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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: PER-PIG |
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PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL , the name given to a group of French economists and philosophers. The heads of the school were Francois Quesnay (q.v.) and Jean Claude Marie Vincent, sieur de Gournay (17121759). The principles of the school had been put forward in 1755 by R. Cantillon, a French merchant of Irish extraction (Essai sur la nature du commerce en general), whose biography W. S. Jevons has elucidated, and whom he regards as the true founder of political economy
and practical men, bent on carrying them into action. The members of the group called themselves les economistes, but it is more convenient, because unambiguous, to designate them by the name physiocrates (Gr. ckiacs, nature, and IcpareIP, to rule), invented by P. S. Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), who was one of their number. In this name, intended to express the fundamental idea of the school, much more is implied than the subjection of the phenomena of the social, and in particular the economic, world to fixed relations of coexistence and succession. This is the positive doctrine which lies at the bottom of all true science. But the law of nature referred to in the title of the sect was something quite different. The theological dogma which represented all the movements of the universe as directed by divine wisdom and benevolence to the production of the greatest possible sum of happiness had been transformed in the hands of the metaphysicians into the conception of a jus naturae, a harmonious and beneficial code established by the favourite entity of these thinkers, nature, antecedent to human institutions, and furnishing the model to which they should be made to conform. The general political doctrine is as follows: Society is composed of a number of individuals, all having the same natural rights. If all do not possess (as some members of the negative school maintained) equal capacities, each can at least best understand his own interest
The physiocrats then proceed with the economic analysis as follows: Only those labours are truly " productive " which add to the quantity of raw materials available for the purposes of man; and the real annual addition to the wealth of the community consists of the excess of the mass of agricultural products (including, of course, metals) over their cost of production. On the amount of this produit net depends the well-being of the community and the possibility of its advance in civilization. The manufacturer merely gives a new form to the materials extracted from the earth; the higher value of the object, after it has passed through his hands, only represents the quantity of provisions and other materials used and consumed in its elaboration. Commerce does nothing more than transfer the wealth already existing from one hand to another; what the trading classes gain thereby is acquired at the cost of the nation, and it is desirable that its amount should be as small as possible. The occupations of the manufacturer and merchant, as well as the liberal professions, and every kind of personal service, are " useful " indeed, but they are " sterile," drawing their income, not from any fund which they themselves create, but from the superfluous earnings of the agriculturist. The revenue of the state, which must be derived altogether from this net product, ought to be raised in the most direct and simplest waynamely, by a single impost of the nature of a land tax. The special
movement
movement
bear a dispassionate examination, were temporarily useful as convenient and serviceable weapons for the overthrow of the-established order.These conclusions as to the revolutionary tendencies of the school are not at all affected by the fact that the form of government preferred by Quesnay and some of his chief
elevation
earnest endeavour to the service of his country than Turgot, who was the principal practical representative of the school.The physiocratic school never obtained much direct popular influence, even in its native country, though it strongly attracted many of the more gifted and earnest minds. Its members, writing on dry subjects in an austere and often heavy style, did not find acceptance with a public which demanded before all things charm of manner in those who addressed it. The physiocratic tenets, which were in fact partly erroneous, were regarded by many as chimerical, and were ridiculed in the contemporary literature; as, for example, the impot unique by Voltaire in his L'Homme aux quarante &us, which was directed in particular against P. P. Mercier -Lariviere (1720-1794). It was justly objected to the group that they were tqo absolute in their view of things; they supposed, as Smith remarks in speaking of Quesnay, that the body politic could thrive only under one precise regimethat, namely, which they recommendedandthought their doctrines universally and immediately applicable in practice. They did not, as theorists, sufficiently take into account national diversities or different stages in social development; nor did they, as politicians, adequately estimate the impediments which ignorance, prejudice and interested opposition present to enlightened statesmanship. The physiocratic system, after guiding in some degree the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and awakening a few echoes here and there in foreign countries, soon ceased to exist as a living power; but the good elements it comprised were not lost to mankind, being incorporated into the more complete construction of Adam Smith. See the article on QUESNAY, with bibliography appended thereto, also the articles on MIRABEAU and TURGOr. Most French histories contain an account of the school; see especially Tocqueville, L'Ancien regime et la revolution, ch. iii.; Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine, vol. i.; R. Stourm, Les Finances de l'ancien regime et de la revolution (1885) ; Droz, Histoire du regne de Louis X VI.; also L. de Lavergne, Economistes francais du X VIII sibcle; H. Higgs, The Physiocrats (London, 1897, with authorities). End of Article: PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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