Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi

Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (born May 9, 1773 in Geneva , † June 25, 1842 in Chêne-Bougeries ) was a Swiss economist and historian . He is considered one of the first important critics of classical English economics.

Life

Sismondi came from a Dauphiné family . After the revocation of the Edict of Tolerance of Nantes in 1685 , the Huguenot family Symond immigrated to Geneva , where they later changed the spelling to Simonde. Sismondi himself added the predicate name (de) Sismondi to the family name around 1796/97, during his exile in Tuscany , as he was convinced that his family originally descended from the very old Pisan patrician family Sismondi.

Simonde de Sismondi coat of arms

Correspondingly, this reflected the family coat of arms that the French Simond de Moydier also carried: in front the family coat of arms of those Sismondi, from which, according to one theory, the Neapolitan noble house Caraffa should also be derived: three silver bars ; behind six silver olives ; everything on a red background.

His father Gédéon-François Simonde († 1810) was a pastor and member of the Geneva Council of Two Hundred . Both of Sismondi's parents belonged to upper - class families in Geneva . Successful trading ventures made them very wealthy. Sismondi's mother Henriette-Gabrielle-Esther (1748–1821) was the daughter of Pierre Girodz (1715–1792), who provided her with a substantial dowry , mostly in real estate. Through her, Sismondi was also a grand cousin of Colonel Alphonse Girodz de Gaudy (1770–1839), who came from Geneva and was awarded the Prussian nobility in 1827 and who was the father of Lieutenant General Alfons Girodz von Gaudi (1818–1888).

Sismondi spent his childhood on the family estate in nearby Châtelaine . He attended schools in Geneva and completed a commercial apprenticeship in Lyon in 1792 . Otherwise he was self-taught . In 1792 he began studying law at the Geneva Academy , but broke it off in 1793 because he and his family had to flee to England with his family until 1794 before the Geneva Revolution. → History of the Canton of Geneva . After returning to Geneva, father and son were arrested and almost all of their property was confiscated. So the family bought the estate Il podere di Valchiusa near Pescia in Tuscany . In the autumn of 1800 Sismondi returned to Geneva, where he eventually became more active in literature. He took part in a discussion group of writers and scholars that gathered around Madame de Staël in Castle Coppet and later became known as the " Coppet Group " ( Groupe de Coppet ).

In 1819 he married the Englishwoman Jessie Allen (1777-1853), who was an aunt of Charles Darwin or of his wife Emma Darwin nee. Wegwood, who was also his cousin.

The economist

Nouveaux principes d'économie politique , 1819

Sismondi established his reputation as an economist with his work Nouveaux Principes… , which appeared in 1819, two years after the main work by David Ricardo . The most essential thoughts of the same were written down as early as 1815 for an article in Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia , which, however, was only published afterwards. In the Études sur l'économie politique , Sismondi further developed his main theses.

The historical trigger for Sismondi's critical turn against the central doctrines of classical economics was the experience of the sales crises in 1815 and 1818/19, which can be seen in connection with the beginning and the end of the continental blockade.

Sismondi's attack on the free traders and the Ricardians was advocated by many for political or ethical reasons because he did not focus on prosperity like Adam Smith or David Ricardo on the development of the productive forces, but on people. Sismondi, on the other hand, said that not only his enemies but also his friends made him blush; By no means did he want to oppose technical progress with his criticism of the obvious contradictions in the relations of production and distribution. Karl Marx takes Ricardo's side here, because production for the sake of production means nothing else here than the development of human productive forces, that is, “development of the wealth of human nature as an end in itself”. According to Marx, Sismondi was only right about those who wanted to cover up the contradiction between the development of the species and the development of the individual.

The controversy

In an article published anonymously in the Edinburgh Review , as was customary at the time , John Ramsay McCulloch took action against Robert Owen . Its reform plans would not address the real causes of the misery of the proletariat ; According to Ricardo's basic rent theory, these are the transition to the cultivation of barren land, the grain tariffs and the taxes that are too high for tenants and manufacturers. Because Owen had accepted an erroneous theory from Sismondi, according to which unregulated competition drives industry to produce more through the use of machines than there is demand for.

In 1820, Sismondi responded to this attack in Pellegrino Rossi's Annales de Jurisprudence with the following: "Investigating the question: Does society grow along with the ability to produce and the ability to consume?" Using the example of the Leipzig Book Fair, he points against McCulloch's thesis that The supply of one type of good determines the demand for another, that it is by no means the case that a book is exchanged for another book, but it could very well be the case that books remain unsold after the fair.

In essence, according to Rosa Luxemburg , the question was: “Where do you find buyers for the surplus of goods when a part of the surplus value, instead of being consumed privately by the capitalists, is capitalized, ie to expand production via the income of society is used? ”Sismondi has the right feeling for the problem, but cannot prevail with a stringent argument because, like his opponent and Adam Smith, he previously did not take into account the replacement of the worn out constant capital in“ simple reproduction ”.

