In Our Time - The Physiocrats

Episode Date: June 20, 2013

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Physiocrats, an important group of economic thinkers in eighteenth-century France. The Physiocrats believed that the land was the ultimate source of all wealth, and crucially that markets should not be constrained by governments. Their ideas were important not just to economists but to the course of politics in France. Later they influenced the work of Adam Smith, who called Physiocracy "perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy."With:Richard Whatmore Professor of Intellectual History & the History of Political Thought at the University of SussexJoel Felix Professor of History at the University of ReadingHelen Paul Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time, for more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, an eminent French economist of the 18th century, the Marquis de Minervo, believed that three inventions that enable the emergence of stable political societies. The first of these was writing, the second was money, and the third he wrote was, The Economic Table, the Great Discovery of Our Age,

of which posterity will reap the benefit. Few people today have heard of the economical table, but it's a landmark in financial history. It was an economic model formulated by Francois-Kénez, the founder of the Physiocrats, a school of thought which dominated French economics and politics in the 18th century. The physiocrats believed that agriculture was the ultimate source of all wealth. Their insistence that government should not interfere in trade made a deep impression on Adam Smith. In the wealth of nations, Smith described the physiocratic system as the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy.

With me to discuss the physiocrats are Richard Wartmore, Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, Joelle Felix, Professor of History at the University of Reading, and Helen Paul, lecturer in economics and economic history at the University of Southampton. Helen Paul, will you give us a quick overview of who the physiocrats were and what they believed? Yes, indeed. They were the first real school of economic thought. themselves the economists, but everyone else calls them the physiocrats. And their founders, really, Francois-Kine.

They were reacting against earlier patterns of thinking called mechanolism. And they were the first people to think in terms of model building of the economy, the kind of abstract model building that the economic table or the tableau economic is about. So in a way, they try to combine a traditional social, with new ideas based on scientific principles, which was their way forward, because science at the time was all the rage

and even ordinary gentlemen would be interested in science. They were trying to think about the economy as a scientific thing or something to be studied in the same way. Why were they called a physiocrats? Partly just because from the 19th century they called that because of one of their books had that physiocracy in the title, but they didn't call themselves that. They call themselves economists,

but we like to call them physiocrats. Why is that? Because we like the sign of Greek. Well, I don't know, really. I suppose because economists have been, it's not very clear who you mean by that. It could be any school, well, it's particularly this school is the physiocrats.

Just easier, I suppose. How new were their ideas, Helen? We're talking about, the difficulty we have is a lot of their ideas have percolated so thoroughly into economic thoughts. economic development, there have been variations on it and development, something so on. But we've got to get back to imagine what it was like then and why they were different. So what was new about them?

What was really new about them is that they had this sense that they could use scientific ideas to study something like the economy, and that was new. So Kenne was a doctor, and he understood the circulation of the blood. He understood how the body functioned like that. He thought about the economy as if it was almost a similar kind of organism with the circulation of resources flowing round from part to part of the economy, from group to group. And that was quite new. Most people before that had really used a lot of normative ideas

about the economy operating in a particular way. What does normative ideas mean? Well, just how things should be based on religious principles rather than how they actually were. So what were they fighting against principally? How were they different? They were different because the mercantilists who preceded them had insisted on trying to build up, in some cases, bullion,

but in other cases just resources within... So the more coinage and wealth had in solid form, more gold and silver and the better off you were. That was a very bullionist idea, so the bullionists were part of the mercantiless. But basically, McCantelists wanted to regulate trade and try to restrict the amount of imported goods into the economy.

All of these things, then their ideas built up a huge amount of nest of regulations and taxes and goodness knows what, and the physiocrats wanted to undo all of that and go for a freer trade regime, primarily domestic free trade. They weren't really as good at talking about international trade. But that was new,

and it certainly went against a lot of traditional ideas. Richard Whatmore, what was the political situation? of France in the first half middle of the 18th century when this came along. We have had a whiff of an idea that science was entering into its kingdom, but what about the politics? Politics are fascinating, and the reason is this. If you look at the 17th century and you look at the commentators who are trying to work out what Europe's future is going to be, they would have said the future is France. It's French. France is the dominant state. It's got, it's the home of civilization,

vast population, natural resources. It is Europe's greatest state. Louis XIVth is the Sun King. Looks like a modern Roman emperor models himself on Augustus. And many European commentators said, what you can expect politically is the establishment of universal monarchy. So you're going to get peace across the world led by France. This enlightened, cosmopolitan country is going to dominate the world, dominate Europe and the world by extension. It's the age of empire, of course. Now, what happens, and this is why the politics are so interesting, is that France declines relatively, especially by comparison with this puny state, Britain, which is so successful at war that it poses a real problem.

