Abstract
The doctrine of the exclusive productivity of agriculture constitutes the physiocrats’ reply to the question of the origin of surplus and wealth. This was their major concern and provides the necessary foundation for all their policy recommendations. The single tax on rent, a commercial policy in favour of the products of land, and the encouragement given to their consumption, are all measures deriving from the belief that only the primary sector yields a net product. This theory must be considered as a hypothesis in some works of the physiocrats, and above all in the different types of Tableaux, but it is not a postulate in the whole of physiocratic economics. Far from simply assuming the existence of a net output only in agriculture, Quesnay and his disciples want to explain this fact and try to convince their opponents. The physiocrats intend to put forward a theory of the origin of national wealth and of ways of increasing it.
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Notes and References
Among the people who criticised physiocracy are Veron de Forbonnais, in his Principes et Observations Oeconomiques (1767)
In Italy Quesnay’s Encyclopédie articles were approvingly quoted by Cesare Beccaria, in the Elementi di Economia Pubblica (see Beccaria, 1769–70, pp. 447–52).
A fierce attack on Quesnay’s view of the sterility of industry can also be found in Arthur Young’s Political Arithmetic of 1774 (see Young, 1774, pp. 254–7).
The beneficial effects of large-scale farming were also underlined by Turgot in his Sur la grande et al petite culture of 1767 (see Turgot, 1767b, pp. 28–9).
For Quesnay there can be a gain over costs in all occupations which require particular skill and talent. Pre-eminent artists provide an example, ‘since there are so few of them that competition between them does not force them to lower the price of their labour’ (Sur les travaux des artisans, Meek, 1962, p. 210.
The demographic conditions of France explained the existence of poor people, who were prepared to become artisans for a low salary in order to obtain the necessaries (see, for instance, Sur les travaux des artisans, Meek, 1962, pp. 212–13).
However, for Quesnay there is at least one case in which there are profits in industry, although there is no lack of competition between the manufacturers. This happens ‘in countries where manufacturing labour is cheap because of the low price of the produce which serves for the subsistence of the workers’ (Extrait, c Kuczynski and Meek, 1972, p. 12, note b). Thus the master manufacturer makes a profit because the cost of reproduction of labour is lower at home than in other countries producing the same commodities.
See Extrait, Kuczynski and Meek, 1972, p. 12
Similar statements can also be found in Baudeau’s Principes de la science morale et politique (see Baudeau, 1767, p. 27; see also Spengler, 1942, pp. 184–5).
Quesnay and Mirabeau are so convinced of the primacy of expenditure in determining the level of activity of the economy, that they strongly oppose saving by proprietors and by wealthy people in general. They ‘must not indulge in sterile savings, which remove part of their revenue from circulation and distribution’ (Mirabeau, 1764, vol. II, p. 343; see also Extrait, Kuczynski and Meek, 1972, p. 4).
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© 1987 Giovanni Vaggi
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Vaggi, G. (1987). Capital, Competition and the Origin of Surplus. In: The Economics of François Quesnay. Studies in Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09096-9_4
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