14.11 Notes

1. About's Handbook went into many editions. See the English translation, Handbook of Social Economy, or the Worker's ABC (London: Strahan &Co., 1872).

2. A century later, Bastiat's broken window fallacy served as the inspiration and centrepiece of Henry Hazlitt's excellent and best-selling economic primer, Economics in One Lesson (New York: Harper & Bros, 1946).

3. Dean Russell, Frédéric Bastiat: Ideas and Influence (Irvington-on-Hudson: Foundation for Economic Education, 1965), p. 20.

4. See Joseph T. Salemo, ‘The Neglect of the French Liberal School in Anglo-American Economics: A Critique of Received Explanations’, The Review of Austrian Economics, 2 (1988), p. 127.

5. See the sensitive appreciation of this aspect of Bastiat's contribution in Israel M. Kirzner, The Economic Point of View (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1960), pp. 82–4.

6. On the trials and tribulations which the laissez-faire liberals had with the Revolution of 1848, which generally had an unfavourable effect on the laissez-faire movement, see David M. Hart, ‘Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-Statist Liberal Tradition, Part I’, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, V (Summer 1981), pp. 273–6.

7. For Cobden's encomiums to Bastiat, see Russell, op. cit., note 3, pp. 73–4,

8. Ibid., p. 90.

9. Thus Piero Barucci writes that Ferrara's value theory ‘was meant to be a critical reply to Ricardo's labor theory of value, in which Ferrara did not see any element of subjectiveness. With his reproduction cost he intended to work out a theory of value which took into account both the element of cost and that of utility of goods. The value of a good would be, in this way, the comparison between the utility attributed by a subject to the good itself and the cost he thinks he would have to incur to reproduce the good. Indeed, this theory emphasized the fact of the utility of goods’. Piero Barucci, ‘The Spread of Marginalism in Italy, 1871–1890’, in R.D.C. Black, A.W. Coats, and C.D.W. Goodwin (eds), The Marginal Revolution in Economics: Interpretation and Evaluation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1973), p. 260. Also see the important article by Salerno, op. cit., note 4, p. 121. And see ibid, p. 144n. 10, and F. Caffè, ‘Ferrara, Francesco’, The New Palgrave: Dictionary of Economics (London: Macmillan, 1987), II p. 302.

10. J.A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 1081.

11. See Barucci, op. cit., note 9, p. 264. Achille Loria, the leading Italian socialist and historicist of this period, noted that Ferrara and his school lauded Bastiat, considered Ricardo and Stuart Mill as dangerous and sophistical theorists and abhorred the German economists as ‘advocates of interventionism and socialism’. Although a fervent opponent of everything Ferrara stood for, Loria was perceptive – and gracious – enough to refer to Ferrara as ‘the greatest Italian economist of the nineteenth century’ and ‘without doubt the greatest genius of which the economic science of our country boasts’. Salerno, op. cit., note 4, p. 144n8. Also see ibid., pp. 121–2.

12. In Norway, we know that a popular treatise on economics was inspired by Bastiat. (H. Lehmann, Velstandslaere, 1874.) On the Swedish Economic Society, see Eli F. Heckscher, ‘A Summary of Economic Thought in Sweden, 1875–1950’, The Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1 (1953), pp. 105–25.

13. Russell, op. cit., note 3, p. 91.

14. It is perhaps significant that Prince Smith's father, John Prince Smith, Senior, wrote tracts in favour of natural law and free trade, for example, Elements of the Science of Money (1813). See Donald G. Rohr, The Origins of Social Liberalism in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 85ff.

15. ‘Prince Smith used the term “free trade” in a wide sense, as in his assertion... that “to the state free trade assigns no other task than just this: the production of security”.’ Ralph Raico, ‘John Prince Smith and the German Free Trade Movement’, in W. Block and L. Rockwell (eds.), Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988), p. 349n.8.

16. See W.O. Henderson, ‘Prince Smith and Free Trade in Germany’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 2 (1950), p. 297, rprt. in W.O. Henderson, Britain and Industrial Europe, 1750–1870 (Liverpool, 1954).

17. Raico, op. cit., note 15, p. 346. On the near-individualist anarchism of Julius Faucher, see Andrew R. Carlson, Anarchism in Germany, Vol. I: The Early Movement (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1972), pp. 65–6.

