The history of political economy in nineteenth-century France is naturally associated with the contributions and the legacy of French classical economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832).
Undoubtedly one of the most influential authors in the economic discipline, Say is known for his “law of outlets”1 (“loi des debouches”) - known as “Say’s Law” - and for his pioneering analysis of the role of the entrepreneur.
Say quickly became the intellectual reference for generations of French liberals. Three main characteristics emerge from his work:(1) he viewed political economy as the key to promoting modern industrial society against the errors and abuses of the Ancien Regime and Napoleon’s policy;
(2) in his framework, competition was not only an economic concept but also a political and moral principle in that it conveyed the idea of the social harmony of private interests; and (3) government intervention was required to achieve economic efficiency and social justice. This chapter explores Say’s multifaceted life and discusses his intellectual influences. Say’s views on production, value, income distribution, money, economic crises and the role of government are examined in turn.
But in the first decades of the nineteenth century, another author was influential: Antoine-Louis-Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836). Alongside Pierre Cabanis, leader of the Ideologues, he played a pivotal role in the development of the French liberal tradition. From a philosophical standpoint, like Turgot, he followed the sen- sationist approach of John Locke and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac - “our sensations are the source and the origin of our ideas” (Destutt de Tracy 1796, 289). From a political standpoint, he distinguished between national governments and special governments: in the former, all rights and powers belonged to the entire nation based on the “general will”,2 while other legitimate sources of rights and powers (divine authority, conquest, birth, etc.) existed in the latter. Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he
1 The expression “law of markets” is often used in reference to Say’s Law.
The problem is that this term does not allow to accurately describe the issue that Say sought to resolve: what are the causes that open greater or lesser outlets to products?2 In the Social Contract, Rousseau (1762, 56-7) defined the general will as something that every citizen should want for the good of all citizens. Destutt de Tracy does not refer to Rousseau’s definition. Instead, for him the general will is the “sum” of individual wills.
DOI: 10.4324/9780429202407-3 was convinced that direct democracy was only viable in a small country. For him, a system of representative government wherein citizens equally and freely choose their delegates could guarantee the permanence of democracy. He thus opposed those like Charles Louis de Montesquieu who considered the 1689 English Bill of Rights a symbol of perfection: the model to follow was the liberal system of the United States, not that of England (Destutt de Tracy 1819, 159). His philosophy led him to deal with political economy and to develop ideas close to Say’s but sometimes in disagreement with them.[9] This is the reason why his developments are also examined in this chapter.
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