The Physiocrats

Combined with the strong sense of individualism, private property becomes a critical component of the Tableau' s functioning. Capital was also needed to sustain the laborers while they produced their product. Unlike the Mercantilists , the Physiocrats did not concern themselves with whether maximizing the net product was a "good" idea did it enhance the power of the sovereign, did it produce general happiness , did improve general morality and so forth.

The "friend of mankind," Marquis de Mirabeau declared that the true wealth of a nation is its population, ergo the greater the net product the greater the sustainable and presumable happier population. Generally, though, the Physiocrats focused on the fact that maximizing net product was the "natural" thing to do. And anything that was "natural," according to the spirit of the age, was the "good" thing to do. The Physiocrats, based on Quesnay's analysis, had identified three classes in the economy: Incomes flowed from sector to sector, and thus class to class.

A "natural state" of the economy emerged when these income flows were in a state of "balance," that is, where no sector expanded and none contracted. Once the "natural state" was achieved, the economy would just continue, reproducing itself indefinitely. Described and defined in his famous La philosophie rurale, Mirabeau's text is considered the best statement of this early Physiocratic doctrine.

The Physiocrats, unlike many of their contemporaries, continued to view the state as a parasitical entity, living off the economy and society , but not part of it. According to this view, government has no prescribed place in the ordre naturel. Its only role is to set the laws of men in a way that permits the God -given laws of nature to bring the natural order about.

They regarded any attempt by the government to influence the economy against these natural forces as leading to imbalances which would postpone the arrival of the natural state and keep the net product below what it would otherwise be. A general laissez-faire policy and the "single tax" were the speediest, least distortionary, and least costly ways of arriving at the natural state. However practical many of the Physiocrats' policy measures were, they wrapped their arguments in metaphysical clouds.

Andrew Stewart Skinner

They differentiated between the ordre naturel natural order, or the social order dictated by nature's laws and the ordre positif positive order, or the social order dictated by human ideals. They charged that social philosophers had confused these two orders. The ordre positif was wholly about man-made conventions. It was about how society should be organized to conform to some human-constructed ideal.

This, they argued, was what the " natural law " and " social contract " philosophers, like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau , were concerned with. However, there was, the Physiocrats argued, nothing "natural" in them at all. By contrast, the ordre naturel were the laws of nature, which were God-given and unalterable by human construct. They believed that the only choice humans had was either to structure their polity, economy, and society in conformity with the ordre naturel or to go against it.

Although the Physiocratic system was accused of being "mysticism parading as science," the truth was perhaps quite the opposite. Physiocracy can be better understood as "science parading as mysticism.

Physiocracy: Meaning, Factors and Critical Estimate

Of particular interest are the modifications introduced by Jacques Turgot and taken up by the Turgotian sect which included, at one step removed, Adam Smith. They were the first to argue that industry, and not only agriculture , could produce a net product. The modified system, in the hands of Adam Smith, yielded up the "labor theory of value," which was later taken up by the Classical School.

The Physiocrats' own style did not help their case. Their pompousness, their mysticism about the ordre naturel, the affected, flowery way in which they wrote their tracts, their petty "cliquishness," their unrestrained adulation and worship of Quesnay and Mirabeau—whom they referred to as the "Confucius of Europe," and the "modern Socrates"—irked just about everybody around them.

Even those who ought to be their natural allies, such as Voltaire , Diderot , Rousseau , and de Mably, despised the Physiocrats with a passion.

• Physiocrat;
• Power Up: Taking Charge of Your Financial Destiny.
• Navigation menu!
• Trouble Brewing in Thunder Creek (Thunder Creek Ranch Book 3).
• Physiocrats;
• Physiocracy.
• Keep Exploring Britannica.

In a letter to Morellet regarding his upcoming Dictionnaire, the otherwise good-natured David Hume expressed his disdain for them thus:. I hope that in your work you will thunder them, and crush them, and pound them, and reduce them to dust and ashes! They are, indeed, the set of men the most chimerical and most arrogant that now exist, since the annihilation of the Sorbonne. Hume, Letter to Morellet, July 10, And Adam Smith killed them with faint praise, arguing that the Physiocratic system "never has done, and probably never will do any harm in any part of the world" Smith, The Tableau shows the reason why the Physiocrats disagreed with Richard Cantillon about exporting food, even though, among others, they also owed to Cantillon their "land theory of value.

The landlord is assumed to be consuming at a level of satiation; therefore, he cannot consume any more. Since food cannot be stored easily, it is necessary to sell it to someone who can use it. This is where the merchant provides value. The merchant was not thought to be a source of wealth, either. Karl Marx in Theories of Surplus Value wrote:. Hence for the Physiocrats agricultural labour is the only productive labour, because it is the only labour that produces a surplus-value, and rent is the only form of surplus-value which they know. The workman in industry does not increase the material substance; he only alters its form.

The material—the mass of material substance—is given to him by agriculture. The latter, in making use of the price of this exchange to buy in their turn the products of the husbandman, only return to him as matter exactly what they have received from him. We have here a very essential difference between these two kinds of labour. How then does surplus-value arise? It does not arise from circulation, but it is realized in circulation. The product is sold at its value, not above its value. There is no excess of price over value. But because it is sold at its value, the seller realizes a surplus-value.

Physiocracy - Wikipedia

This is only possible because he has not himself paid in full for the value which he sells, that is, because the product contains a portion of value which has not been paid for by the seller, which he has not offset by an equivalent. And this is the case with agricultural labor. The seller sells what he has not bought. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use for details see www.

University Press Scholarship Online. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Search my Subject Specializations: Classical, Early, and Medieval Plays and Playwrights: Classical, Early, and Medieval Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval World History: Civil War American History: Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.

A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith. Print Save Cite Email Share. Economic Writings 11 Sir James Steuart: The American Colonies 10 David Hume: Principles of Political Economy Index of Authorities.