Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi | |
---|---|
Swiss Confederation | |
Nationality | Genevan, and Swiss since 1815 |
Academic career | |
Field | Political economy |
School or tradition | Classical economics |
Influences |
|
Contributions | Theory of the business cycle |
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, also known as Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi, (French:
Early life
His paternal family seem to have borne the name Simonde, at least from the time when they migrated from Dauphiné to Geneva at the revocation of the edict of Nantes. It was not till after Sismondi had become an author that, observing the identity of his family arms with those of the once flourishing Pisan house of the Sismondi and finding that some members of that house had migrated to France, he assumed the connection without further proof and called himself Sismondi.[11]
The Simondes, however, were themselves citizens of Geneva of the upper class, and possessed both rank and property, though the father was also a village pastor.
The future historian was well educated, but his family wished him to devote himself to commerce rather than literature, and he became a banker's clerk in Lyon. Then the Revolution broke out, and as it affected Geneva, the Simonde family took refuge in England where they stayed for eighteen months (1793–1794). Disliking—it is said—the climate, they returned to Geneva, but found the state of affairs still unfavourable; there is even a legend that the head of the family was reduced to selling milk himself in the town. The greater part of the family property was sold, and with the proceeds they emigrated to Italy, bought a small farm in Pescia near Lucca and Pistoia, and set to work to cultivate it themselves.[11]
Sismondi worked hard there, with both his hands and mind, and his experiences gave him the material of his first book, Tableau de l'agriculture toscane, which, after returning to Geneva, he published there in 1801.[11] At a young age, Sismondi had read The Wealth of Nations and became strongly attached to Smith's theories. He apparently published his first work on the subject of political economy, De la richesse commerciale ou principes de l'economie politique appliqué à la legislation du commerce (1803) to explain and popularize Smith's doctrine, but following this Sismondi spent a considerable amount of time dedicated to historical research. He again turned his attention to political economy around 1818 when he was commissioned to write an entry on "Political Economy" for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. This was just following a serious economic downturn after the outbreak of the first major crisis in 1815.[13]
Criticism of economic orthodoxy
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As an economist, Sismondi represented a humanitarian protest against the dominant orthodoxy of his time. In his 1803 book, he followed
Focuses of his work are central to the idea of taking particular economic situations and analyzing them in the situational setting of history from which one is drawing data or insight.
Sismondi is known for the study of economic crises rooting from “the social ramifications of the economic system rather than on its structure.” His interpretations put him before Marx, in semi-defining the bourgeoisie and proletariat division in society. Key to his philosophy, Sismondi saw these class divisions to coincide with crises in the economy and didn't see extreme social reform as the answer, but rather moderate versions that allowed for technological advances to be slowed for the economy to catch up, via limiting production and the limitation of what he referred to as “the prevailing glorification of free competition”, all while, most importantly, allowing individuals to retain private property and any revenues generated from it.
His theory may more precisely be classed as one of periodic crises, rather than cycles per se. and as such is the earliest theorist of systemic crisis theory. His theory was adapted by Charles Dunoyer, who introduces the notion of cycling between two phases, thus giving a modern form of economic cycle.[17]
As important was his role as an economist; Sismondi was renowned as a historian. He commonly applied economic thought and historical settings to explain the irrationality of past economic events.[citation needed]
Sismondi also contributed a great deal to economics with his thoughts on aggregate demand. Observing the capitalist industrial system in England, Sismondi saw that unchecked competition both resulted in producers all increasing individual production (because of lack of knowledge of other producers' production) this was then seen as forcing employers to cut prices, which they did by sacrificing workers' wages. This yielded overproduction and underconsumption; with most of England's workforce suffering from depressed wages, workers were then unable to afford the goods they had produced, and underconsumption of goods then followed. Sismondi believed that by increasing the wages of laborers they would have more buying power, be able to buy the national output and thus increase demand.
