Abstract
Economists have long interpreted the Physiocratic concept of the relation of the state to property as essentially the protection of private property. The thesis of this article is that the Physiocratic theory of property de facto valid, however doctrinal its advocacy of private property, is a theory of malleable property rights premised upon an utilitarian understanding of the social function of private property and necessarily involving the state in the continuing reconstitution of property rights.
Originally published in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 75 (February 1961), pp. 96–111. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance provided by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at Georgia State College of Business Administration, and in particular by Dr Willys R. Knight, Director.
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Notes
Quoted in George John Malanos, The Evolution of the General Theory (unpublished doctoral dissertion, Harvard, 1946), p. 45.
Richard Schlatter, Private Property: The History of an Idea (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1951), p. 217.
Auguste Oncken (ed.), Oeuvres Economiques et Philosophiques de F. Quesnay (Paris: Joseph Baer, 1888), p. 331.
Quoted in John Herman Randall, Jr, The Making of the Modem Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), p. 324.
R. H. Palgrave (ed.), Dictionary of Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1908), vol. II, p. 598.
Taken from the title of la Rivière’s L’ Ordre naturel et essential des sociétés politiques and the sub-title of du Pont’s Physiocracy, ‘The Natural Constitution of That Form of Government Most Advantageous to the Human Race’. Quesnay’s utilitarian tenor is also evident in his definition of natural law: ‘We shall understand by physical law the regular course of any physical occurrence in the natural order obviously most advantageous to mankind. We shall understand by moral law the pattern of all human action in the moral order which conforms to the physical order obviously most advantageous to mankind.’ ‘Positive legislation consists, then,’ says Quesnay, ‘in the enunciation of the natural laws which make up the order obviously the most advantageous possible for men in society’ (K. W. Kapp and L. L. Kapp, Readings in Economics (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1949), pp. 100, 101).
See also Nicolas Baudeau, Première Introduction à la Philosophie Economique (Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1910), p. 31.
P. C. Newman, A. D. Gayer, and M. H. Spencer, Source Readings in Economic Thought (New York: Norton, 1954), p. 103.
Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1955), p. 159. (See also the French edition, published by Librairie Gallimard, 1952, vol. I, p. 210.)
Mario Einaudi, The Physiocratic Doctrine of Judicial Control (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), p. 3.
Schlatter cites Baudeau’s view that, ‘It is a common error to attribute property to the civil law’ (Private Property, p. 217). The inference that private property exists prior and preeminent to civil law reflects Lord Acton’s dictum that, ‘Society secures rights; it neither bestows nor restricts them’ (quoted in Paschal Larkin, Property in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin: Cork University Press, 1930) p. 198). Turgot, however, agreeing ‘that labour gave a natural title to property’, added, says Schlatter, that ‘in the state of nature property in land lasted only so long as the appropriator continued to occupy and cultivate: permanent property in land was a creation of the civil law’ (p. 217; see below, n. 31). Larkin found another qualification by the Physiocrats, that ‘Every individual has a natural right to at least those things which are necessary for his welfare’ (p. 200). Quesnay also qualified the general rule by noting that ‘the strong can unjustly employ violence upon the weak’, by ‘the condition that he injure neither himself nor others‘, and by recognizing differential ‘circumstances’ (Kapp and Kapp, Readings in Economics, pp. 97, 99).
(These are the same qualifications propounded by Locke himself. Locke qualifies his explanation of property in the natural state (On Civil Government, paragraphs 26, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33) by assuming abundance (paragraphs 33, 36) and the use of the qualifying phrase, ‘As much as anyone can make use of (paragraphs 31, 36). Civil society is also differentiated from the state of nature. See Larkin, Property in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 59–64, and Huntington Cairns, Legal Philosophy from Plato to Hegel (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1949), pp. 335–61.) Schlatter concludes that: ‘These civil extensions of the right of property were justified by their general utility, but they should be revised whenever they conflict with the original right of nature’ (p. 217). ‘Thus the privileges of the aristocracy, he advised the king, are civil rights which deprive others of their natural right to enjoy the produce of their own industry: these privileges ought, consequently, to be suppressed.’ On the distinction between feudal rights as privileges or legitimate property, see Larkin, pp. 213 ff.
While not a Physiocrat in every doctrinal respect, Turgot’s association with the group is reasonably close; moreover, his attitude towards governmentally induced social change and social reconstruction does parallel the general Physiocratic view in almost every respect. Turgot may have been ‘more of a fellow-traveler ... than a Physiocrat pur’, but he is also the only major Physiocrat providing the historical analyst with practical experience as a source of insight (Ronald L. Meek, ‘The Physiocratic Concept of Profit’, Economica, n.s. XXVI (Feb. 1959), p. 52).
W. Walker Stephens (ed.), The Life and Writings of Turgot (New York: Longmans, Green, 1895), pp. 227–8.
R. P. Shepherd, Turgot and the Six Edicts, Columbia University, Series in History, Economics and Public Law (New York, 1903), vol. XVIII, p. 131.
J. J. Spengler, ‘The Physiocrats and Say’s Law of Markets’, I–II, Journal of Political Economy, vol. LIII (Sept. and Dec. 1945), pp. 193–211, 317–47, esp. pp. 204–11, 317–29, 345–7;
Henri Woog, The Tableau Economique of François Quesnay (Bern: A. Francke, 1950), pp. 22–5, 82–98 (‘The “Tableau Economique” in Disequilibrium’);
Leo Rogin, The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory (New York: Harper, 1956), pp. 23–4, 29;
Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 287;
A. R. J. Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches (New York: Macmillan, 1922), p. ix;
Edmund Whittaker, Schools and Streams of Economic Thought (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1960), p. 95.
Luigi Einaudi, ‘The Physiocratic Theory of Taxation’, in Economic Essays in Honour of Gustav Cassel (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1933), pp. 131–5.
Compare R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1920), chs II and III.
Given the recognition of these manipulations, ‘their philosophies would have permitted and would even have compelled them to regard’ them ‘as ordained by Nature’ (O. H. Taylor, Economics and Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), p. 99). As Spengler notes, even ‘Dubois admits that if it could have been proved to Quesnay that legislation (e.g., tariffs) would increase the net product, he might have found such intervention to conform to the natural order’ (‘The Physiocrats and Say’s Law of Markets’, p. 328).
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© 1992 Warren J. Samuels
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Samuels, W.J. (1992). The Physiocratic Theory of Property and State. In: Essays in the History of Mainstream Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12266-0_2
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