histofthought1

The brilliance ofTurgot 4137. Turgot's paper was applauded in Bentham's notable Defence (~f Usury, and was reprintedalong with Bentham's essay in its French and Spanish translations in the late 1820s.8. As Turgot puts it: 'a capital is the equivalent of a rent equal to a fixed portion of thatcapital and conversely, an annual rent represents a capital equal to the amount of that rentrepeated a certain number of times, according as the interest is at a higher or lower rate'.9. While the Hume-Turgot model is highly useful in isolating and clarifying distinctionsbetween the price level and interest, and in highlighting the impact of a change in thequantity of money, it is still a retrogression from the sophisticated process analysis ofCantillon.10. The paper, written for the seminar of Karl Knies in Heidelberg, was presented.to theAustrian EA. von Hayek by Bohm-Bawerk's widow in 1922-23. See P.D. Groenewegen(ed.) The Economics (dA.R.i. Turgot (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), pp. xxix-xxx.For Bohm's dismissal of Turgot, see Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest(South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1959), I, pp. 39-45. For the American AustrianFrank Fetter's defence of Turgot as against Bohm, see Frank A. Fetter, Capital, Interest,and Rent: Essays in the Theory (~l Distribution, ed. by M. Rothbard (Kansas City: SheedAndrews and McMeel, 1977), pp. 24-6. For more on the treatment of Turgot's theory ofinterest by economists, see Groenewegen 'A Reinterpretation of Turgot's Theory of Capitaland Interest', Economic Journal, 81 (June 1971), pp. 327-8, 333, 339-40. ForSchumpeter on Bohm's mistreatment of Turgot, see lA. Schumpeter, History of EconomicAnalysis (New York, Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 332n. On the Marshall­Wicksell-Cassel controversy over Bohm-Bawerk's treatment of Turgot's theory of interest,see Peter D. Groenewegen, 'Turgot's Place in the History of Economic Thought: ABicentenary Estimate', History (~lPolitical Economy, 15 (Winter 1983), pp. 611-15.II. Schumpeter, op. cit., note 10, pp. 249, 325.12. 'Einaudi on Galiani', in H.W. Spiegel (ed.), The Development ofEconomic Thought (NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1952), pp. 77-8.13. Indeed publicly self-professed Machiavellianism or amoralism is almost always selfcontradictory,since it will hardly serve Machiavellian ends.14. See Joseph Rossi, The Abbe Galiani in France (New York: Publications ofthe Institute ofFrench Studies, 1930), pp. 47-8.15. Oswald St Clair, A Key to Ricardo (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1965), p. 293.16. My translation. See Emil Kauder, 'Genesis of the Marginal Utility theory', EconomicJournal (Sept. 1953), p. 647.J7. T. Hutchison, Before Adam Smith: The Emergence of Political Economy, 1662-1776(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 326.18. Hutchison, op. cit., note Jl7, p. 327.19. Henry Dunning Macleod" A Dictionary o.lPolitical Economy (London, 1863), I, pp. 534­5.