François Quesnay

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François Quesnay

François Quesnay [ fʀɑ̃ˈswa kɛˈnɛ ] (born June 4, 1694 in Méré / Montfort-l'Amaury near Versailles , † December 16, 1774 in Versailles) was a French surgeon and economist . He is considered the founder of the physiocratic school of economics and encyclopedia .

The doctor

Quesnay was born as the eighth of his parents' 13 children in a village in the Île-de-France in the Rambouillet arrondissement , around 90 km from Paris. His father was a small landowner (not a lawyer), worked as a farmer and ran a grocer's next to it; François was only eight years old when he died. At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship in Paris with a copper engraver who made illustrations for the surgical academy. It was here that Quesnay developed his interest in medicine, after completing his apprenticeship he trained as a surgeon in the Surgery College of Saint-Côme in Paris, and in 1718 he was a surgeon.

James Gillray : The Bloodletting (around 1805)

A medical pamphlet got him some attention. It was directed against Jean-Baptiste Silva , the consulting doctor of the king, and his opinion - then widespread - that practically every illness should be treated with vigorous bloodletting . Quesnay, on the other hand, recommended that blood, as a beneficial substance, should be handled more carefully. In Paris he got an honorable job as personal physician to the Duke of Villeroy, became a doctor of medicine in 1744 and finally in 1749 by the influential mistress of King Louis XV. , Madame de Pompadour , appointed to the court of Versailles . As her trusted personal physician, he had a small apartment in the castle; one of his jobs was to check all the food she ate. He was placed among the official court physicians, with the declared claim to the successor as the king's chief personal physician. In 1751 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, in 1752 he was given a title of nobility after he had cured the Crown Prince of chickenpox .

The economist

The Tableau Économique

Quesnay only dealt with questions of economics at a very advanced age . Numerous writings on this subject appeared in France around the middle of the 18th century. These problems also played a large role in the encyclopedia by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert , a central work of the Enlightenment . Quesnay was friends with d'Alembert, in the years 1756/57 he wrote several encyclopedic articles, albeit - for unknown reasons - not about medicine, but about agriculture and its economic importance. In 1758 he developed his revolutionary model of the economic cycle and its laws, the Tableau économique , and thus became the founder of the Physiocracy.

It is often suggested that Quesnay applied his circulatory medical knowledge to economics; there is no proof of this. The fact that Quesnay was also called " Confucius of Europe" speaks in favor of the thesis that Chinese role models inspired him.

A major advance in Quesnay's economic model was the recognition that spending was not simply used up, but appeared elsewhere as income, which now made spending possible again, and so on. No longer individual phenomena of economic life were examined, but a scheme emerged that made it possible to see how production, distribution and consumption were connected and conditioned on one another. The resulting cycle would, so to speak, regulate itself according to natural law, the state should intervene as little as possible: “Laissez faire et laisser passer” became the motto of the Physiocrats. Quesnay named three “classes” (groups or sectors) as the bearers of all economic activities: Agriculture ( class productive ) generates the economic surplus. The landowners ( classe des propriétaires or classe distributive ), mostly aristocrats, operate the land distribution through leasing and ensure its amelioration ; they use up the entire surplus. The traders and traders ( classe stérile ) do not generate any economically relevant surplus with their activities, hence their classification as sterile .

The physiocratic school of thought had numerous followers among French intellectuals. Since 1765 there have been inserts with their writings in specialist journals. Quesnay himself published articles such as "Observations sur le droit naturel" and "Mémoire sur les avantages de l'industrie et du commerce" under the pseudonyms H., N., Isle or Nisaque . In Paris, meetings were held twice a week in the Palais des Count Mirabeau for ten years , social events with discussions that also served to prepare new publications on the physiocratic economy. During his long stay in France since 1764, the British moral philosopher and later famous economist Adam Smith also took part in the events. Quesnay also occasionally came to these meetings in Paris at the age of seventy. On December 16, 1774, at the then unusually old age of 80, he died in his apartment in Versailles. A few months earlier, a supporter of his theory, the statesman and economist Turgot , finance minister of Louis XVI. become.

Quesnay's view of the economy as a cycle marked a scientific breakthrough and paved the way for the development of classical economics . His characterization of the various “classes”, however, soon aroused contradictions, especially the assessment of the emerging manufacturers as unproductive and “sterile”. Adam Smith then corrected the thesis of the primacy of agriculture as a source of national wealth in his major economic work The Prosperity of Nations . He did not attribute productive power to any particular sector of the economy, but to labor in general , which underlies all forms of production. It is crucial that sufficient capital is made available in order to be able to use productive work.

An alternative and historical view

The usual presentation of Quesnay's economic theory follows the texts, which are then understood from the perspective of today's economic theory, the neoclassical. When read in a historical context and from the point of view of classical economic theory, these texts have different contents.

