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Published by EH.NET (May 2001) 
 
Richard Whatmore, _Republicanism and the French Revolution: An  
Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say's Political Economy_.  
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xiv + 248 pp.$70 (cloth),  
ISBN: 0-19-924115-5. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by William Baumol, Department of Economics, New  
York University. 
 
 
The central objective of this book is to describe, both in light of  
the writings of contemporaries and from internal evidence in  
Jean-Baptiste Say's own writings, the underlying orientation of that  
author -- the political philosophy by which he was guided. The  
author, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, is extraordinarily  
well informed about the pertinent literature of the time, and perhaps  
tells us more about this material than some readers may want to know.  
But, on the basis of those writings, he offers us insights into Say's  
predilections and, in particular, his views on political and social  
issues, that are likely to have escaped even careful readers of Say's  
best-known writings. In particular, the author emphasizes that Say  
was not a liberal in the tradition of the British classical  
economists, nor a full-fledged follower of the path of Adam Smith  
(though he points out in the very first page of Chapter 1 that  
Jean-Baptiste's own son, Horace Say, asserted that, contrary to  
Whatmore, such was indeed his father's orientation). Here, we are  
told, Say's position also did not favor full democracy or even the  
constitutional royalist regime of the United Kingdom at the beginning  
of the nineteenth century. Instead, Say's position was consistent and  
avid "republicanism." 
 
The term, however, is used in a sense very different from ours. The  
author describes eighteenth century "republican political economy" in  
the following passage: 
        Republican political economy demanded the establishment and  
maintenance of a moderate level of wealth for all citizens. Ranks had  
to be abolished to prevent aristocracy or inequality from recurring.  
The sovereignty of the [propertied] people was to be coupled with the  
decentralization of political and administrative power to the  
citizens of a locality. Despite this, the republic was to remain a  
unified state. Its laws would embody the public good and its  
patriotic citizenry would be dedicated to defending and maintaining  
the state. The modern republic was a commercial society in the sense  
that wealth derived from trade and industry was to be encouraged as  
an antidote to the poverty of the state and the citizenry.  
Commercialization was to be welcomed as long as it remained  
compatible with republican morality and an egalitarian social  
structure. 
        A republic was therefore not solely to be created by making  
laws that prevented domination and abolished monarchy, as many  
eighteenth-century British radicals supposed. Far more important was  
the creation of a republican political culture based on a blend of  
commercial with traditionally conceived virtuous manners. Without  
cultural transformation any projected political innovations would be  
doomed to failure. (p. 31) 
 
Implicit in this passage are the other goals that the author claims  
to have been Say's -- severely reduced inequality with moderate  
wealth for all, dedication to virtue and good manners on the part of  
the population, and education of the public as well as the members of  
government to the need for and benefits of such behavior, as well as  
the requirements of a well-functioning economy that is a necessary  
condition for achievement of these goals. 
 
All of this is entirely plausible, though the author provides us with  
remarkably little in Say's writings, at least after he had attained  
maturity, that makes these points explicitly. But Whatmore goes  
further than this. He implies that this is what Say's _TraitT_ and  
his other writings in economics are, essentially, all about. Even  
Say's law is not to be properly understood without this information:  
"In consequence, it isāmisleading to group him [Say] with exponents  
of classical political economy in Britain, as many historians of  
economic thought continue to do. Say's conception of utility must be  
seen as a product of a French discussion about public virtue rather  
than a partially-formed building block of a new science. Say's 'Law',  
by contrast with the use made of it by British Ricardians, was  
intended to combat fears of 'general gluts' by the introduction of  
specific ranks and manners" (p. 218). 
 
In taking this position, it seems clear to me, the author goes too  
far. Rereading of the _TraitT_ surely indicates that the author  
intended the book to be a work of political economy in the standard  
sense, and one completely divorced from political connotations.  
Indeed, Say emphasizes this in the first page of his introduction:  
"Since the time of Adam Smith, it appears to me, these two very  
distinct inquiries have been uniformly separated, the term _political  
economy_ being now confined to the science which treats of wealth,  
and that of _politics_, to designate the relations existing between a  
government and its people, and the relations of different states to  
each other" (_ A Treatise of Political Economy_, American translation  
of the fourth edition of the _TraitT_, Philadelphia, 1834, pp.  
xv-xvi). 
 
This is not to deny that Whatmore's observations are illuminating.  
They do help us to understand Say as author, just as Jacob Viner's  
emphasis (_The Role of Providence in the Social Order_, Princeton:  
Princeton University Press, 1972, p. 81) of the religious connotation  
of Adam Smith's invisible hand passage ("invisible hand" being a  
common eighteenth-century reference to the hand of Providence) helps  
us to understand what Smith meant in this passage. But a claim that  
_The Wealth of Nations_ is therefore to be interpreted as  
predominantly a religious tract would surely be misleading. And it  
seems to me equally misleading to interpret the _TraitT_ as a manual  
of republicanism rather than, primarily, as a work of political  
economy, as the title of the book tells us, and as Say tells us the  
term was conventionally interpreted at the time. 
 
 
William J. Baumol, Professor of Economics, New York University. is  
currently working on a book investigating the explanation of the  
superior growth record of free-market economies and, most recently,  
is co-author with Ralph Gomory of _Global Trade and Conflicting  
National Interests_, MIT Press, 2001. 
 
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Fax: 513-529-3308). Published by EH.Net (May 2001). All EH.Net  
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