18. Gustave de Molinari, ‘De la production de la securité’, Journal des Économistes, XXV (Feb. 1849), pp. 277–90. Translated as Gustave de Molinari, The Production of Security (trans. J. McCulloch, New York: Center for Libertarian Studies, May 1977).

19. See the complete translation of the eleventh soire'e in ‘Appendix’, David M. Hart, ‘Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition, Part 111’, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, VI (Winter 1982), pp. 88–102.

20. See Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty: the Libertarian Manifesto (1973, rev. ed., New York: Libertarian Review Foundation, 1985). For an appreciative discussion of Molinari and of the concept of total privatization of protection from crime, see Bruce L. Benson, ‘Guns for Protection and Other Private Sector Responses to the Fear of Rising Crime’, in D. Kates (ed.), Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy (San Francisco: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984), pp. 346–56. Also see Benson, The Enterprise of Law (San Francisco: Pacific Institute, 1990).

21. For the discussion around Molinari's thesis, see the Journal des Économistes, XXIV (15 October 1849), pp. 315–6. For more on a summary of the discussion, see Murray N. Rothbard, ‘Preface’, Molinari, op. cit., note 18, pp. i-iii.

22. Molinari lived in Belgium during the decade of the 1850s. He returned to Belgium upon the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon in December 1851, which precipitated Bonaparte's despotism in France. With the aid of his friend Charles de Brouckére, Molinari was appointed professor of political economy at the Belgian Royal Museum of Industry in Brussels, and at the Higher Institute of Commerce in Antwerp. His lectures at the museum formed the basis of Molinari's major theoretical work, his Cours d'Économie Politique (2 vols, Paris, 1863). Molinari continued to write articles and reviews for the Journal des Économistes during his Belgian years, also founding the Économiste belge in 1855, an even more frankly radical journal which he continued to edit for another 13 years. Molinari returned to Paris in 1860, becoming editor-in-chief of the laissez-faire journal, the Journal des Débats, from 1871 to 1876.

23. This book was unfortunately the only one of Molinari's works to be translated into English, as The Society of Tomorrow (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1904). On Molinari's retreat in his later years, and for an elaboration of his views in general, see David M. Hart, ‘Gustave de Molinari and the Antistatist Liberal Tradition, Part II’, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, V (Autumn 1981), pp. 399–5434.

24. Molinari, op. cit., note 18, pp. 1–2.

25. Frédéric Passy, ‘Prefatory Letter’, in Molinari, op. cit., note 23, pp. xxviii-xxix. A prolific author on economics himself, Passy was at one point president of the Société d'Économie Politique, as well as a member of the French Chamber of Deputies, 1881–88. Passy was a co-founder of the International Peace League in 1867, and, for his work on behalf of peace and international arbitration, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

26. Pareto's role in the development of mathematical neoclassical general equilibrium theory will be treated in a later volume; the present section deals with his political economy. See however, on the Pareto-Croce debate on positivism vs praxeology as the proper economic method, Murray N. Rothbard, Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1979), pp. 54–6.

27. In P. Bucolo (ed), The Other Pareto (London: Scolar Press, 1980), p. 44.

28. From Molinari's Précis d'économie politique et de la moral (1893), in Bucolo, op. cit., note 27, p. 68.

29. Quoted in ibid., p. 144.

30. Ibid., p. 141.

31. See the illuminating article by S.E. Finer, ‘Pareto and Pluto-Democracy: the Retreat to Galapogos’, American Political Science Review, 62 (1968), pp. 440–50. Even more important is Finer's introduction to Vilfredo Pareto, Sociological Writings (ed. S.E. Finer, London: Pall Mall Press, 1966).

32. See Bucolo, op. cit., note 27, p. 166.

33. Finer, in Pareto, op. cit., note 31, p. 18.

34. Bucolo, op. cit., note 27, pp. 149–50.

35. Theo Suranyi-Unger, Economics in the Twentieth Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 1931), p. 128. My own translation from Pareto's quoted sentence.

36. More specifically, eight editions appeared of Volume I, on theory, in Rau's lifetime, as well as five editions of Volume II, on economic policy, and five editions of Volume III, on public finance, beginning in 1832. A sixth posthumous edition of Volume III was revised by Rau's ex-student, also from Erlangen, Professor Adolph Wagner. Wagner also rewrote and published the ninth edition of Volume I in 1876. See Keith Tribe, Governing Economy: The Reformation of German Economic Discourse 1750–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 183 and 183n.