Quesnay's thinking shaped the bloodstream . He knew him well, as he earned his studies by drawing anatomical copperplate engravings. In his day, medical professionals believed that to relieve inflammation by veining, lower blood pressure at a point away from the wound. Using a model of pipes, Quesnay demonstrated that it doesn't matter where the bloodletting takes place, because the pressure drops no matter where the system is opened. That this evidence was provided by a surgeon, someone socially under a medic, made it angry for the medic; It made the country doctor Quesnay famous and in 1749 the personal doctor of the Pompadour .

This dispute was not a triviality, but a clash of theoretical structures: the medical view of Galen (AD 129-216), which was still dominant with regard to bloodletting , and whose texts only became known again with the Renaissance in Western Europe, and the new empirical view of the Blood circulation by Harvey (1578–1657), who was not convincing until Malpighi's discovery of the capillaries in 1661. Since according to Galen the blood produced is consumed by the organs, while according to Harvey it is recirculated, Galen's medical view has a structural similarity to the economic neoclassical, according to which goods are consumed to increase well-being, while according to the economic classic, productive work is an input of the next economic cycle.

It was only because of his position at court that Quesnay began to deal with economic policy issues from 1750 onwards, as France was threatened with national bankruptcy. He saw a kind of blood circulation in the economic cycle of goods, although he did not go into the pulmonary cycle, since the function of the lungs was still unknown. Lavoisier's experiments on the function of oxygen took place a little later. Just as the heart is for the organism, agriculture was particularly important for the economic cycle.

Initially, the kings of France were very weak towards their princes and they tried to reduce their independence. So Versailles was created to force the nobles to hold court there, to neglect and impoverish their possessions. Half a percent of the population - the aristocracy, who claimed to be descended from the Germanic conquerors, and the aristocratic church - received almost the entire net income of the country. Therefore, almost the entire demand for craft and industrial services was the demand of the nobility and the church. Since the nobility and the church make no contribution to the economic cycle - they do not provide any output that will become the input for the next period - the artisans working for them were also irrelevant to the productive economic cycle. The work involved in these needs was therefore unproductive, a central analytical element that classical economic theory adopted from Quesnay from Adam Smith to John St. Mill. In the Tableau économique , an input-output scheme, Quesnay shows that landowners (aristocracy and church) receive services from the craftsmen and agriculture, but do nothing apart from letting the land go to the farmers, so that the craftsmen pay as much as they pay from agriculture and other craftsmen and that the farmers supply the nobility and crafts, but their own consumption of manual and agricultural services is low. Agriculture alone delivers more than it receives.

Quesnay cannot openly say that the landowners and everyone who works for them are parasites. This would be a criticism of the social system that he is trying to save. But he sees a difference between the work of the artisans, who work primarily for the nobility and the church, and that of the farmers. The price of handicraft products corresponds - as in the entire economic classic - to the costs of reproduction: the costs of the processed materials plus the subsistence wages of the craftsmen. The competition brings temporarily higher prices back to this level. In contrast, according to Quesnay, the prices of agricultural products are higher than the cost of reproduction, so that only agriculture creates wealth, while other areas only reproduce. Increased agricultural production also reduces prices less because the demand is almost unlimited.

«Il faut distinguer […] une augmentation par réunion des matières premières et de dépense en consommation de choses qui existaient avant cette sorte d'augmentation, d'avec une génération , ou création de richesse, qui forment un renouvellement et un accroissement réel de richesses renaissantes. »

Quesnay's distinction between agriculture and handicrafts (industry) is explained by the British classics: For these, with increased agricultural production, the unit costs and prices of agricultural products rise because poorer soils are taken under the plow ( Ricardo ). If, on the other hand, industrial products are manufactured in higher quantities, the unit costs and prices decrease due to the deeper division of labor ( Adam Smith ). Quesnay sees it the other way round, but historically completely correct:

  • Adam Smith's famous thesis of falling costs due to a deeper division of labor induced by growing markets only applies to industrial mass production. France's artisans carried out individual production for the nobility; falling costs cannot occur with luxury products. Therefore, Adam Smith, who was taught to think in terms of economic cycles by the Physiocrats in Paris, ultimately could not understand them because his thinking was based on the background information of his country.
  • Before its industrial revolution, England revolutionized its agriculture by adopting - not openly known - Chinese models. Examples of this successful capitalist agriculture existed in the north of France. The adoption of the English model for the whole of France promised a boost in development which, as in England, could be the basis for industrial development. Quesnay's statement that France's future lies in the development of agriculture and not in trade is an analytical masterpiece that no economist since him has ever achieved.
  • The demand of this future capitalist agriculture for industrial goods creates a new market for French trade. However, to the extent that the craft manufactures for this market, its products are input for the next economic cycle and are therefore “productive”; this production would also be associated with falling unit costs. Quesnay's designation of craft and industry as “classe stérile” is therefore generally wrong and historically correct.

