Herr D hring makes a great deal of noise over his discovery that Since political economy, as it made its appearance in history, is in fact nothing but the scientific insight into the economy in the period of capitalist production, principles and theorems relating to it, for example, in the writers of ancient Greek society, can only be found in so far as certain phenomena commodity production, trade, money, interest-bearing capital, etc. are common to both societies. In so far as the Greeks make occasional excursions into this sphere, they show the same genius and originality as in all other spheres. Because of this, their views form, historically, the theoretical starting-points of the modern science. Let us now listen to what the world-historic Herr D hring has to say. Aristotle's thesis, that Final result: Greek antiquity, as mirrored in the notice taken {21} by D hring, in fact possessed only quite ordinary ideas (p. 25), if such niaiserie (p. 19) has anything whatever in common with ideas, whether ordinary or extraordinary. It would be better to read Herr D hring's chapter on mercantilism  in the original , that is, in F. List's Nationales System, Chapter 29: The Industrial System, Incorrectly Called the Mercantile System by the School . How carefully Herr D hring manages to avoid here too any semblance of erudition {17} is shown by the following passage, among others: List, Chapter 28: The Italian Political Economists , says: Of Petty, the founder of modern political economy, Herr D hring tells us that there was Petty's propositions on Herr D hring makes this penetrating observation on Petty's theory of value: In Adam Smith, however, we can find not only traces of contrary views on the concept of value, not only two but even three, and strictly speaking even four sharply contrary opinions on value, running quite comfortably side by side and intermingled. But what is quite natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying and summarising more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the generality. And, to pass from great things to small: as we have seen, Herr D hring himself gives us five different kinds of value to select from at will, and with them, an equal number of contrary views. Of course, had his own thought been more penetrating , he would not have had to expend so much effort in trying to throw his readers back from Petty's perfectly clear conception of value into the uttermost confusion. A smoothly finished work of Petty s which may be said to be cast in a single block, is his Quantulumcunque concerning Money, published in 1682, ten years after his Anatomy of Ireland (this first appeared in 1672, not 1691 as stated by Herr D hring, who takes it second-hand from the most current textbook compilations ).  In this book the last vestiges of mercantilist views, found in other writings by him, have completely disappeared. In content and form it is a little masterpiece, and for this very reason Herr D hring does not even mention its title. It is quite in the order of things that in relation to the most brilliant and original of economic investigators, our vainglorious and pedantic mediocrity should only snarl his displeasure, and take offence at the fact that the flashes of theoretical thought do not proudly parade about in rank and file as ready-made axioms {D. Ph. 224}, but merely rise sporadically to the surface from the depths of crude {D. K. G. 57} practical material, for example, of taxes. Petty's foundations of Political Arithmetic {58}, vulgo statistics, are treated by Herr D hring in the same way as that author s specifically economic works. He malevolently shrugs his shoulders at the odd methods used by Petty! Considering the grotesque methods still employed in this field a century later even by Lavoisier,  and in view of the great distance that separates even contemporary statistics from the goal which Petty assigned to them in broad outline, such self-satisfied superiority two centuries post festum stands out in all its undisguised stupidity. Petty s most important ideas which received such scant attention in Herr D hring's enterprise {9} are, in the latter's view, nothing but disconnected conceits, chance thoughts, incidental comments, to which only in our day a significance is given, by the use of excerpts torn from their context, which in themselves they have not got; which therefore also play no part in the real history of political economy, but only in modern books below the standard of Herr D hring's deep-rooted criticism and historical depiction in the grand style {556}. In his enterprise , he seems to have had in view a circle of readers who would have implicit faith and would never be bold enough to ask for proof of his assertions. We shall return to this point soon (when dealing with Locke and North), but must first take a fleeting glance at Boisguillebert and Law. In connection with the former, we must draw attention to the sole find made by Herr D hring: he has discovered a connection between Boisguillebert and Law which had hitherto been missed. Boisguillebert asserts that the precious metals could be replaced, in