Of goats and dogs: Joseph Townsend and the idealisation of markets—a decisive episode in the history of economics

Philipp H. Lepenies

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2014, vol. 38, issue 2, 447-457

Abstract: Joseph Townsend’s Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786) played a major role in the development of economic thought. Its originality lies in the fact that the notion of competitive markets was defined as a ‘natural law’, a principle of nature that should not be meddled with. This principle was explained by describing the struggle for survival between goats and dogs on a remote Pacific island. The Dissertation stands in the shadow of Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. Yet Malthus has been accused of plagiarising Townsend. I argue that an overlooked aspect in this debate is that Townsend’s Dissertation and Malthus’s Essay share a revolutionary methodology that removed the market mechanism from any cultural and social context in the name of science—a feature that has been a part of market-fundamentalist economics ever since.

Date: 2014
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