37. See Donald G. Rohr, The Origins of Social Liberalism in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 78–84. Also see H.C. Recktenwald, ‘Rau, Karl Heinrich’, The New Palgrave, op. cit., note 9, IV, p. 96.

38. This is true of his current treatment by British academics as well, as witness the sustained sneer that permeates the article by Murray Milgate and Alastair Levy, “Henry Dunning Macleod,” The New Palgrave, op. cit., note 9, III, pp. 268–9.

39. For an appreciative discussion of Macleod by a modern pro-gold standard, banking school French theorist, see Charles Rist, History of Monetary and Credit Theory (1940, New York; A.M. Kelley, 1966), pp. 73, 102, 203, 205, 261.

40. Salerno, op. cit., note 9, pp. 130–1. Also see, Murray N. Rothbard, ‘Catallactics’, New Palgrave, op. cit., note 9, II, p. 377.

41. Salerno, op. cit., note 9, p. 131. See Henry Dunning Macleod, The Elements of Political Economy (London: Longman, Brown, 1857), pp. 98–100, 111, 127. Also see Macleod, The History of Economics (New York: G.P. Putnam's, 1896); and idem., A Dictionary of Political Economy, Vol. I (London, 1863).

42. Salerno, op. cit., note 9, p. 132.

43. W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 57, 261. Also see Israel M. Kirzner, The Economic Point of View (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1960), pp. 73, 202–3.

44. J.A. LaNauze writes of the Hearn work that ‘It was an innovation in English political economy to begin a treatise with a chapter on human wants, and to make the satisfaction of wants a central theme... But his is an innovation only in English writing. The prominence which Hearn gives to wants is simply a reflection of his reading from French literature. His chapter is in places almost a transcription from Bastiat's Harmonies, and his sub-title echoes Bastiat's frequently repeated phrase, “Wants, Efforts, Satisfactions!’” J.A. LaNauze, Political Economy in Australia (Carlton, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1949), pp. 56–8. See also the discussion of Hearn in Salerno, op. cit., note 9, pp. 125–9.

45. Kirzner, op. cit., note 43, pp. 202n7, 212n2.

46. Williams & Norgate was an important publisher of the day, the publisher of Herbert Spencer's works and of the philosophic journal Mind. This is not surprising in view of the libertarian individualist philosophy common to both Donisthorpe and Spencer.

47. Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Principles of Plutology (London: Williams & Norgate, 1876), p. 132. Also see Peter Newman, ‘Donisthorpe, Wordsworth’, New Palgrave, op. cit., note 9,1, pp. 916–7.

48. On Donisthorpe as libertarian, see W.H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition, Vol. II, The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), pp. 277–80.

49. Not to be confused with his son and namesake, a moderate statist who was to become first president of the American Economic Association. (Francis Amasa Walker, 1840^97.)

50. Walker, squarely in the American tradition, insisted, as against the British currency school, that bank deposits were fully as much part of the money supply as bank notes. And yet, oddly and inconsistently, he failed to include deposits in his 100 per cent reform proposal, asserting unconvincingly that restriction of notes to their equivalent in specie would exert a sufficient check on the creation of deposits.

51. Amasa Walker, The Science of Wealth (3rd ed., Boston: Little, Brown, 1867), p. 230–31.

52. Ibid., pp. 9–13; also see Salerno, op. cit., note 9, pp. 133–5.

53. Arthur Latham Perry, Political Economy (1883, 21st ed„ New York: Scribner, 1892), p. ix.

54. Despite his devotion to Walker for leading him to Bastiat, and despite his being one of those laissez-faire economists to whom Perry dedicated his book, Perry privately reproved Walker for ‘being too much in bondage to Adam Smith’. See Sidney Fine, Laissez-faire and the General-Welfare State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), p. 52nl6.

55. For an appreciation of Perry's contribution, see Kirzner, op. cit., note 43, pp. 75–7.

56. Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York: Viking Press, 1949), III, p. 57.

57. Perry, op. cit., note 53, pp. 102–3.

58. Dorfman, op. cit., note 56, III, pp. 178–9.

59. For the collected writings of Charles H. Carroll, see Charles Holt Carroll, Organization of Debt into Currency (E. Simmons, ed., Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1964).

60. William Jaffé, ‘Menger, Jevons and Walras De-Homogenized', Economic Inquiry, 14 (Dec. 1976), pp. 511–24.