the normal monetary functions which they fulfil in commodity circulation, by credit money (un morceau de papier). Law on the other hand imagines that any increase whatever in the number of these pieces of paper increases the wealth of a nation. Herr D hring draws from this the conclusion that Boisguillebert s Nevertheless, Herr D hring continues in his serio-comic style, To return to Petty and the inconspicuous role in the history of economics assigned to him by Herr D hring, let us first listen to what we are told about Petty s immediate successors, Locke and North. Locke s Considerations on Lowering of Interest and Raising of Money, and North s Discourses upon Trade, appeared in the same year, 1691. As regards this last point, Locke and North did little more than copy him. In regard to interest, however, Locke followed Petty s parallel between rent of money and rent of land, while North goes further and opposes interest as rent of stock to land rent, and the stocklords to the landlords. And while Locke accepts free play for the rate of interest, as demanded by Petty, only with reservations, North accepts it unconditionally. Herr D hring himself still a bitter mercantilist in the more subtle {55} sense surpasses himself when he dismisses Dudley North s Discourses upon Trade with the comment that they were written in the direction of free trade {64}. It is rather like saying of Harvey that he wrote in the direction of the circulation of the blood. North's work apart from its other merits is a classical exposition, driven home with relentless logic, of the doctrine of free trade, both foreign and internal certainly something extraordinary {64} in the year 1691! Herr D hring, by the way, informs us that Locke and North gave us proof of how the first bold strokes which Petty dealt in almost every sphere of political economy were taken up one by one by his English successors and further developed. The traces of this process during the period 1691 to 1752 are obvious even to the most superficial observer from the very fact that all the more important economic writings of that time start from Petty, either positively or negatively. That period, which abounded in original thinkers, is therefore the most important for the investigation of the gradual genesis of political economy. The historical depiction in the grand style {556}, which chalks up against Marx the unpardonable sin of making so much commotion in Capital about Petty and the writers of that period, simply strikes them right out of history. From Locke, North, Boisguillebert and Law it jumps straight to the physiocrats, and then, at the entrance to the real temple of political economy, appears David Hume. With Herr D hring's permission, however, we restore the chronological order, putting Hume before the physiocrats. Hume s economic Essays appeared in 1752. In the related essays: of Money, of the Balance of Trade, of Commerce, Hume follows step by step, and often even in his personal idiosyncrasies, Jacob Vanderlint s Money Answers All Things, published in London in 1734. However unknown this Vanderlint may have been to Herr D hring, references to him can be found in English economic works even at the end of the eighteenth century, that is to say, in the period after Adam Smith. Like Vanderlint, Hume treated money as a mere token of value; he copied almost word for word (and this is important as he might have taken the theory of money as a token of value from many other sources) Vanderlint's argument on why the balance of trade cannot be permanently either favourable or unfavourable to a country; like Vanderlint, he teaches that the equilibrium of balances is brought about naturally, in accordance with the different economic situations in the different countries; like Vanderlint, he preaches free trade, but less boldly and consistently; like Vanderlint, though with less profundity, he emphasises wants as the motive forces of production; he follows Vanderlint in the influence on commodity prices which he erroneously attributes to bank money and government securities in general; like Vanderlint, he rejects credit money; like Vanderlint, he makes commodity prices dependent on the price of labour, that is, on wages; he even copies Vanderlint s absurd notion that by accumulating treasures commodity prices are kept down, etc., etc. At a much earlier point Herr D hring made an oracular allusion to how others had misunderstood Hume's monetary theory with a particularly minatory reference to Marx, who in Capital had, besides, pointed in a manner contrary to police regulations to the secret connections of Hume with Vanderlint and with J. Massie, who will be mentioned later. As for this misunderstanding, the facts are as follows. In regard to Hume s real theory of money (that money is a mere token of value, and therefore, other conditions being equal, commodity prices rise in proportion to the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to its decrease), Herr D hring, with the best intentions in the world though in his own luminous way can only repeat the errors made by his predecessors. Hume, however, after