Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The history of economic thought and its role
- 2 The prehistory of political economy
- 3 William Petty and the origins of political economy
- 4 From body politic to economic tables
- 5 Adam Smith
- 6 Economic science at the time of the French Revolution
- 7 David Ricardo
- 8 The ‘Ricardians’ and the decline of Ricardianism
- 9 Karl Marx
- 10 The marginalist revolution: the subjective theory of value
- 11 The Austrian school and its neighbourhood
- 12 General economic equilibrium
- 13 Alfred Marshall
- 14 John Maynard Keynes
- 15 Joseph Schumpeter
- 16 Piero Sraffa
- 17 The age of fragmentation
- 18 Where are we going? Some (very tentative) considerations
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
6 - Economic science at the time of the French Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The history of economic thought and its role
- 2 The prehistory of political economy
- 3 William Petty and the origins of political economy
- 4 From body politic to economic tables
- 5 Adam Smith
- 6 Economic science at the time of the French Revolution
- 7 David Ricardo
- 8 The ‘Ricardians’ and the decline of Ricardianism
- 9 Karl Marx
- 10 The marginalist revolution: the subjective theory of value
- 11 The Austrian school and its neighbourhood
- 12 General economic equilibrium
- 13 Alfred Marshall
- 14 John Maynard Keynes
- 15 Joseph Schumpeter
- 16 Piero Sraffa
- 17 The age of fragmentation
- 18 Where are we going? Some (very tentative) considerations
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
Summary
The perfectibility of human societies, between utopias and reforms
The English ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 took place with practically no bloodshed and, albeit marking a radical change in the political order, producing no drastic break in continuity for the English institutions. On the contrary, the French Revolution of 1789, and especially the radicalisation it subsequently went through, once again, and in dramatic terms, faces social scientists with two crucial issues. First, can a change in institutions lead to a better society, also – and perhaps above all – as far as material life is concerned, and hence in the functioning of the economy? Second, if the change has a cost in terms of violence and bloodshed, as was apparent in the case of the French Revolution, do the advantages that may be reaped justify these costs?
In the eighteenth century the tradition of the Enlightenment gave a more or less positive answer to the first question: intervention by benevolent sovereigns, guided by reason, may favour social progress, which in any case remains the direction human history tends to move in. The second question, on the other hand, hardly represented a real issue for exponents of the Enlightenment, who by and large accepted as a matter of fact the absolute power of national monarchies and limited their proposals for intervention to the fields of economic issues and social policies.
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- Information
- The Wealth of IdeasA History of Economic Thought, pp. 155 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005