Figures of mockery. The cultural disqualification of physiocracy (1760-1790)

Arnaud Orain

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2015, vol. 22, issue 3, 383-419

Abstract: By studying seriously a literature generally dismissed by the historians of economics - satires, tales, theatrical works, pamphlets, poems, and songs that mock with humour the physiocrats, their fellow-travellers, and their doctrines - this paper reveals what was made of them and their ideas, who did this, and the underlying whys and wherefores. Three major forms of critiques are considered. The first, that of a Church (the Encyclopédistes ) fighting a rising heresy (the physiocrats), concludes that the fanaticism of the latter is incompatible with the virtues of tolerance that must characterise the true philosophes . In the second form, the Encyclopédistes and the Économistes are assimilated. Both led to the destruction of the old taxonomy of society and even to death, to famine and to a chaos of transgression. The third form concerns the dubious parallel between the y-king of ancient China and the Tableau économique . These three types of cultural writings capture and explain something new - physiocratic political economy - thanks to well-known mental constructs. It stages characters and facts in order to give meaning to events the causes of which are difficult to explain. It is, beyond all the irony and mockery, an attempt to understand and to defuse new fears resulting from this incredible endeavour to change reality.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2014.1003952

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