propounding the theory cited above, himself raises the objection (as Montesquieu, starting from the same premises, had done previously) that Hume's arguments, expressly directed against Locke that the rate of interest is not regulated by the amount of available money but by the rate of profit, and his other explanations of the causes which determine rises or falls in the rate of interest, are all to be found, much more exactly though less cleverly stated, in An Essay on the Governing Causes of the Natural Rate of Interest; wherein the sentiments of Sir W. Petty and Mr. Locke, on that head, are considered. This work appeared in 1750, two years before Hume's essay; its author was J. Massie, a writer active in various fields, who had a wide public, as can be seen from contemporary English literature. Adam Smith's discussion of the rate of interest is closer to Massie than to Hume. Neither Massie nor Hume know or say anything regarding the nature of profit , which plays a role with both. For example, Hume s essay on interest begins with the following words: What arouses the naive astonishment of our critical historian is the fact that Hume, in connection with some felicitous idea or other, does not even claim to have originated it {131}. This would certainly not have happened to Herr D hring. We have seen how Hume confuses every increase of the precious metals with such an increase as is accompanied by a depreciation, a revolution in their own value, hence, in the measure of value of commodities. This confusion was inevitable with Hume because he had not the slightest understanding of the function of the precious metals as the measure of value. And he could not have it, because he had absolutely no knowledge of value itself. The word itself is to be found perhaps only once in his essays, namely, in the passage where, in attempting to correct Locke's erroneous notion that the precious metals had only an imaginary value , he makes it even worse by saying that they had merely a fictitious value . In this he is much inferior not only to Petty but to many of his English contemporaries. He shows the same backwardness in still proclaiming the old-fashioned notion that the merchant is the mainspring of production an idea which Petty had long passed beyond. As for Herr D hring s assurance that in his essays Hume concerned himself with the chief economic relationships {121}, if the reader only compares Cantillon s work quoted by Adam Smith (which appeared the same year as Hume's essays, 1752, but many years after its author s death),  he will be surprised at the narrow range of Hume s economic writings. Hume, as we have said, in spite of the letters-patent issued to him by Herr D hring, is nevertheless quite a respectable figure also in the field of political economy, but in this field he is anything but an original investigator, and even less an epoch-making one. The influence of his economic essays on the educated circles of his day was due not merely to his excellent presentation, but principally to the fact that the essays were a progressive and optimistic glorification of industry and trade, which were then flourishing in other words, of the capitalist society which at that time was rapidly rising in England, and whose approval they therefore had to gain. Let one instance suffice here. Everyone knows the passionate fight that the masses of the English people were waging, just in Hume s day, against the system of indirect taxes which was being regularly exploited by the notorious Sir Robert Walpole for the relief of the landlords and of the rich in general. In his essay Of Taxes, in which, without mentioning his name, Hume polemises against his indispensable authority Vanderlint the stoutest opponent of indirect taxation and the most determined advocate of a land tax we read: But why is Hume given such an exaggerated position in Kritische Geschichte? Simply because this serious and subtle thinker {121} has the honour of enacting the D hring of the eighteenth century. Hume serves as proof that In his effort Herr D hring says: Had Quesnay considered things from a really natural standpoint, and had he rid himself not only of regard for the precious metals and the amount of money, but also of regard for money values... But as it is he reckons solely with sums of value, and imagined (!) the net product in advance as a money value {106}. So for the fourth and fifth time: there are only money values in the Tableau! After all this effort , we at last get the result . Listen and marvel at these words: Once he has shaken off this painful secret, this Horatian black care which sat hunched on his back during his ride through the land of the physiocrats, our serious and subtle thinker blows another merry blast on his trumpet, as follows: But in order that our readers may not be left in the same cruel ignorance about Quesnay s Tableau as those necessarily are who receive their economic wisdom first hand from Herr D hring, we will explain it briefly as follows: As is known, the physiocrats divide society into three classes: (1) The productive, i.e., the class which is actually engaged in