Now, that means that French politicians, French commentators on French political writings, are obsessed with how to restore French greatness. Now, nobody thinks that politics in the 18th century are stable. Everybody thinks that you can expect enormous change. A lot of people, including the physiocrats, believe that there's a state of corruption that describes the existing world

and you want to create an alternative future. You want to imagine a different world and the key is what is the transition mechanism to get from your state of corruption to your new reformed world. How exactly do you get there? Now the physiocrats have very, very clear responses to the problem of restoring French glory.

The best way to think of it is with the modern parallel, Obviously, many people think that China is the future. Think of France in the position of China at the beginning of the 18th, end of the 17th, beginning of the 18th century, and imagine that it doesn't happen. The intellectual ferment, in consequence, is remarkable. We call it the Enlightenment sometimes. It's a remarkable intellectual period

because people are grappling with the problem. Why didn't the French state continue to rise? And how did Britain, by comparison, seemingly rise above France. You describe Britain as puny and it isn't merely self-serving to ask why you use that particular word. Well, let's give an example.

The final Stuart kings are pensioned by Louis XIV. By, say, the war of the Spanish succession, so 1711714. The remarkable victories of Marlborough, obviously the union with Scotland really transform the process of the British polity. Now, some people thought it's just a blip. Many people continue to expect, including lots of Britons, continuing to expect Britain to decline. But it doesn't happen. But nobody thinks Britain's going to be stable, and nor do the physiocrats. And that's part of the reason why they're so important.

Are we here, are we going to talk about the Industrial Revolution creeping into Britain in a way it didn't creep it were, a sailing Britain from the north in the way it didn't. do in France? Well, that is one of the major questions because France was faced with the issue of what kind of economy to establish. Now, if we think of commercial society,

if we think of an agricultural society by contrast, and we might think of a mercantile society, the kind Helen's mentioned, and we might think of that as a society addicted to I don't know, a beggar my neighbour, economic policy, trying to grab the domestic markets of your neighbour.

Now, the French have a choice. The most popular book, excluding the Bible of the century, is Francois Fenelon's Telemachus, circulated in manuscript 1699 and then in addition 1717. Telemachus says, avoid commerce, get the people out of the cities, avoid luxury. You have to be concerned about commercial society. So going back to Colbert and Louis XIV and the aspiration to be a mercantile empire, mercantile economy, many people saw that as spelling trouble, effeminacy and decline, libertinism, all of the things that you have to worry about, destroy religion, destroy the economy, destroy morality.

Well, that was a round-up, wasn't it? Joel Felix, what economic pressures have been created by Francis' situation? in the period that Richard just been discussing. Richard has described very well the situation in France, but in the middle of the 18th century, clearly what he mentioned is absolutely visible. It's not only intellectual, it's happened. Why? Because a war started again in Europe in the 1740s.

What precisely is visible? What is visible is this war, which has a dramatic impact on France. First of all, France, although the war started very well, the seven years war in 1556 to 1763, But very soon it's getting back to worse, really. France is defeated in Canada, loses a few islands in the Caribbean, loses India,

and most importantly, is defeated in Hanover by Frederick the Great. The economy, the British Navy, is really blockading France. The French Navy is defeated severely in 1758, and nothing's going through. France might be an agricultural country, but still the international trade is very, very important. France exports a number of manufacturing goods

and there is a major economic crisis I should say as well that an important element in the mood of the French at the time is that Louise 15th had an assassination attempt in 1757 which came quite as a shock

and basically the finance are stretched taxation is really high and everybody is really upset about the level of taxation Probably we'll talk about the problem of the countryside, but at this moment, harvest are exceptionally good. What does it mean a good harvest? Normally, you should be happy about that.

