A history of economic doctrines

Political Economy as the name of a special science is the invention of one Antoine de Montchrétien, who first employed the term about the beginning of the seventeenth century. N...

Notwithstanding the originality and vigour displayed by the Physiocrats, they can only be regarded as the heralds of the new science. Adam Smith,[126] it is now unanimously agre...

A new point of view is presented to us by the economists of whom we are now going to speak. Hitherto we have heard with admiration of the discovery of new facts and of their ben...

It would, of course, be extravagant to imagine that these three writers were unanimous on all questions. There were several points that still remained obscure, and more than one...

Economic Liberalism had everywhere become triumphant. In France the corporation era was definitely at an end by 1791. Some manufacturers, it is true, demanded its re-establishme...

Sismondi, by supplementing the study of political economy by a study of social economics, had already much enlarged the area traced for the science by its founders. But while gi...

The name “Associative Socialists” is given to all those writers who believe that voluntary association on the basis of some preconceived plan is sufficient for the solution of a...

By the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine of Adam Smith had conquered the whole of Europe. Former theories were forgotten and no rival had appeared to challenge its s...

Proudhon comes next, though his place in the history of economic doctrines is not easily defined. Like all socialists he begins with a criticism of the rights of property. The e...

It is time we returned to the Classical writers. Now that the combat had grown fierce among its critics, we are anxious to know what the Classical school itself was doing to rep...

The previous Book has shown us the unsettled state of economic science. It has also indicated how the science was turned from its original course by reverses suffered at the han...

While the French economists, alarmed at the consequences involved in the theories of Malthus and Ricardo, strove to transmute the Brazen laws into Golden ones, the English econo...

With Bastiat economic Liberalism, threatened by socialism, sought precarious refuge in Optimism. With Mill the older doctrines found new expression in language scientific in its...

The second half of the nineteenth century is dominated by Historical ideas, though their final triumph was not fully established until the last quarter of the century. The rise...

The nineteenth century opened with a feeling of contempt for government of every kind, and with unbounded confidence on the part of at least every publicist in the virtue of eco...

Everyone knows of the spell cast over the socialism of the last forty years by the doctrines of Karl Marx and the contempt with which this newer so-called scientific socialism r...

Everyone who knows the Bible at all or has the slightest acquaintance with the writings of the early Fathers must have been struck by the number of texts which they contain bear...

In the earlier sections of this work no special difficulty was experienced in giving the essential traits of the economic thought of each period. But on the threshold of this la...

If we are to give this new doctrine its true setting we must return for a moment to our study of the Historical school. The criticism of that school, as we have already seen, wa...

The revival of interest in Classical theories, of which mention was made in the last chapter, cannot be passed over without a special reference to the theory of rent. The theory...

The word “solidarity,” formerly a term of exclusively legal import,[1249] has during the last twenty years been employed to designate a doctrine which has aroused the greatest e...

The social creed of the anarchist is a curious fusion of Liberal and socialist doctrines. Its economic criticism of the State, its enthusiasm for individual initiative, as well...

there is this great difference. Rousseau thought that the state of nature had been denaturalised by social and especially by political institutions, including, of course, privat...

The correspondence between selling price and the cost of production seemed to Smith to be of the very essence of justice. Complete correspondence would realise the ideal of the...

[192] All these questions so obscurely treated in Smith’s work are handled with admirable lucidity in Irving Fisher’s _Nature of Capital and Income_ (New York, 1907). Revenue is...

[200] “It is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stock towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most adva...

[210] _Wealth of Nations_, Book I, chap. 8; Cannan, vol. i, p. 68. The masters possess the advantage in discussion (1) because they can combine much more easily; (2) because, th...

[230] “Each of those different branches of trade, however, is not only advantageous, but necessary and unavoidable, when the course of things, without any constraint or violence...

[579] “The German nation will at once obtain what it is now in need of, namely, fisheries and naval power, maritime commerce and colonies.” (_National System_, p. 143.) List has...

[789] The co-operative movement probably suggested this idea to him. He several times expresses the opinion that middlemen’s profits exceed those of the capitalists, and that th...

comparison with producer’s rent, which had gained notoriety long before the Hedonistic school arose. Both are due to similar causes, namely, the existence of differential advant...

[1175] In this case Stuart Mill seems to compare rent to a monopoly revenue: “A thing which is limited in quantity, even though its possessors do not act in concert, is still a...