In Book IV of his Nouveaux Principes , in Chapter VII: On the division of labor and by machines, and in Book VII, Chapter VII: Machines create a superfluous population , Sismondi attacked the Ricardian “compensation theory” head-on that machines always have at least as much employment managed when they replaced. In the third edition of his Principles , Ricardo added a new chapter in which he dropped the compensation theory. In the last year of his life, Ricardo met with Sismondi in Geneva to discuss this question, ignoring the possibility of foreign trade: Does production create a correspondingly high demand by itself, ie through its own increase? - In the following years Sismondi had a direct controversy with Jean-Baptiste Say about the same question .

Within Marxist economic theory , the controversy lengthened on the basis of the reproduction schemes of the second volume of Capital . When VI Lenin tried to prove against the arguments of the Narodniki that a development towards capitalism was economically viable in Russia , his polemic was directed against Sismondi's argumentation, which had highlighted the contradictions in capital accumulation. On the other hand, Marxists, who sought to demonstrate a universal tendency to collapse in capitalism, tried to reconcile Marx's reproduction schemes with economic contradictions and crisis tendencies (in the sense of Sismondi). Together with Robert Malthus , Sismondi is viewed critically as a classic proponent of the under-consumption theory .

Classification and assessment

In the history of economics, Sismondi, like the so-called Kathedersozialisten later, is considered to be a representative of interventionism and a more historically realistic approach that is critical of free trade. Because he sharply criticized the doctrine of laissez faire and instead advocated labor protection legislation and a leading role for the state in the economy.

Karl Marx , Theories of Added Value , 1956

Eugène Buret is named as a direct student . Antoine-Elisé Cherbuliez, who is referred to there as a "Sismondist", often appears in the floor plans . Marx hesitates to deal with Cherbuliez separately, since most of his book is "sismondic", or a "strange compound of Sismondic and Ricardo antagonisms".

Adolphe Jérôme Blanqui and Joseph Droz were influenced by contemporaries, and later in certain respects also Louis Blanc , Johann Karl Rodbertus or Karl Marx. Marx himself says of Sismondi that he is distinguished by the fact that he emphasizes the social form-determination of capital as the essential and sees in this the essential difference between the capitalist mode of production and others.

As far as theoretical knowledge is concerned, Sismondi's arguments against Say's law are particularly noteworthy, as is his "underconsumption theory" to explain economic crises . Joseph Schumpeter sees the most important achievement, however, in the fact that he explicitly formulated a dynamic model for analysis that works with a period scheme. Sismondi pointed out to the classical economists , who almost always proceeded from Say's law , to the possibility of a technologically induced unemployment, which is caused by the mechanization of the production processes.

The historian

Schumpeter calls Sismondi's greatest achievement his 16-volume history of the Italian republics of the Middle Ages. His story of the fall of the Roman Empire would also contain interesting sociological perspectives and analyzes.

With De la littérature du midi de l'Europe , Sismondi published the first literary history in 1813 that sought to depict the entirety of the Romance literatures (i.e. the Old French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. Following German romantics such as August Wilhelm Schlegel , he understood this as an expression of a peculiar Romanesque mentality and as a thoroughly romantic literature in which the medieval spiritual world of "love, chivalry and religion" continues to have an effect today. Only French literature broke with this tradition after the Middle Ages by turning to Greek and Roman models; it therefore remains “in terms of sensitivity, enthusiasm, warmth, depth and truth of feelings” far behind its Romance sister literature and is therefore excluded from his work. The four volumes of De la littérature du midi de l'Europe , together with the later works of Claude Fauriel, mark the turn of French literary historiography towards a romantic paradigm which, compared to the previously predominant classicist style ideal, the primordial nature of folk poetry and medieval literatures as immediate, characteristic expression of the respective “ folk spirit ”. Sismondi planned further volumes to present the Germanic and Slavic literatures, but gave up this project because of a lack of language skills.

Works (selection)