But for the landowners, it means that the price is collapsing. And the taxation is very high, and they find it very, very difficult to accept. So the physiocrats come in 1759, and everybody says, oh, you should reduce taxation. There is too much tax. Tax is killing tax, in effect. The government can't pay.

its financier or refund its debt and the physiocrat come with this idea right. In order to be powerful, we need to have a strong, powerful agriculture which will produce wealth. And once we have these wells, we can establish

a fiscal system which will tax these walls. And in 1763, when the France comes out of this war, which is a major defeat and which is seen as the true development of a British power and its empire.

The French are really willing to do something and in particular to start the war of revenge which will develop in 1778 with the American war. So there is a clear agenda and the physiocrats bring Revenge against Britain. Absolutely. It starts and kicks off in America.

Yes. That's a very nice way to put it actually. I haven't heard that phrase before for French participation in America. But you brought us very well to the physiocrats. And the central figure was a man called Francois-Kenne, who was at Versailles. He was a medical man there. But can you tell us a bit about him? And what was important?

You've mentioned the land as well. So can you just tell this his view of the value of the land in the economy? Yes. So just a few words about Kenne to situate him. When he publishes his famous economical table, he's not a young man at all. He's in mid-60s. And he started his career as a doctor surgeon. And through his activity as a doctor, he went in contact with a number of very powerful people at court, in particular families like the Noai, who were powerful through their relationship to one of the mistresses of the 14th.

They knew the Villarroix, who was the educator of the young Louis XVI's. And those people intervened for him. And Kenne is appointed in 1749, the personal doctor. of a Marquis de Pompadour. And it is important to realize that the Marquis de Pompadour from 1745 until her death in 1764 is the official mistress of the king. As a result, Kenei gets flat, if you want, in Versailles and tries to develop his research in the economic realm.

In terms of what he brings, Kenei, it's something which is at the time very few people understood why because like Ellen said earlier on if you were to read something about economics you might read a text, long text but what Kenne provides is one piece of paper

where he explains the economic system and on that basis he proposes with 26 maxims the first economic program to establish France at the level he considered it should be. I think listeners Cecil gasping that he could do this on one sheet of paper, but he did. Would that he could not return?

Can we bring him back in some way? Anyway, that's a frivolous digression. Right, so Helen Paul, we have this table economic, the economic table on one sheet of paper. What were the main points he made and how radical were they? Well, his main idea was to just make this very abstract and simple. Basically, he thought all wealth really sprang from the land. And then the resources that were used up by the people who actually worked on the land,

once they consumed what they needed, anything left over was what he called the net product or the prodig net. And then that itself was shared out between the people who owned the land, the proprietors, and what he called the sterile class, the merchants and the artisans, and therefore these people didn't actually create wealth, he thought. He didn't quite understand the added value from manufacture. But the prodig net circulated back around this system, and it was reproduced every year. So it was very similar, if you like, to the circulation of the blood

or some idea like that. So you could see it, if you like, think of this as a, model or a diagram, which is quite easy to understand. And because it was abstract, of course, it's a simplification, but you have to do that with economic models to start off with

in order to have an easy way to understand the economy. Sorry, you're about to go on. Well, I mean, you can make it more complicated than that, but I think you've got to start somewhere. No. He didn't. He just had 26th, him, and I think we should respect

him in this room. So you had this plan, and you based on the language, of course it's extremely convenient for the leaders of the feudal society and the empowered Irish-Socrats, they welcomed it. So he didn't find any opposition intellectually or, as it were, societally in what he was proposing. He wasn't thinking of overturning what he felt was the natural order, if you like the God-given order where the people at the top, like the king and the elite, obviously should own the land and they obviously should have part of the Paduinenet.

But you could, if you wanted, you could turn this around and you could say, well, if all the people who are actually producing things are the actual farmers, why are the landowners getting anything? What are they for? Which, of course, could be quite a revolutionary way to interpret this. So that certainly wasn't his intention at all. Can we take this on his work? I mean, so he's put this forward.

