Richard Cantillon: Founder of Political Economy - Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan. The Mises Institute has finally published the long-awaited new edition of Richard Cantillon's Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général (Essay on Economic Theory).[1] Finished sometime between 1730 and 1734, the Essai was only finally published in French many years after his death.[2] It was not published and distributed in English until Henry Higgs's 1932 translation from the original French edition.[3] For some reason, perhaps related to Cantillon's death in 1734, the posthumous publication of the Essai, or the lack of a widely distributed English edition, the Essai remained generally unknown until its "rediscovery" by William Stanley Jevons in the late-19th century.[4] While Cantillon's "rediscovery" at the hands of Jevons certainly provided the Essai some historical recognition — including stimulating further historical investigation into Cantillon's life and additional analysis of his theories — this stimulus unfortunately proved rather limited.
A Brief History. The Brilliance of Turgot - Murray N. Rothbard. The Man There is a custom in chess tournaments to award "brilliancy" prizes for particularly resplendent victories. "Brilliancy" games are brief, lucid, and devastating, in which the master innovatively finds ways to new truths and new combinations in the discipline. If we were to award a prize for "brilliancy" in the history of economic thought, it would surely go to Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, the baron de l'Aulne (1727–1781). His career in economics was brief but brilliant and in every way remarkable.
In the first place, he died rather young, and second, the time and energy he devoted to economics was comparatively little. He was a busy man of affairs, born in Paris to a distinguished Norman family that had long served as important royal officials. Turgot had a sparkling career as a student, earning honors at the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice, and then at the great theological faculty of the University of Paris, the Sorbonne. Laissez-Faire and Free Trade A.R.J. Value, Exchange, and Price. Benjamin Constant - Ralph Raico. [New Individualist Review, 1961] "He loved liberty as other men love power," was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a contemporary. His lifelong concern, both as a writer and politician, was the attainment in France and in other nations of a free society; and at the time when classical liberalism was the specter haunting Europe — in the second and third decades of the last century — he shared with Jeremy Bentham the honor of being the chief intellectual protagonist for the new ideology.
But it is not only for his elevated and disinterested love of freedom, nor for his historical importance that Constant merits being remembered: there is something to be gained in the study of his works by individualists aiming at the development of a political philosophy that will avoid the errors both of certain 18th-century liberals and of 19th-century conservatism.
There followed a period of intense opposition to Bonaparte. And now the liberals' attitude toward the state underwent a change. Economic Thought in Ancient Greece - Jesus Huerta de Soto. The intellectual odyssey that laid the foundations for Western civilization began in classical Greece. Unfortunately, Greek thinkers failed in their attempt to grasp the essential principles of the spontaneous market order and of the dynamic process of social cooperation which surrounded them. While we must acknowledge the important Greek contributions in the areas of epistemology, logic, ethics, and even the conception of natural law, the Greeks failed miserably to see the need for the development of a discipline, economic science, devoted to the study of the spontaneous processes of social cooperation that comprise the market. What is even worse is that when the first intellectuals emerged, so did the symbiosis and complicity between thinkers and rulers.
From the beginning, the great majority of intellectuals embraced statism and systematically undervalued and even criticized and denigrated the society of trade, commerce, and crafts that flourished around them. A Brief Note on Taoism. Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest. I. Translators’ Introductions II. Capital and Rent [Bastiat; trans. Anon.] 1. Introduction 2. Ought Capital to Produce Interest? III. 1. V. Back to online library. Oeuvres complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, vol. 5 Sophismes économiques et Petits pamphlets II. About this Title: Volume V of Bastiat’s collected writings in 7 volumes, which contains more of his lengthier pamphlets such as What is Seen and What is Not Seen and his letters to Proudhon on Free Credit.
Copyright information: The text is in the public domain. Fair use statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. The Economics of Destutt de Tracy - Timothy D. Terrell. Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), a French philosopher and economist, is worthy of attention as a contributor to French liberal thought in the tradition of Condillac. Tracy's deductive methodology, his liberal approach to governmental affairs, and his subjectivism qualify him as a proto-Austrian economist who enjoyed considerable influence not only in France but also around the world. This essay will briefly examine Tracy's thought, concentrating on his theory of money and banking and his ideas on government. We will conclude with a review of the effect Tracy had on American Jeffersonian thought. Ideology and Ideologists, Method, and Subjectivism Destutt de Tracy's economics were an outgrowth of his philosophy of "ideology.
" In this, ideology sought to replace theology as the dominant unifying system, and, further, to exclude all religious studies whatsoever from the ideological system. The inception of ideology was at a time of political upheaval in France. Biography of Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Mises Institute. CLAUDE FREDERIC BASTIAT was a French economist, legislator, and writer who championed private property, free markets, and limited government. Perhaps the main underlying theme of Bastiat's writings was that the free market was inherently a source of "economic harmony" among individuals, as long as government was restricted to the function of protecting the lives, liberties, and property of citizens from theft or aggression.
To Bastiat, governmental coercion was only legitimate if it served "to guarantee security of person, liberty, and property rights, to cause justice to reign over all. "[1] Bastiat emphasized the plan-coordination function of the free market, a major theme of the Austrian School, because his thinking was influenced by some of Adam Smith's writings and by the great French free-market economists Jean-Baptiste Say, Francois Quesnay, Destutt de Tracy, Charles Comte, Richard Cantillon (who was born in Ireland and emigrated to France), and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.
The Evil of Government Debt. Jefferson’s Economist. Government as Consumer.