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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.
Copyright (c) 2001 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2850;
Fax: 513-529-3308). Published by EH.Net (May 2001). All EH.Net
reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview
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