In his book On Classical Economics, Thomas Sowell devotes a chapter to Sismondi, arguing that he was a neglected pioneer.[18]
Italian history
Meanwhile, he began to compile his great Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge, and was introduced to
In 1807 appeared the first volumes of the above-mentioned book about the Italian republics, which, though his essay in political economy had brought him some reputation and the offer of a Russian professorship, first made Sismondi a prominent man among European men of letters. The completion of this book, which extended to sixteen volumes, occupied him, though by no means entirely, for the next eleven years. He lived at first in Geneva where he delivered some interesting lectures about the literature of southern Europe, which were continued from time to time and finally published. He held an official position: secretary of the chamber of commerce for the then department of Leman.[11]
French history
Sismondi lived in Paris from 1813 until the Restoration, supporting
Later life
In April 1819 Sismondi married
In 1826 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.[citation needed]
After spending the last years of his life in Geneva preparing new editions of his writings, finishing his study of the French, and serving as a member of the Geneva Assembly, speaking for freedom with order, he died in 1842 of stomach cancer.[1]
Other works
Besides the works mentioned above Sismondi produced many others, never working less than eight hours a day for many years. The most important ones are: Littérature du midi de l'Europe [Literature of Southern Europe] (1813),[20] a historical novel entitled Julia Severa ou l'an 492 (1822), Histoire de la renaissance de la liberté en Italie (1832), Histoire de la chute de l'Empire romain (1835), Précis de l'histoire des Français, an abridgment of his own book (1839), and several others, mainly political pamphlets.[11]
Sismondi's journals and his correspondence with Channing, with the countess of Albany and with others have been published mainly by Mlle Mongolfier (Paris, 1843) and M. de Saint-René Taillandier (Paris, 1863). The latter work serves as the main text of two admirable Lundis of Sainte-Beuve (September 1863), republished in the Nouveaux Lundis, vol. VI.[11]
Historiographical position and political stance
He was a historian whose economic ideas passed through different phases. The acceptance of free trade principles in De la richesse commerciale was abandoned in favour of a critical posture towards
His critique was noticed by
Sismondi influenced many major socialist thinkers including Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Robert Owen. Marx thought Sismondi embodied the critique of the "bourgeois science of economics."[25] In his notes, Marx excerpted various aspects of his analysis. Marx was particularly fond of Sismondi's statement that "The Roman proletariat lived almost exclusively at the expense of society. One could almost say that modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat, from the share which it deducts from the reward of his labor."[25] Henryk Grossman argued that Sismondi was a significant methodological and theoretical predecessor of Marx, particularly by identifying the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value as fundamental to capitalism.[26] In 1897, Vladimir Lenin wrote an article refuting Sismondi's work. Lenin said,
The contributor to Russkoye Bogatstvo states at the very outset that no writer has been "so wrongly appraised" as Sismondi, who, he alleges, has been "unjustly" represented, now as a reactionary, then as a utopian. The very opposite is true. Precisely this appraisal of Sismondi is quite correct.[27]
In 1913, Rosa Luxemburg wrote a critique of Sismondi in The Accumulation of Capital.[28]
The historian Jerzy Jedlicki writes:
All sorts of labels were pinned on this humanist from Geneva who lived in the period of the beginnings of industrial capitalism: he was regarded as a reactionary and a radical, a petty-bourgeois socialist and a romanticist. But when we read his work a hundred and fifty years later, we discover in him a precursor of the democratized, corrective liberalism of the twentieth century and also, in spite of all the defects of his economic theory, a precursor of concepts for the development of overpopulated countries with a low national income. Sismondi’s thought, unfettered by doctrine, has stood the test of time, something which cannot be said of many of his contemporaries.[29]
Main publications
- Tableau de l'agriculture toscane (1801)
- De la richesse commerciale (1803)
- The History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages (Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge) (16 vols.) (1807–18). His most important historical work, on Italy's republican past, which became an inspiration to 19th-century Italian nationalists.
- De l'intérêt de la France à l'égard de la traite des nègres (1814)
- Nouvelles réflexions sur la traite des nègres (1814)
- Examen de la Constitution française (1815)
- Political Economy (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 modernes (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)
References
- ^ a b "Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi". Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
- S2CID 154967384.
- ^ Spiegel, Henry William (1991). The Growth of Economic Thought. Duke University Press. pp. 302–303.
- ^ a b c d Ekins, Paul; Max-Neef, Manfred (2006). Real Life Economics. Routledge. pp. 91–93.
- ^ a b c Murray, Christopher John (2004). Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850, Volume 2. Taylor & Francis. pp. 1054–1055.
