts on colony emancipation and free trade addressed to the Spanish Cortes in the early 1820s.

The difficulty of identifying Bentham’s place in the history of economic thought mainly derives from the nature of one of his main “theoretical” works, the Manuel. The subjects examined in this text are not those on which classical economics was based, that is, the distinction between market and natural prices, that between “use” and “exchange value”, the analysis of the respective role of cost of production and utility in the determi­nation of value, the relationship between value, distribution and growth, the quantitative theory of money, and so on. The theoretical assumptions on which Bentham’s analysis is based are quite simple: (1) the law of demand and supply; (2) a primitive version of the law of markets based on a sort of aggregate production function whose elements are the number of labourers, the amount of capital, the allocation of capital, the productivity of labour, and the “avantage du commerce”, that is, (absolute) advantage in international trade; and (3) the assumption that individuals are both the best judges of their own interests and the best placed to obtain the relevant information for their choices. These assumptions led Bentham to the conclusion that the amount of aggregate income can be increased only by variations of any of the above mentioned factors, and the market spon­taneously maximizes this output - a conclusion summarized by the argument that “trade is limited by capital”. On this ground Bentham examined the most widespread policy measures for the encouragement of industry and trade: capital loans, capital transfers, bounties on production, drawbacks on production, bounties on exportation, prohibition of rival manufactures, maximums, and selective taxation. The only other subjects ana­lysed in the Manuel were population, colonies, and usury laws. The general conclusion was typically laissez-faire: “Political economy is a science rather than an art. There is a lot to learn and little to do” (Bentham 1829-30, II: 201).

As to DU, the text contains no analysis of the determination of the interest rate. The main argument is that usury laws - setting a cap on the maximum interest rate that can be levied - do not contribute to lower it, as they encourage either risky illegal loans or other practices of evasion. Furthermore, they have adverse selection effects on borrowers, by excluding innovators (projectors), who could obtain loans only at rates beyond the legal maximum. This was an explicit critique of Adam Smith, who in book II, chapter 4 of Wealth of Nations had argued in favour of usury laws (Hollander 1999).

Among Bentham’s unpublished projects, the most interesting is a bulky manuscript translated by Dumont as Sur les prix, whose publication was discouraged by Ricardo. This text contains an analysis of the British credit system and of the phenomena of infla­tion, forced saving and the instability of credit markets. Bentham argues in favour of a flexible role of central banks as gatekeepers against these risks, and at the same time as stimuli to production via credit creation, an unorthodox approach that cost Bentham the disapproval of his friend.

Another focus of Bentham’s economic analysis is represented by public finance or, as he called it, “financial economy”, or “economy as applied to office”. The pamphlets he published on this subject dealt with taxation and its effects on individual choice on the one hand, and on the ways of making public expenditure more efficient on the other hand. In A Protest against Law Taxes, Bentham argued that taxes on legal proceed­ings are the worst possible type of tax, because they cannot be foreseen, apportioned or insured, and because failure to pay them in full operates as a complete exclusion from justice. The consequences are that lawsuits become inaccessible to poor plaintiffs, and justice is not encouraged. Finally, in Supply without Burthen he suggested that taxing col­lateral inheritance could be the best way to redistribute wealth and finance government expenditure, as this measure did not disappoint legitimate expectations.

Bentham’s pamphlets on public economics belong to the period 1808-32, when he became a radical campaigner for representative democracy based on universal suffrage. Aside from the two Defences of Economy, most of the legal and political works of this period contain an interesting analysis of the means to minimize public expenditure and maximize its efficacy (a collection of articles published in 1830, entitled Official Aptitude Maximized, Expense Minimized, testifies to Bentham’s attitude towards innovation in the language of social sciences; Bentham 1830 [1993]). Reducing public expenditure implies minimizing salaries, abolishing civil and religious sinecures and useless offices, optimizing the number of employees for every office, and avoiding every opportunity for corruption. Bentham’s proposals range from rules of transparency (including trans­parency of public buildings according to panoptic principles) (Blamires 2008), contract management, an idiosyncratic revival of the sale of offices, and an interesting mechanism combining public examinations for verifying moral and intellectual “aptitude”, with a “patriotic auction” for minimizing salaries. Utopian as they may appear, these proposals aimed at selecting a class of political representatives and public officers who, without being altruists, are more interested in reputation and self-fulfilment than in pecuniary motives.

So, what makes Bentham’s approach to political economy so peculiar and apparently so distant from the typical concerns of classical economists, except for the laissez-faire conclusions?