And then he meets the Marquis de Mirabeau, who published a work called A Friend of Mankind, and they work together. I'm still trying to tease out. what's radical about it, what the change is, because I said in an introduction, it might have been for the trail, I can't remember, that he sort of replaced the medieval roles in society with something with class and so on. Can you just take us down that past, please? Certainly. So, Mirabeau is the author of a very, very popular book. Lamid is on The Friend of Mankind, and it tries to solve the problems of France. most books about politics, about political economy, try to solve the problems of France.

It's interesting, isn't it? The state of France, they're besotted by the state of France. They're besotted. But also, they're thinking about what are the models that we should follow? Should we follow the British? The perception of Louis XIV was that he'd followed the Dutch in terms of creating a mercantile,

banking empire, and also that he had a lust after the wealth of Spain, so that an aspiration to grab the wealth of the Indies, obviously of the Spanish Americas. And the physiocrats are saying, hold on, none of those models are ones that we should follow. Now, what they're arguing, and it's a very, very radical argument, because they're saying, turn your back on Colbert, on Louis the 14th, on the British model of mercantile empire. Let's try and work out why the British are successful. They're successful because of their advanced agriculture, crop rotation, use of the plough, large farms. It's this kind of strategy that they think has made Britain successful, and that's the true

foundation of Britain's wealth. What they don't like, what they're absolutely opposed to, is bankers, merchants who can take their wealth and move it somewhere else, because that is something that they can threaten politicians. Again, if you remember Louis XIV as time passes dependent on so many court bankers, they don't like that at all. They want to have a monarch who is able to put into practice natural laws. I mean, Kenay's vision is, I have seen the laws of nature.

I have seen exactly how the economy, the natural economy operates. And we're in a system where there are blockages and corruptions and all sorts of problems, and we need to get rid of those and restore what Smith later calls the natural progress of opulence. So where wealth is natural, in order to do that, you have to get away from merchants and bankers who threaten politicians, who corrupt politicians, who take their wealth out of the state. if the state doesn't venerate them. So you want people with a stake in the soil because they cannot take their wealth away.

Those are the people you can trust politically. Those are the people that you want to give a greater voice to, which is part of the radical elements that Helen's just mentioned. What was the confluence of opinion between Mirabeau and Cannae? Well, that is Mirabeau called it a transformation of his own ideas. he believed passionately that France needed to become a more moral society. He was worried about luxury, libertinism. He was worried about immorality of all kinds, spreading with commerce,

and he wanted to increase the population. So he is, you could say that in the amidism, again, friend of mankind, it's a fascinating cosmopolitan vision. It's that if you put into practice his ideas, you'll have a state where you won't expect international conflict at all because you'll have a natural economy and everybody recognises that they gain by economic progress and you won't need to fight anymore.

So what Kenne says is that Mirabeau did not understand in the first edition of the Friend of Mankind that population is dependent on the productivity of agriculture. and it's that that Mirabeau sees it's a revelation to him and he acknowledges he thinks Kenay, very stubborn, convinced. I mean, he's like a biblical prophet, really. You're not going to argue with him. He's seen this vision and he convinces Mirabot

and Mirabot, wonderful publicist, wonderful campaigner for the physiocratic vision into the future. Joel Felix, the physiocras believe in some called the natural order which Richard has brought forward. I'd like a development develop it a little. Was God involved here? Riches also referred to visions. We know that Newton was in the background.

The great idea of scientific enlightenment was hovering over Europe. So where are we with the natural order? Whose natural order is it? Certainly it's the vision of Kenya about a special natural order, a certain form. And as you mentioned, it comes really directly from Newton, this idea

that they are natural laws, universal laws which govern the way the planets revolve around the sun for instance and one of Kenny's aim really

is to try to find out if such laws would be applicable to the human society in particular and civilized society and in doing that really

he tries to find out which are these basic blocks if you want of civilization and he consider that Simply surviving, reproducing yourself is an essential element

which is part of a human can, every individual. So you consider that there is this natural law, this natural order, which is represented in the work of the nature. You plant a seed, you do nothing, it's rains, it's sunshine, and then you harvest the seed, and you've got more seed that you planted. So it's really focused on this notion that the true source of wealth lies. precisely in this physical, as a physiocrats say, power of laws.

