Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say's Political Economy (review)

According to John Stuart Mill, who stayed in Jean-Baptiste Say's house during his visit to France in 1820, the French economist was a fierce republican. In line with this statement, the basic idea of Richard Whatmore's book is to explain the historical significance of republicanism for the development of French political economy. This is an important clue for a correct understanding of Say, claims Whatmore in his introduction, since Say was neither a liberal nor an orthodox classical political economist, and he was certainly not a panglossian economist satisfied with the existing social order.

In order to understand what republicanism meant, Whatmore devotes the first and second parts of his book (chapters 1 to 5) to the French intellectual context from physiocracy to the beginning of the revolution (1789–1793). These chapters are quite innovative. Whatmore digs intensively in the works of important authors of the period who were to influence the young Say, particularly Etienne Clavière (a banker, then minister of finance) and Pierre-Louis Roederer (a lawyer, then member of the French high administration). Both men advocated the necessity of a science of manners in order to restore the French economy and, contrary to the previous generation of classical republicans (Montesquieu, Mably, and Voltaire, but Rousseau as well), they believed in the possibility of creating a commercial republican society, in a large state, out of the material of a corrupted monarchy. The third part of the book (chapters 6 to 9) focuses on Say's thoughts, from the terror (1794) to the beginning of the consulate (circa 1803–4).

The major result comes with a penetrating interpretation of Say's first writings in the light of their intellectual context. Whatmore shows convincingly that Say's Olbie (1800)—now available in English in Evelyn Forget's recent essay on Say—and the first edition of the Traité d'économie politique (1803) were major attempts to provide a modified version of commercial republicanism. As Say separated political economy from politics, he revealed his loss of faith in Clavière's approach: the basic point was no longer to establish a constitutional republicanism but to transform the nation by introducing such republican manners as frugality and industry and enlightened self-interest; these were to be coupled with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth in order to fight poverty and to create a larger middle-class. Apart from its historical accuracy, Whatmore's interpretation captures numerous elements spread over the Traité (on the labor market and how it endangers the social independence of poor citizens, on private and public consumption considered from a moral perspective, etc.). It also captures an important part of Say's public life, since his deep involvement in the teaching of political economy was directly related to the importance he gave to manners and to the role that political economy could play in order to meliorate French society from top (the legislator and the administration) to bottom (the nation in its entirety, with particular emphasis on the entrepreneurs). Nevertheless, the book could have pushed further this line of inquiry examining the evolution of Say's thought after the restoration (1815).

Dealing with the “mature” Say, from 1815 up to Say's death in November 1832, the last part of the book is sketchier, with two brief chapters. This is to be regretted, since Say was still busy with similar questions whether in a book on morals (Petit volume contenant quelques aperçus des hommes et de la société, 1817 and 1818) or in an unfinished manuscript (Essai de politique pratique—which will be soon available as volume 2 of Say's Œuvres complètes). This is emphatically the case from a more analytical point of view. For example, when Say objected to Malthus's and...