Rousseau’s Economic Philosophy: Beyond the Market of Innocents

162 Pages·1998·8.57 MB·English

by  Bertil Fridén (auth.)

ROUSSEAU'S ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'IflSTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCIflVES OF THE IflSTORY OF IDEAS
159
ROUSSEAU'S ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY
Beyond the Market of Innocents
by
BERTIL FRIDEN
Founding Directors:
P. Dibont (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA)
Director:
Sarah Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom)
Assistant-Directors: J.E. Force (Lexington); J.C. Laursen (Riverside)
Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory
(Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington);
G.A.J. Rogers (Keele); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht)
Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (paris); B. Copenhaver (Los Angeles); A. Crombie (Oxford);
H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop
(Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University); E. Labrousse (paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles);
J. Malarczyk (Lublin); J. Orcibal (paris); W. ROd (Munchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles);
H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (ZUrich); J. Tans (Groningen)
ROUSSEAU'S ECONOMIC
PHILOSOPHY
Beyond the Market of Innocents
by
BERTIL FRIDEN
Institute ofConservation,
Goteborg University, Sweden
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-6228-2 ISBN 978-94-011-5294-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5294-5
Printed on acid-free paper
An Rights Reserved
©1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
incIuding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner
© Photograph Bert Leandersson
Bryggaregatan I, Goteborg
Votre tein est vermeil comme la fleur de Grenade
votre parler un paifum dont je suis inseparable ami.
Le monde n)a rien de stable) tout y passe.
Persian song. DICTIONNAlRE DE LA MUSIQUE
To Homa
Contents
PREFACE ...•..............................•........•........ II
I. INTRODUCTION
Jean-Jaques Rousseau and Political Economy ............................ 13
2. READING ROUSSEAU
From Heart to Heart ............................................. 19
3. THE MARKET AS A BROTHEL
Information Costs and the Dual Economy ofB read and Lapri ............... 33
4. EVERYONE MUST LIVE
Blueprint for an Autarchic Economy .................................. 51
5. STARVING FOR CANDY
The Futility ofM ercantilism ........................................ 63
6. THE IRON LAW OF PEASANT MISERY
The Maladie oft he Corn Market .................................... 81
7. THE SELF COMMON TO THE WHOLE
Democracy Necessary and Impossible .................................. 95
8. CHAINS OF DEPENDENCE
From Abuse to Use .............................................. 105
9. THE JEWS ARE CITIZENS
The Realism oft he Republic ofH earts ................................ 123
10. NOTHING SOLID FOR THE HEART
An Economy for the Quality ofL ift ........... ~ ...................... 137
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................ 157
INDEX ....................................................... 165
Preface
T
HE PRESENT WORK has been generously supported by grants from the
Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The
Institute of Economic History, and the Institute of Conservation both at
the University of Goteborg have in different ways housed the project. An
anonymous reader at Kluwer Academic Publishers provided a very wise,
constructive and concerned critique. This and the carefulness of the editors have
been stimulating. Jan Bohlin, Eva-Lena Dahl, brjan Emanuelsson, Lars Herlitz,
Urban Herlitz and Martti Rantanen have given important information as well as
encouragement. Unfortunately I have not been able to use their advice to the
extent I would have liked. Kyra and Michael Landzelius have been of help
concerning the format of the essay. Kyra has kindly processed my English. Gus
Kaage gave the text its fInal touch in spite of a lot of nuisances like my unreadable
corrections, and having to do the job on the most wonderful summer days in
years. The photographer Bert Leandersson responded in a very sensitive way to
my vague requests. I feel privileged to be able to include one of his photos. And
Nils FridCn helped in several ways with the design of the book.
I wish to express my deep gratitude to them all.
Goteborg in July 1997
Bertil Fridin
1. INTRODUCTION
Jean-Ja cques Rousseau and
Political Economy
O
NE OF THE MOST beautiful spots in our inherited intellectual landscape
has long lain peculiarly untrodden. It belongs to that multicoloured
garden of concepts, ideas, observations and reflections created by Jean
Jacques Rousseau. It has usually been excluded from our reading routes while
other corners have not. His work in drama, fiction, music, politics, social and
moral philosophy, linguistics, botanies, education, like his autobiographies and
