Richard Cantillon 1680 1734 And Jacques Turgot 1727 1781

Richard Cantillon was an Irish refugee who fled to France after the defeat of James II. As a business associate of John Law he sold stock on a rising market and made a fortune from the Mississippi Bubble. His one great book 'Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General' circulated widely among French and English economic writers and was widely quoted and even plagiarised by amongst others Hume, Turgot, Mirabeau, Stewart and Adam Smith.

Richard Cantillon, writing fifty years before Adam Smith, was the first to see the economy as an interrelated whole, and the first to give a coherent account of how it works. This is the first comprehensive study of his economic theory and of his place in the history of the subject.

An examination of the language and style of the work to demonstrate Smith’s engagement with the challenges which history and actuality offer to his beliefs in the natural system of liberty.

The book covers Hume’s biographical development; his self appraisal as a 'man of letters’; his philosophical writings with emphasis on their direct and indirect economic content; his self-aware criticism of his approach to the Treatise and the development of his rhetorical understanding of the needs/interests of his readers/potential readers; his rhetorical turn and Ciceronian adjustments to his writing within the genre of the essay, including his two Enquiries; his political essays and his nine essays conventionally classified as economic. The work aims to show how the Treatise and its vicissitudes gave rise to his economics. The work takes a broad approach to Hume and his writings on economic topics from the Treatise, through the Enquires and on to his political and economic essay. The work also explores Hume’s textual method and charts the move from abstruse philosophy to a Ciceronian engagement with social conditions and problems as developed in the Political Discourses. In addition, Hume’s extensive use of analogies is also brought into clearer focus than is found in other texts. Overall, the book will be of great use to both postgraduates and undergraduates alike.

As the author of The Condition of the Working Class in England and, along with Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels is a seminal 19th-century figure; the co-founder of Marxism, he left an indelible impression as a philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian and revolutionary socialist. The Life, Work and Legacy of Friedrich Engels is nevertheless the first book to comprehensively explore Engels' contributions in all of these spheres. The book sees 13 experts from a range of scholarly backgrounds examine Engels and his writing in relation to topics including the United States and the future of capitalism, European social democracy and the nature of the political economy, with technology, capital, and labor acting as fundamental cross-cutting themes throughout. The volume analyses the intriguing relationship between Engels and Karl Marx, the towering historical figure whose long shadow has obscured the achievements of Engels for so long, and reassesses Engels' significance in this context. There are 66 images to be found throughout the text, 30 of these in colour, as well as a conclusion which successfully views Engels in the context of the age. As a journalist, author and communist figurehead, Engels dealt succinctly – and with strong opinions – with the core questions of the developments changing the globe in the 19th century and The Life, Work and Legacy of Friedrich Engels finally shines a light on this in a compelling call for revisionism.

The dominant economic explanations of the 20th century are not comprehensive enough to describe the complexity of economy and society and their reliance on the biosphere. Intangible Flow Theory in Economics: Human Participation in Economic and Societal Production outlines a new theory that challenges both economics and the relativism conveyed in social constructivism, poststructuralism and postmodernism. To mainstream economics and Marxism, monetary flows transform us humans into commodities. To this new theory, flows of economic elements as physical goods or money are consummated by intangible flows that cannot yet be precisely appraised at an actual or approximate value, for instance, workflows, service flows, information flows or communicational flows. The theory suggests a systematic alternative to refute the human commodity framework and interrelated conjectures (e.g. human capital, human resources, human assets). Furthermore, it exhibits that economic and societal production is fully integrated on the biosphere. Conversely, contemporary relativism argues for the end of theory development, suspension of evidence and entrenchment of knowledge validity among local systems (named as paradigms, epistemes, research programs, truth regimes or other terms). Thus, relativism tacitly supports dominant theories as the human commodity framework because it preventively sabotages the creation of new theoretical explanations. Disputing relativist theses, intangible flow theory demonstrates that innovative theoretical explanations remain possible. This book is of significant interest to students and scholars of political economy, economic sociology, organization, economics and social theory.

This edited volume discusses the life and scholarship of Friedrich Engels. Written to commemorate the two-hundred-year anniversary of Engels’ birth, the contributions take a look into his research from a variety of viewpoints, trace the influence of his predecessors, and critically evaluate his place within 19th century scholarship. In addition, specific topics are taken up, such as his (mis)assessment of American capitalism, his influence on the Italian labor movement, the thematization of social problems and the relevance of his thought in a global economy. Providing a fresh look at the co-founder of scientific socialism, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students of contemporary political, social and economic systems, the history of economic thought, and political history.

In this concise yet comprehensive history, Heinz D. Kurz traces the long arc of economic thought from its emergence in ancient Greece to its systematic presentation among the classical thinkers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the influential work of scholars such as Paul Samuelson and Kenneth J. Arrow. With a keen eye for how economic insights are acquired, lost, and reborn, Kurz focuses on the dynamic individuals who give old ideas new life and the historical events that provoke different approaches and theories. Over the course of this journey, Kurz explains what Adam Smith meant by the "invisible hand"; how Karl Marx's "law of motion" works in capitalist economies; the roots of the Austrian economists' emphasis on the problems of information, incomplete knowledge, and uncertainty; John Maynard Keynes's principle of effective demand and economic stabilization; and the insights and challenges offered by growth theory, welfare economics, game theory, and more. He concludes with a deft summation of world economists' major concerns today and their critical relation to world events.