Helen Paul, after Kenay, one of the most, Jacques Togo came along. This spreads over, I don't know, what we're talking about, 56 years. They keep joining each other. They're a loose continuum, but they are a continuous continuum, but they are a continuum. He was significant. Can you tell the listeners why? Yes, he actually had political power because he became controller general. which gave him authority over the economy.

And he was the first Comptroller General of the reign of Louis XVIth. And he wanted to liberalise the French system, which you'll be amazed to hear was full of bureaucracy and various sorts of log jams. So if you wanted to move, say, an agricultural product from A to B, it would have to go through various stages and pay taxes along the way, even if it was just moving within France. He wanted to remove all these sorts of obstacles.

to free trade, free labour, free market pricing. He wanted to undermine the power of the guilds. He wanted even things like grain to be allowed to move around, the transshipment of grain, and remove all the regulations on the sale and the price, which was a problem for him, because unfortunately, when he did this, it just happened to coincide with periods of bad harvests when you need to have some kind of restriction on grain,

otherwise you get rioting, and that's unfortunately... But he did represent... a political arm for them. And he showed the limits, it seems to me, you tell me if I'm wrong, which I'm, that when he tried to put into practice some of these things, put into practice, when he tried to abolish the notion

that labourers should mend roads, serfs, whatever they were, peasant, whatever they were called in front of them, should mend roads freely. The Irish Democrats objected and resisted it, so shouted it down, and he was out of office in a year or two. Yes, that's right.

That's the famous Corvé, where your peasant had to go and give free labor to build a road. And he felt it was just more sensible to get contractors to do that and leave the peasants on the land during the harvest. The problem being that the elite, they also use this free labor, the corvay, on their own lands privately, and they didn't want to have to pay through tax.

So does this show the limitation of the physiocrats' influence? I think it does, because it runs straight into a very entrenched, system of people who hold offices of some kind or hold guild positions or who have some sort of political right or are free from taxation for some other reason. There are so many of these people that Turgos attempt to liberalise the economy fast runs into a lot of problems. You know, Felix, the physiocrats divided the economy into three different classes of individuals. Again, alluded to by Richard, can you be more specific about those three classes and what they

contributed, please? Yes, to come back to what was just said and we carry on on that is, When we mentioned the aristocrats of the elites, the aristocrats are not, they are divided in their outlook about society. Chugo is an aristocrat. Kenes has been ennobled. All those people are part of the aristocracy. So they've got different views, as Richard said,

because it's very tough question which are asked about the society, how the future of France should be. And naturally, you would imagine that people are not absolutely divided, united on that. And when it comes to the three classes, I would say it's a formidable breakthrough. in terms of the Ancien regime. Why? Because the Ancien regime in France, and in Europe in general,

it was divided typically into three orders, not classes. Orders, meaning depending on the function you have in society. And usually a function which has to do, for instance, with religion. The clergy is the first order. Then the nobility is a second order. And the rest of the nation called the third order. And what is very important is that these different orders have benefited differently from the world.

society depending on their role in the society. And it causes an enormous amount of problem for the monarchy. Why? Because the monarchy is rooted into this system. But for obvious reason, the monarchy, the government and people who are in charge of the country have to modernize this society. They have to get rid to some extent of privileges, limit that. And it's extremely difficult to get through, as you would imagine. So when Kenne comes with these three classes, he distributes people,

differently according to their economic usefulness, their role in society. And there are three classes now. One is the class of the farmers who till the soil, who are actually the true creative of wealth makers. The wealth makers, exactly. Then there is the class of the landowners who own and lend their land to the wealth maker, and they include the aristocrats, the clergy, the king as a tax collector. And also, all those people who actually own land and who are not aristocrats because most of the land in France is not owned by aristocrats.

And the last group are the manufacturers, the merchants, the craftsmen, who are the sterile class or the barren class. It's interesting this word sterile, Richard Wartmore. What does he mean by sterile? Well, sterile means that what they do is not... By merchants and so.