his immense correspondence, keep appearing again and again within our most
vital strains of thought, always concerning us, convincing and confusing, causing
comfort and contempt. But this ignored spot merits our presence. It could shed
new light on some important social dilemmas, discussed with far too little
historical depth in modern literature. The spot is Rousseau's economic philoso
phy, and that interval in the spectrum of economic reflection which deals with
values and goods badly handled by the market mechanism.
The spot was not always marginal. In the enlightened salons of Paris during
the decades just before the fall of the Ancien Regime, Rousseau's economic
philosophy was evidently a hot topic. The editors of the great ENCYCLOPEDIE
selected Rousseau to write the article on "political economy" in tome v. They
selected him, not Quesnay, Mirabeau, Turgot, Forbonnais, Condorcet or
Diderot himself. All of tl1ese great thinkers were well-established writers on
economic matters.
But tl1e attention of the reading audiences soon vanished and was directed
elsewhere. If they were ever noticed, Rousseau's economic ideas were delegated
to some curiosa cabinet of obsolete and eccentric fairy-tales, disclosing little eco
nomic insight. Some commentators noticed his reluctance to market exchange.
But most of them found his views of little use besides that of serving as exemp
lary or warning instances of political ideas they preferred or despised. Only a
handful of commentators found it worthwhile to try to penetrate his concep
tualisations further.
14 1. INTRODUCTION
One such commentator is Jean Starobinski. In his famous book: JEAN JAC
QUES ROUSSEAU: LA TRANSPARENCE ET L'OBSTACLE, Starobinski approaches
Rousseau's anti-market views from an extra-economic perspective and exposes
them as an "autarchy myth'~ an "imaginative flight" dictated by Rousseau's psycho
logical constitution. This argument may seem to legitimise the conclusion that an
analysis of the intrinsic contents of Rousseau's economic philosophy is redun
dant since it can be explained away.
However, such a conclusion would be deeply unjustified. Starobinski's
argument is overwhelmingly elegant and delightful. But it is, nevertheless,
misleading; at least if it is to be taken as the exhaustive truth. Indeed, those very
formulations (by Rousseau) on which Starobinski bases his argument, reveal a
strikingly consistent and well-informed position that per se is worth a serious
analysis. Starobinski may be right or wrong on the character of Rousseau's
personality and even about its impact on his economic views; but the passages he
discusses have intrinsic qualities that justifY a profound analysis of the larger
issue. It is, in other words, not necessary to explain Rousseau's statements as
"imaginative flights': They can be read as expressions of a carefully elaborated
economic philosophy which should concern us for several reasons.
Firstly, Rousseau's economic philosophy appears, in certain ways, as an
attractive alternative to competing positions by contemporaries such as Adam
Smith, David Hume, Ferdinando Galiani, Fran<;ois Quesnay, Sir James Steuart
and others; and it relates to those of theorists such as Bernard Mandeville, John
Locke and Richard Cantillon. To study and evaluate Rousseau's economic
philosophy from a comparative perspective alone would be an interesting task in
and of itsel£
But an even more useful way to configure the impact of Rousseau's economic
tlleories in tllls fertile intellectual climate would be to contemplate them
according to the way in which their specific premises differ from those of other
significant analyses. If the premises differ, the space within which the theories are
valid also differs. The respective premises ascribe to each theory a specific domain
within which it is applicable. The tensions between different analyses can then be
rewritten as competing claims concerning how far-reaching the validities of the
various domains are, ratller tllan taken as a question only of their mere inl1erent
consistencies. We would then have to clarifY not mainly to what extent Smith or
Rousseau were right or wrong in their economic-political descriptions, but rat
her, when their prescriptions could be validly applied and when not. This opens
the possibility for several kinds of possible criticisms against an argument. It
could be accused of inconsistencies, but also of claiming too extended a validity
for a particular doctrine, or of treating esoteric problems of little interest. But the
various authors and their texts could also be treated as representatives of comple
mentary domains.
Three typical domains could then be suitably represented by Smith, Hume
and Rousseau. Smith's doctrine is elaborated within a domain wherein people's
"regard to their own interest" generates a socially optimal resource allocation. It
includes cases when, metaphorically speaking, it is not "the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer or tlle baker" that causes tlle product to be supplied and