Sensationist political economy defined

This general approach pervaded the new “sciences morales et politiques” (moral and political sciences) in the second half of the eighteenth century, from Franςois Quesnay (1694-1774) and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1981) to M.-J.-A.- N.

Locke... the first, proved that all our ideas come from the senses, and that there is not any notion in the human mind at which we arrived but starting only from sensations, he showed us the real point from which men started, and from which we have to start again in order to follow the generation of all our ideas.

(Turgot 1756, 518)

In the economic field, this approach was most strikingly developed by a group of authors who, starting from sensationist premisses, based their statements on a calculus of pleasure/utility and pain/disutility, in which individuals seek to max­imise the former and minimise the latter. Turgot was the “founding father” and most well-known author of this group, which also included his disciple Condorcet, a younger follower, Pierre-Louis Rrnderer (1754-1835), and some friends like Andre Morellet (1727-1819). Echoes can also be found in a late work by Condillac himself, Le commerce et le gouvernement consideres relativement l'un a l'autre (1776).^[83] Helvetius and d’Holbach did not deal with political economy proper, and Quesnay’s developments followed a different route. This first group of authors was for a long time wrongly assimilated with the physiocrats.

However, the notion of a sensationist political economy can also be understood in a broader sense.

Sensationist political economy and physiocracy

What are the links between the first group of sensationist authors and Quesnay and his disciples, with whom they have usually been confused? Turgot and Condorcet were critical of the physiocrats. They rejected the notions of “tutelary authority” and “legal despotism”, adopted a natural human rights approach based on liberty, security and property (while stressing the concept of utility, they were not utilitar­ians) and developed a distinct political economy mostly focused on the decisions of individuals. At the political level, they praised Rousseau’s 1762 Du contrat social, ou Principe du droit politique. Rousseau, Turgot wrote,

is one of those authors who best serve morals and humanity. Far from criti­cizing him for diverging from common ideas on this topic, I believe instead that he remained respectful of too many prejudices; but we have to follow his road if we are to attain his goal, which is to bring men closer to equality, justice and happiness.

(Turgot 1913-23, II, 659-60)

The Contrat social “distinguishes precisely between Sovereign and Government; and this distinction presents a genuinely illuminating truth which... resolves for­ever the idea of the inalienability of the sovereignty of the people under any form of government” (1913-23, II, 660). Condorcet later endeavoured to give a precise meaning to Rousseau’s concept of “general will”, especially in his celebrated 1785 treatise, Essai sur l'application de l'analyse a la probability des decisions rendues a la pluralite des voix.

However, at the same time, the most important sensationist economists, like Turgot, accepted the basis of the Tableau economique, that is, the theory of the exclusive productivity of agriculture, and this created some confusion. Turgot was usually depicted as a physiocrat or a “dissenting” or “heterodox” disciple of Quesnay, meaning with these epithets that the differences were ultimately of tri­fling importance, which is certainly not the case. What also caused some confu­sion was the attitude of Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817). When he published Turgot’s main theoretical work (the 1766 Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses) in three instalments in the Ephemerides du citoyen,¹ he “corrected” some passages to bring them more in line with the physiocratie dogmas and added some notes. Turgot protested and asked Dupont to publish offprints of the original text (to Dupont, 2 February 1770, in Turgot 1913-23, III, 373-4). This is what Dupont did in 1770, and there was also another edition of the text of the offprint in 1788.^{[86] [87] But when, in 1808-11, he published the Euvres de M. Turgot, the text of the Reflexions that he included in this edition was, with minor differ­ences, that of the Ephemerides and not that of the offprint. In 1844, when Eugene Daire and Hippolyte Dussard edited the Euvres de Turgot in the “Collection des principaux economistes” published by Gilbert-Urbain Guillaumin, it was the text of the Dupont 1808-11 edition which was reprinted, not that of the offprint.}

Finally, another reason for confusion was proposed by Jean-Baptiste Say. “One did Turgot a disservice in presenting him as a coryphaeus of the sect of the Econo­mistes”, he stated in his Traite d'economiepolitique.

Turgot was too good a citizen not to sincerely esteem such good citizens as the Economistes: and, when he was in power, he believed it useful to support them. The latter, in turn, benefitted from portraying such a knowledgeable man and a Ministre d’Etat as one of their disciples.

(Say 1803-41, 31)

The diffusion of sensationistpolitical economy

A last point concerns the diffusion of sensationist economic writings. Most of them of course came out as books and pamphlets - two important manuscripts of Turgot being an exception: the 1769 article “Valeurs et monnaies” and the 1770 Memoire sur lesprets d’argent, not to mention his “Lettres” to the Comptroller General Joseph Marie Terray on the grain trade. But, at that time, especially in the case of promi­nent authors, the circulation and influence of writings did not necessarily depend on the fact that they were printed or not: copies of the manuscripts circulated within intellectual networks. Finally, the substance of some of Turgot’s manuscripts was published under other authors’ names. The article “Valeurs et monnaies”, for exam­ple, was intended for a Dictionnaire du Commerce in five volumes that Morellet planned to publish and that he described in detail in his Prospectus d’un nouveau Dictionnaire de commerce (Morellet 1769). The Dictionnaire was never completed but Morellet made use of Turgot’s manuscript in the composition of a long “Digres­sion pour servir a l’intelligence de la partie du plan du nouveau Dictionnaire, rela­tive aux monnaies” (Morellet 1769, 98-183) included in the Prospectus - this may have been a source of inspiration for Condillac (who could also have known the manuscript) some years later and for Isnard’s 1781 Traite des Richesses (where the Prospectus is referred to). For his part, Pierre Rullie, in his Theorie de l’interet de l’argent, tiree des vrais principes du droit naturel, de la theologie et de la politique, contre l’abus de l’imputation d’usure (1780), drew on the 1766 Reflexions, but also and above all on Turgot’s Memoire sur les prets d’argent, from which he quoted extensively. The work prompted some polemical exchanges and a second enlarged edition was published in 1782. Finally, Turgot’s Memoire was published in 1789, in Memoires sur lepret a interet et sur le commerce des fers (Turgot 1789).

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