These are merchants. As Joel said, craftsmen, And the sterile classes are those whose activities are not vital for the productivity of agriculture. You have to make sure that the net product increases year on year. Yes, you can have a commercial realm. One of the differences between the physiocrats and Finelon and the more brutal critics of commercial society is that they actually, they're not against commerce.

They're not against the sterile classes. They just don't think they're as important as the more important social groups who generate the wealth of the nation. Now, one of the important background arguments is popularised by Voltaire in his letters on England. And again, you have to remember that the physiocrats and all of these French authors, they're commenting on France, but they have Britain in the background. And Voltaire, letters on England, 1733, says that what's astonishing, is the Earl of Oxford's brother is a factor in Aleppo.

Now, that doesn't sound like a radical statement. It is because he's saying that the difference between France and Britain is that Britain has a commercial nobility involved in trade. They're merchants. They're not. They don't do what the French nobility do, which is go into the church, go into the military, might be surgeons, might be lawyers. they're not a commercial nobility.

Now, Montesquere, in the spirit of the law 1748, says that you don't want a commercial nobility. The physiocrats really come to prominence while this debate about whether you should have a commercial nobility is a very significant issue. And they are against it because they're saying that that's the sterile classes, except commercial in the sense of developing agriculture. Helen Paul Out of the 18th century we got the at this time We get the phrase laissez-faire What did that mean to the physiocrats?

Well it literally means that Well alone in a sense That you don't interfere With a lot of regulations and rules And restrictions on You don't interfere with rules But we hear that they want to get rid of a lot of rules No I think you don't interfere with the system

By using rules Sorry that's not very clear of it And particularly with domestic trade That was their great interest rather than international trade was a wee bit more tricky for them and particularly the free trade in grain around the country and they had in a sense that was quite sensible because you had areas like the Longadoc

where they could easily have sold their wheat outside and they were really prevented from doing so very easily with a lot of tolls and restrictions and the like but that they were always if you like thinking about agriculture and anything that was quite close to agriculture. The phrase laissez-faire comes to mean something else later on, and I think we're possibly

associate it more with free trade, international trade, now. But to them, it was quite limited because they didn't think they thought the political system should stay put as it was, but everything else, the movement of grain around the country or whatever should be allowed to just move

without intervention from the government. Charles Felix, can you tell us How far were the physiocrats' ideas of pulling to practice? How seriously were they taken? And give us some idea of the dates. We're beginning to lose track of dates. Second half 18th century, but when?

We need to... The ideas of the physiocrats are implemented in 1763, 1764 after the war because there is an outcry from some of the landowners to make sure that they get a good price for the harvard. And the state is, well, it's very difficult for the state because it's an aspect perhaps which we might talk about later. But, okay, it's good to develop agriculture, et cetera. But the policy of the physiocrat is to increase the price of wheat and corn, which transfer onto bread. And for a number of people, it's very, very difficult.

They consider that it's one aspect, of course, which character has very much a physiocracy. They've gotten a scientific approach to economic. problems and part of the society consider that economic is part of real moral policy, not really of hard science, economics. So sorry, you just said, you got lost to the moment. It's economic

policy and its moral policy at the same time. I would say the people who find it very difficult to grasp the ideas of the economies, because nowadays it seems obvious that you are students, you might study economics at university, but there was no such thing in the 18th. The

physicists are, the physicists are, the physicists are creating a new field of knowledge. So it's very difficult for a number of people to understand. But for some people, economics, probably like nowadays, all these figures, profit, etc. It's not acceptable.

You cannot build a society which is fair if you forget the moral dimension of economics. But in 1763, 1764, there is a need, there is pressure on the government to deregulate the coal market in France for a number of

reason. One reason is very trivial, which has perhaps nothing to do with the physiocratic theory at all. It's just there is plenty of wheat in France. Let's export and we bring back money through our balance of trade. It's really pragmatic. But there is a vision nevertheless among the government that something has to be done in the field of agriculture. Because if you really can develop the productivity of agriculture, and you can can adjust the taxation on these walls, then the state might find a solution to its financial problem and become powerful again, be able to sustain both armies on the continent,

but fight the British at sea, were, of course, the difficult bit to chew. So can we just develop that a bit more, if there's more to develop, Richard, what more? In getting these ideas into, well, getting them instituted? Yes. they are pushing the court, they're pushing ministers. There's a sense of a program, and in some ways it's a relatively straightforward program, they want the monarch to act as a legal despot and put into practice these laws of nature. Now, as Joel said, there's a real push in the 1760s.