De la richesse commerciale , 1803
  • Tableau de l'agriculture toscane (1801)
  • De la richesse commerciale (1803)
  • Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge (1807-1818) online
    • German history of the Italian Free States in the Middle Ages. From the French. 16 vols. Zurich: Geßner 1807–1824
    • German history of the Italian Free States in the Middle Ages (translated from French by Friedrich Wilhelm Bruckbräu ), Part 1, Augsburg 1836, online .
  • De la litterature du midi de l'Europe (1813)
  • De l'intérêt de la France à l'égard de la traite des nègres (1814)
  • Examen de la Constitution française (1815)
  • Economie politique (1815)
  • Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819)
  • Histoire des Français (1821–1844)
  • Les colonies des anciens comparées à celles des modern (1837)
  • Études de sciences sociales (1837)
  • Études sur l'économie politique (1837)
  • Précis de l'histoire des Français (1839)
  • Fragments de son journal et correspondance (1857)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Emil Spiess : Illustrated History of Switzerland , Vol. 3. Zurich 1961, p. 87.
  2. ↑ JCL Simonde v. Sismondi: History of the Italian Free States: Their Origin, Progress and Fall , Augsburg 1840, p. 222.
  3. ↑ JCL Simonde Sismondi: History of the Italian Free States in the Middle Ages , Volume 5, Zurich 1810, p. 235.
  4. ↑ August Oldekop : St. Petersburgische Zeitschrift , Volume 2, 1822, p. 49 ; Helmut O. Pappe : Biography of Sismondi [Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi], University of Sussex, Intellectual history Archive, Institute of intellectual history , p. 1.
  5. ↑ The representative of a branch of from Touraine derived upper-class family Bretonneau (de la Bissonaye), Gabriel-Charles Bretonneau, born in 1827 in Digne , married in 1851 with Marie-Louise Simond de Moydier that in 1889 Paris died, asked in 1868 for permission add to his name the predicate name de Moydier , by whom he was known and who belonged to his wife's family: Dictionnaire des familles françaises anciennes ou notables , volume 7, Évreux 1908, p. 42 f. See the coat of arms of the Bretonneau de Moydier , who have the coat of arms Simond de Moydier (or Simonde de Sismondi) in the square shield in the 2nd and 3rd field : [[Johannes Baptista Rietstap]]: Armorial général , Volume 1, 1884, P. 297 ; M. Bacheline-Deflorenne: État présent de la noblesse française contenant , Paris 1886, p. 472.
  6. ↑ Biographie universelle , Volume 7, Paris 1813, p. 105 ; Johann Samuel Publication : Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste , Volume 15, Leipzig 1826, S. 162.
  7. ^ Johannes Baptista Rietstap: Armorial général , Volume 2, 1887, p. 780.
  8. ↑ Bonstettiana , Göttingen 2003, p. 880.
  9. ↑ a b Notices généalogiques sur les familles genevoises , Geneva 1829, pp. 218–220.
  10. ↑ Helmut O. Pappe: Biography of Sismondi [Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi], University of Sussex, Intellectual history Archive, Institute of intellectual history , p. 1, Helmut O. Pappe (ed.): Statistique du Département du Léman , Geneva 1971, p. 15. , Benjamin Constant , Geneva 1980, p. 94.
  11. ^ Historical Lexicon of Switzerland , Sismondi, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de
  12. ^ Françoise Tilkin and others: Le Groupe de Coppet et le monde moderne. Dros, Genève 1998.
  13. ↑ Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz , Sismondi, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de ; A Calendar of the Correspondance of Charles Darwin , 1821-1882, p. 636.
  14. ↑ a b Joseph A. Schumpeter, (Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, ed.): History of economic analysis. First part of the volume. Vandenhoeck Ruprecht Göttingen 1965. p. 607.
  15. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value . Vol. 26, Part Two (MEW 26.2), p. 111.
  16. ^ Rosa Luxemburg: The accumulation of capital. In: Freedom is always only the freedom of those who think differently. Voltmedia, Paderborn, ISBN 3-938478-73-X , pp. 262f., Note *
  17. ↑ The essay Examen de cette question: Le pouvoir de consommer s'accroît-il toujours dans la société avec le pouvoir de produire? is printed in full in the 2nd edition of the Nouveaux principes .
  18. ^ Rosa Luxemburg: The accumulation of capital. In: Freedom is always only the freedom of those who think differently. Voltmedia, Paderborn, ISBN 3-938478-73-X , p. 267.
  19. ↑ see also: Georges Sotiroff: Ricardo and Sismondi, a current discussion about post-war economy 120 years ago. Europa Verlag, 1945.
  20. ↑ VI Lenin: A characterization of economic romanticism. Sismondi and our native Sismondists. Foreign Languages ​​Pub. House, Moscow 1951. ( online )
  21. ↑ Lenin's theory of realization. In: Roman Rosdolsky: On the genesis of Marx's capital . Volume III, European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1968, p. 556 ff.
  22. ↑ Alfred Müller: Die Marxsche Konjunkturtheorie - An over-accumulation-theoretical interpretation. PapyRossa Cologne, 2009 (dissertation 1983) p. 9.
  23. ↑ Raymund de Waha: The national economy in France. Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart 1910, pp. 355f.
  24. ↑ Antoine-Elisé Cherbuliez (1797-1869): Richesse ou pauvreté. Exposition des causes et des effets de la distribution actuelle des richesses sociales. Paris 1841.
  25. ^ ' Marx-Engels-Werkausgabe (MEW) Vol. 42, Dietz, Berlin 1983. Name register, p. 1078.
  26. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value , Vol. 3. P. 373.
  27. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value , Vol. 3. P. 373.
  28. ^ Next to Richard Jones (1790–1855): Text-book of Lectures on the Political Economy of Nations , Hertford 1852.
  29. ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the added value , Vol. 3. P. 416.
  30. ↑ Joseph A. Schumpeter, (Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, ed.): History of economic analysis. First volume, Vandenhoeck Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965, p. 608.
  31. ^ René Wellek : History of literary criticism. Vol. 2, De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1977–1990. Pp. 3-5.
personal data
SURNAME Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sismondi, Charles de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss economist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1842
Place of death Chêne-Bougeries