- ^ Ekelund Jr, Robert B.; Hébert, Robert F. (2006). A History of Economic Theory and Method: Fifth Edition. Waveland Press. p. 226.
- ^ Lutz, Mark A. (2002). Economics for the Common Good: Two Centuries of Economic Thought in the Humanist Tradition. Routledge. pp. 55–57.
- ^ McCracken, Harlan Linneus (2001). Value Theory and Business Cycles. Minerva Group. p. 22.
- ^ a b Stedman Jones, Gareth (2006). "Saint-Simon and the Liberal origins of the Socialist critique of Political Economy". In Aprile, Sylvie; Bensimon, Fabrice (eds.). La France et l'Angleterre au XIXe siècle. Échanges, représentations, comparaisons. Créaphis. pp. 21–47.
- S2CID 158110512.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard de". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 159. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ Charles Dardier (1876). Ésaĭe Gasc, citoyen de Genève: sa politique et sa théologie, Genève – Constance – Montauban 1748–1813. Sandoz et Fischbacher. p. 54.
- ^ "An Introduction to the Study of Crisis by Kuruma Samezō 1929".
- ^ Bertholet, Auguste (2021). "Constant, Sismondi et la Pologne". Annales Benjamin Constant. 46: 65–85.
- ^ Simonde de Sismondi, New Principles of Political Economy, vol. 1 (1819), 20–21.
- ^ Stiglitz, J. E. (2011). The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- ^ Litchfield, H.E. (1904). Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin. A century of family letters. Cambridge: University Press. p. xvi-xvii.
- ^
"Review of New Books". The Literary Chronicle (219): 465. 26 July 1825. Retrieved 22 June 2013.
[...] Sismondi divides modern literature into two branches, which he makes the subjects of two dissertations: one on the Romance, the other on the Teutonic languages. The former embraces Arabian literature, the Provençals, the Troubadours, Italian and Spanish literature, &c. The second comprises the literature of England, Germany, and other Teutonic nations.
- ^ Lovell, David W. (2015). Marx's Proletariat (RLE Marxism): The Making of a Myth. Routledge. p. 75.
- ^ Say, Jean-Baptiste (1828). Cours Complet d'Economie Politique Pratique, chap. XVIII.
- S2CID 153937328.
- ^ Strickland, Geoffrey (1974). Stendhal: Education of a Novelist. CUP Archive. p. 271.
- ^ a b Chattopadhyay, Paresh (2016). Marx's Associated Mode of Production: A Critique of Marxism. Springer. pp. 39–41.
- .
- ^ "Lenin: 1897/econroman: Does the Home Market Shrink Because of the Ruination of the Small Producers?". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
- ^ "Rosa Luxemburg: The Accumulation of Capital (Chap.11)". marxists.catbull.com. Archived from the original on 3 December 2019. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
- ^ Jedlicki, Jerzy (1999). A Suburb of Europe: Nineteenth-century Polish Approaches to Western Civilization. Central European University Press. p. 75.
Further reading
- Lenin, Vladimir (1972) [1897]. "A Characterisation of Economic Romanticism: Sismondi and Our Native Sismondists". Lenin: Collected Works. Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 129–266. OCLC 39312993.
- Rosenblatt, Helena (2012). "On the need for a Protestant Reformation: Constant, Sismondi, Guizot and Laboulaye". In Geenens, Raf (ed.). French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day. Cambridge University Press. pp. 115–133.
- Rosenblatt, Helena (2013). "Sismondi, from Republicanism to Liberal Protestantism". In Kapossy, Béla (ed.). Modern Republicanism and Critical Liberalism. Slatkine. pp. 123–143.
- Vincent, K. Steven (2013). "The Liberalism of Sismondi and Constant". The European Legacy. 18 (7): 912–916. S2CID 219640988.
- Henryk Grossman [2017] Simonde de Sismondi and His Economic Theories (A New Interpretation of His Thought) orig. in French [1924] Warsaw, English translation in Henryk Grossman [2017] Capitalism’s Contradictions: Studies in Economic Theory before and after Marx Ed. Rick Kuhn (Trans. Birchall, Kuhn, O’Callaghan) Haymarket, Chicago.
- Mazzei, Umberto (2018). Sismondi, précurseur ignoré de Marx, Slatkine, Genève.