The interlinking of food for thought from the bloodstream with the historical development potential of France to a theory that is “politically correct” through the choice of words and which was supposed to save a corrupt social system through reforms is probably unique of its kind. Since the distribution of income and thus production and markets were different in England, Adam Smith had difficulties understanding these French statements. Smith's cycle theory followed the Physiocrats and he would have dedicated his "Wealth of Nations" to Quesnay had he not died beforehand. In addition to the difficulties encountered by the British economic classics in understanding the physiocrats, the later neoclassics also saw the differences that separate the economic classics from the diametrically different neoclassics. Statements by most of the following economists about the physiocrats only show that the theoretical elements of their own theory do not allow one to understand the meaning of the physiocracy.

In 1774 Turgot became contrôleur général des finances and began the first steps to implement the Physiocrats' program. Since corruption benefits everyone, his reforms meet resistance. When he abolished the grain tariffs within France, noble tax collectors lost their income (they paid the king a fixed amount and raised three times the tax). When grain prices rose due to a bad harvest in 1774, the rumor, promoted by the tax collectors, gained credibility that speculators, including the king, would now earn money from the grain price through free trade; the people went to the gates of Versailles. When Turgot proposed in January 1776 to abolish the peasant labor and dissolve the craft guilds, as a first step to remove all privileges, the king had to give in to his opponents and demand his resignation. The physiocratic ideas lose their meaning politically and in the Parisian salons. With Jacques Necker , Turgot's opponent comes to power in 1776, who promotes France's comparative industrial advantage, the production of luxury goods, and the French Revolution through further national debt.

Portrait of François Quesnay in a drawing by Jean-Charles François after a painting by Jean-Martial Frédou

Memberships

In 1751 he became a member of the Académie royale des sciences .

Works (selection)

Tableau economique , 1965
  • Observations on the effets de la saignée (1730)
  • Essai phisique sur l'œconomie animale (1736)
  • L'art de guérir par la saignée (1736)
  • Histoire de l'origine et des progresses de la chirurgie en France. Paris 1749
  • Traité de la suppuration (1749)
  • Traité de la gangrène (1749)
  • Traité des fièvres continues (1753)
  • Auguste Oncken (ed.): Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques . Frankfurt / M .: Joseph Baer; Paris: Jules Peelman, 1888
  • Marguerite Kuczynski (ed.): Economic writings . Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1971/76. 1 .: Writings from the years 1756–1759 . 1971 (2 vols.). 2 .: Writings from the years 1763–1767 . 1976 (2 vols.)

literature

Web links

Commons : François Quesnay  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: François Quesnay  - Sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Quesnay, François. 2005, p. 1209.
  2. ↑ Frank Arthur Kafker: Notices sur les auteurs of 17 volumes de "discours" de l'Encyclopédie Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie. Année (1990) Volume 8 Numéro 8, p. 112
  3. ^ François Quesnay. Observations sur les effets de la saignée, tant dans les maladies du ressort de la médecine que de la chirurgie, fondées sur les lois de l'hydrostatique: avec des remarques critiques, sur le traité de l'usage des différentes sortes de saignées, de Monsieur Silva. Osmont, Paris 1730 (digitized version )
  4. ↑ Uwe Schultz: Madame de Pompadour or love in power. CH Beck, Munich (2004) ISBN 3-406-52194-0 pp. 79-82
  5. ↑ z. B. Wolfgang Eßbach : Elements of ideological set theory: race, class, mass. in: Justin Stagl , Wolfgang Reinhard (Hrsg.): Limits of being human. Volume 8 of publications of the "Institute for Historical Anthropology eV", Verlag Böhlau, Vienna 2005, p. 738
  6. ↑ Traité de la suppuration, (1764)
  7. ↑ Jorge Schvarzer, El modelo Japonés, Buenos Aires: Ciencia Nueva, page 7
  8. ^ "Sur les travaux des Artisans - Second Dialogue", pp. 526–554 in: "Œuvres Économiques et Philosophiques de F. Quesnay" Ed. A. Oncken, Francfort / Paris 1888, page 531
  9. ^ John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization , Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 201-6.
  10. ↑ Dugald Stewart, foreword to: Essays on Philosophical Subjects by The late Adam Smith, LL. D., Fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, Basil, Printed for the Editor of the Collection of English Classics, Sold by James Decker, 1799.
  11. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter Q. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 7, 2020 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Quesnay, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French doctor and economist
DATE OF BIRTH June 4, 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH Méré at Versailles
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1774
Place of death Versailles