There's another push in the 1770s with Turgo. afterwards again the disciples DuPont de de de Mour condorce people like that begin to argue that if we can't rely on the monarch to put into practice these natural laws then we have to look at provincial assemblies

getting patriotic nobles to embrace to recognise the importance of the productivity of agriculture and ultimately we might have to enfranchise that's simplifying 18th century thought grotesquely, but it's to give power to those who own the soil. And that is the aspiration.

They will help the monarch to put into practice the physiocratic programme. And it's a real voice in the decades before the revolution. We've got a neck-and-neck business going on here, haven't they? The physiocrats are saying this, and the French revolution is festering away and about to explode. So can you give us, it's a tricky one of this, isn't it, Helen? What are you going to do about that?

I mean that I suppose their entire program is based on the notion of keeping the social system more or less as it is. And of course, with the revolution literally removes the heads of these landowners and elite types. But they themselves, I suppose, they lost some political power with the fall of Turgle. They being the physiocrats. Exactly. when Turgo got axed. Obviously that was a very public rebuff, wasn't it? Well, yes, and certainly he'd tried to bring in his reforms too fast,

and he'd unfortunately hit some buffers with rioting and all sorts of things happening when there were various bad harvest. So in some ways it's bad luck, but it's also bad implementation of his policy. So we're coming up to the French Revolution, Richard Wattman. I'm sorry to hurry a bit, but we're coming to the end of the programme, and I want to talk about influences. Never mind. And what effect of force the French Revolution to have on the physiocrats?

I think the physiocrats are an indirect cause of the French Revolution. And the reason is they are anglophobes. They say to the French, don't follow the British. When you have your political changes, don't follow 1688, don't follow the glorious revolution, don't follow the British economy. That is profoundly important in terms of the shaping of the French Revolution. because the French revolutionaries turn their back on Britain throughout the 1790s. Second thing is they turn against history.

The physiocrats in some ways are saying, this is a contrast with Adam Smith, for example, and other political economists who are obsessed with a more nuanced historical vision, looking at unintended consequences, etc., etc., in the historical process. The physiocrats, as in the case of Dupon de Dumur, during the revolution, says, turn your back on history. There aren't any models in history. We don't want to follow anything. We've seen the vision of the natural economic order.

We know how to put it into practice. So that sense of the revolutionaries transforming society, changing laws, but not following the British, there are parallels with the physiocratic programme. At the beginning of the programme, I mentioned Adam Smith, Juel Felix, and his wealth of nations, and his great praise of the physiocrats. And they come up and they seem to influence Marx, Maynard Keynes,

and on it goes. Let's stick with Adam Smith. How can we see their influence on him? It's a strange influence in many ways because he praises them, but when you look, you read the words of the nation, he's very deeply critical. He says they are wrong. And when he mentions Kenneth, once he says he's a very speculative physician.

So he is clear that his ideas are not the same. But what is very important is they are looking at the same problems. Adam Smith look at these problems within, the context of Britain and the physiocrat looks at these problems within France. So what is very important really that on both sides of a channel, and it's true that France is experiencing problems, but it would be untrue to say that Britain is absolutely clear. There are immense problems at the same period about what is the future of Britain,

and as you would imagine, the French Revolution will not make these problems develop any easier at all. So there are two men who are proposing a very different vision, with different politics of economics at the end of the 18th century. Could we say finally, Richard Rotmour, that that economical table was an original document which did lead to other such documents in increasing depth and lengthen ever since? I don't think so.

Because they're a school with a vision in terms of the legacy, you could say that it's very important in societies who are attracted by the idea of not embracing columnists, of embracing agriculture, so we're thinking about the United States. Right, thank you very much, Helen Paul,

Richard Watmore, Joel Felix. Next week we'll be talking about the Chinese novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Thank you very much for listening. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.com.ukuk slash Radio 4.