An eye at chronology may offer a first answer to this question. In the timeline going from Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) to Malthus’s Principles (1820), the ear­liest significant “neo-Smithian” contributions are Say’s Traite d’economie politique (1803), Sismondi’s De la Richesse commerciale (1803) and James Mill’s Essay on the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804). Burke’s Thoughts and Details on Scarcity date from 1795 and Malthus’s Essay on Population was published in 1798. Bentham’s interest in political economy originated in his early years. In a letter to James Anderson, dated 28 March 1783, he defines himself “a mere novice in politi­cal economy”, while already showing awareness of the principles later illustrated in the Manuel. He wrote most of the materials employed by Dumont between 1785 and 1795, and he published DU in between. There was no classical canon at that time, and the reinterpretation and exploitation of Smith’s contribution was still poten­tially open to different alternatives. The shelves of Bentham’s mental library were peopled by Smith’s Wealth of Nations, as well as by James Steuart’s Inquiry (1767), Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois (1748), Josiah Tucker’s Elements of Commerce (1755), Condillac’s Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), Anderson’s Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry (1777), John Howlett’s Examination of Dr. Price’s Essay on Population (1781), Arthur Young’s Annals of Agriculture (1784-1815), and Hume’s Political Essays (1751).

However, most importantly, the connection Bentham established between politi­cal economy and the science of legislation is the reason that explains the conceptual structure of his economic reasoning. Very early, and certainly by the mid-1770s at least, Bentham conceived an ambitious plan to compose a complete body of law. In opposi­tion to Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69) he critically examined in the Fragment on Government (1776), and in opposition also to Smith, parts of whose analysis of British law he could find in Wealth of Nations, Bentham was inter­ested in the principles of law-making, rather than in the study of “law as it is”. Many of the materials employed by Dumont for the Traites de legislation civile et penale (1802) and the Theorie (1811) derive from the manuscripts of the Projet d’un corps de loix complet a l’usage d’un pays quelconque, a text on which Bentham worked in the 1780s possibly in response to a competition announced by the Societe economique de Berne. The basic ingredients of Bentham’s approach to the science of legislation comprise two: on the one hand, every branch of legislation must be based on some specific “ends” which the law must promote to make a nation happy. These ends are, for Bentham, essentially four, although particular branches of legislation may have additional ones: security, subsistence, abundance, and equality; on the other hand, the law must create a set of appropriate incentives and penalties that influence individual decisions, and, as Elie Halevy (1901-04 [1905]) wrote, “artificially harmonise” and direct them towards those ends. Bentham wrote IPML to give an exact foundation to this logical structure. In the light of the utilitarian doctrine exposed in that work, the ends of legislation are interpreted as so many specifications of the GHP - they are in fact “subordinate ends” - while the exact measure of reward and punishment is based on the “felicific calculus”. The subordinate ends are the necessary guidelines to translate the GHP into a body of laws aiming at regulating social interactions. The arithmetic of pleasures and pains, combined with Bentham’s admonition that “[m]en calculate, some with less exact­ness, indeed, some with more: but all men calculate” (Bentham 1789 [1996]: 173-4), grounds the mechanics of laws on the “economic” assumption that individuals react to incentives.

Bentham considered political economy as a branch of the “art-and-science” of leg­islation. In a text probably dating from 1814, he describes the connection with other branches of law as follows:

Ends of Political Economy:

These are the same as the distributive branch of law. Wherein, then, lies the difference? Answer: In so far as political economy is the object, so it is, that to two of those objects, viz. subsistence and abundance, a more particular and direct attention is paid, than either to secu­rity or to equality.

By distributive law, is declared what on as many occasions as shall happen to have been taken into view, shall be each man’s own. By political economy, is endeavoured to be ascertained how far, and for what particular purposes, chiefly for the general purposes of abundance and sub­sistence (i.e. security for subsistence), the use which otherwise under distributive law each man might make of his own, shall, for the more effectual fulfilment of these several ends, be directed and restricted. (Bentham 1838-43: III, 295)

The doctrine of political economy as “a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator” (Smith 1776, IV: I.1), although variously interpreted, was commonplace in Bentham’s times. However, whereas writers such as Steuart and Anderson employed it to prescribe how to “direct” and “restrict” private initiative, the “capital limits trade” principle drove Bentham to the conclusion that governments had very little to do in this field, and that the “natural rewards” awarded by market laws were the best incentives to promote the ends of subsistence and abundance (Sigot 2001). On this point he agreed with Smith, who had famously argued that the main aim of political economy was “to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue of subsistence for themselves” (Smith 1776, IV: I.1, emphasis added). Conversely, Bentham showed how the measures recommended by other writers offered adverse incentives to individuals, reducing, instead of increasing, the “matter of wealth” and therefore the stock of subsistence and opulence. The demonstration of the errors made by governments in manipulating incentives is the main focus of the Manuel, as well as of DU and of all other economic works written or published by Bentham, including those on “financial economy”.

Far from believing he was interested only in some aspects of the Smithian economic discourse, Bentham was convinced that he had translated the core of Smith’s politi­cal economy into a more coherent set of principles, avoiding useless digressions and a certain disorganization in the order of arguments, not because he had amended the flaws of Smith’s theory of value or distribution, but because he had scrutinized the relationship between market laws and the ends of government in the mirror of an utilitarian science of legislation.

Marco E.L. Guidi

See also:

British classical political economy (II); French classical political economy (II); John Stuart Mill (I); Jean-Baptiste Say (I); Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism (III).