William Petty

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Sir William Petty at the age of 63
Sir William Petty

Sir William Petty (* 27 May 1623 in Romsey in the county of Hampshire , † 16th December 1687 in London ) was an economist , scientist and philosopher. He is considered the father of English economics . William Petty is a founding member of the Royal Society .

Live and act

Hendrick Cornelisz Departure of the sailing ships of the East Indian Society , 1630–1640 Rijksmuseum ( Amsterdam )

William Petty was born into a modest family. He has been described as precocious and highly intelligent. At the age of twelve he was already a skilled blacksmith, watchmaker and carpenter. As a teenager he went to sea as a cabin boy. At the age of 14 he resumed his studies at the Jesuit College in Caen , Latin , ancient Greek and French as well as mathematics and astronomy . Then he returned to England. In 1643, during the English Civil War , he fled to Holland , where he studied anatomy . In Amsterdam he became Hobbes' personal secretary ; this is how he met René Descartes , Pierre Gassendi and Marin Mersenne .

After the end of the civil war in 1646 he went to Oxford to medicine to study. He joined the Philosophy Society of London. In 1651 he became professor of anatomy at Oxford and music in London. In 1652 he joined Oliver Cromwell's army in Ireland as a physician general. His opposition to conventional teaching and perhaps his acquaintance with Francis Bacon's new conception of science had driven him from Oxford. In 1654 he was given the task of registering all of Ireland in a cadastre: it was the Down Survey , which he completed in 1656. The importance of this task was that Cromwell settled his creditors with land ownership. William Petty was also rewarded with real estate; he received 30,000 acres in the south west of Ireland and 9,000 livres . The size of the amount aroused suspicion. Until his death, he was suspected of bribery and fraud, but no formal evidence was produced.

After his return to England as a supporter of Cromwell, his election to parliament failed in 1659. Despite his political beliefs, he was treated well during the Restoration , even though he lost part of his property. In 1662 he was invited again to the meetings of the Royal Society and wrote his first economic work, the treatise on taxation .

He tried without much success in naval architecture , was born on April 11, 1661 by King Charles II. To Knight Bachelor beaten ( "Sir") and went back to Ireland in 1666. The events that took him from Oxford to Ireland mark his evolution from medicine and the natural sciences to the social sciences. From then on he dedicated his life to them there. His main interest became the prosperity of Ireland, and he proposed numerous means of getting it out of its backwardness. He drew a contradicting balance sheet of his life. From humble origins, he had found his way into the intellectual elite, and at 35 he was a wealthy man. His contemporaries considered him a brilliant mind, decent and sane. Even so, he remained uncertain of the durability of his property and frustrated by his political failures. In 1685 he returned to London and died there two years later.

Fonts

Economic writings , 1899

Petty has shown the division of labor as a source of productivity using the example of a pocket watch and also shown the effects of the division of labor with regard to a city or the industry of an entire country.

With his Political Arithmetic , Petty had undertaken to found a new science that was to base its arguments only on naturally observable causes. His proposal to relocate all residents and chattels of Ireland and High Scotland to the rest of Great Britain in order to save time and thus increase productivity was called bold and ingenious.

In Petty's time, Holland was the economic policy model for English economists, just as England would later become the model for all the rest of the world. Petty therefore sought to prove that Holland's supremacy was not due to special intellectual gifts, but that England had the same option. Freedom of conscience is a prerequisite for trade, “because the poor are hardworking and regard work and industry as a duty to God, as long as they are allowed to think that those who have less wealth have more wit and understanding in divine things, which they do consider them special property of the poor ”. The trade is therefore "not fixated on any kind of religion, but rather always on the heterodox part of the whole". He advocates public taxes on rascals, because it is better to tax yourself for the rascals than to be taxed by them themselves. On the other hand, he is against taxes that transfer wealth to those who “do nothing but eat, drink, sing, play, dance and practice metaphysics”.

He also spoke out in favor of keeping wages to a minimum: “The law ... should allow the worker just what is still necessary for life; for if you give him twice as much, then he only works half as much as he could have done and would otherwise have done; that means a loss of the result of so much work for society. "

Karl Marx had classical political economy in England begin with Petty and in France with Boisguillebert , the English end with Ricardo and the French with Sismondi . But while Petty was "a frivolous, plunder-addicted and characterless adventurer", Boisguillebert, although Intendant Louis XIV, advocated the oppressed classes with as much spirit as daring.

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Franz Duncker, 1859; MEW Vol. 13, p. 38f. Note *.
  2. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 234
  3. ↑ An Essay concerning the multiplication of mankind etc. , 3rd ed. 1686, pp. 35f .; see. Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Franz Duncker, 1859; MEW Vol. 13, p. 38f. Note *. The Spectator of November 26, 1711 emphasized this, but John Ramsay McCulloch misplaced it.
  4. ↑ Political Arithmetic , Chapter 4, p. 225; see. Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Franz Duncker, 1859; MEW Vol. 13, p. 38f. Note *.
  5. ^ William Petty: A Treatise of Taxes, and Contributions. London 1667; quoted according to Karl Marx, MEW 26.1, p. 332.
  6. ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Franz Duncker, 1859; MEW Vol. 13, p. 40. Note ***.

Works

  • A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions (1662)
  • Political Arithmetic posthumously. (approx. 1676, pub. 1690)
  • Verbum Sapienti posthumously. (1664, pub. 1691)
  • Political Anatomy of Ireland posthumously. (1672, pub. 1691)
  • Quantulumcunque Concerning Money posthumously. (1682, pub. 1695)

literature

  • Heino Klingen: Political Economy of the Pre-Classical Period. The contributions of Pettys, Cantillons and Quesnays to the emergence of classical political economy . Metropolis Marburg 1992. ISBN 3-926570-59-8 . Pp. 23-66.

Web links

Commons : William Petty  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: William Petty, in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Petty, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British economist, scientist statistician and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1623
PLACE OF BIRTH Romsey , Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1687
Place of death London