agriculture tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers; they are called productive, because their labour yields a surplus: rent. (2) The class which appropriates this surplus, including the landowners and their retainers, the prince and in general all officials paid by the state, and finally also the Church in its special character as appropriator of tithes. For the sake of brevity, in what follows we call the first class simply farmers , and the second class landlords . (3) The industrial or sterile class; sterile because, in the view of the physiocrats, it adds to the raw materials delivered to it by the productive class only as much value as it consumes in means of subsistence supplied to it by that same class. Quesnay's Tableau was intended to portray how the total annual product of a country (concretely, France) circulates among these three classes and facilitates annual reproduction. The first premise of the Tableau was that the farming system and with it large-scale agriculture, in the sense in which this term was understood in Quesnay s time, had been generally introduced, Normandy, Picardy, le-de-France and a few other French provinces serving as prototypes. The farmer therefore appears as the real leader in agriculture, as he represents in the Tableau the whole productive (agricultural) class and pays the landlord a rent in money. An invested capital or inventory of ten milliard livres is assigned to the farmers as a whole; of this sum, one-fifth, or two milliards, is the working capital which has to be replaced every year this figure too was estimated on the basis of the best-managed farms in the provinces mentioned above. Further premises: (1) that for the sake of simplicity constant prices and simple reproduction prevail; (2) that all circulation which takes place solely within one class is excluded, and that only circulation between class and class is taken into account; (3) that all purchases and sales taking place between class and class in the course of the industrial year are combined in a single total sum. Lastly, it must be borne in mind that in Quesnay s time in France, as was more or less the case throughout Europe, the home industry of the peasant families satisfied by far the greater portion of their needs other than food, and is therefore taken for granted here as supplementary to agriculture. The starting-point of the Tableau is the total harvest, the gross product of the annual yield of the soil, which is consequently placed as the first item or the total reproduction of the country, in this case France. The magnitude of value of this gross product is estimated on the basis of the average prices of agricultural products among the trading nations. It comes to five milliard livres, a sum which roughly expresses the money value of the gross agricultural production of France based on such statistical estimates as were then possible. This and nothing else is the reason why in his Tableau Quesnay operates with several milliards {106}, to be precise, with five milliards, and not with five livres tournois.  The whole gross product, of a value of five milliards, is therefore in the hands of the productive class, that is, in the first place the farmers, who have produced it by advancing an annual working capital of two milliards, which corresponds to an invested capital of ten milliards. The agricultural products foodstuffs, raw materials, etc. which are required for the replacement of the working capital, including therefore the maintenance of all persons directly engaged in agriculture, are taken in natura from the total harvest and expended for the purpose of new agricultural production. Since, as we have seen, constant prices and simple reproduction on a given scale are assumed, the money value of the portion which is thus taken from the gross product is equal to two milliard livres. This portion, therefore, does not enter into general circulation. For, as we have noted, circulation which takes place only within a particular class, and not between one class and another, is excluded from the Tableau. After the replacement of the working capital out of the gross product there remains a surplus of three milliards, of which two are in means of subsistence and one in raw materials. The rent which the farmers have to pay to the landlords is however only two-thirds of this sum, equal to two milliards. It will soon be seen why it is only these two milliards which figure under the heading of net product or net income {106}. But in addition to the total reproduction of agriculture amounting in value to five milliards, of which three milliards enter into general circulation, there is also in the hands of the farmers, before the movement described in the Tableau begins, the whole "p cule" of the nation, two milliards of cash money. This comes about in the following way. As the total harvest is the starting-point of the Tableau, this starting-point also forms the closing point of an economic year, for example, of the year 1758, from which point a new economic year begins. During the course of this new year, 1759, the portion of the gross product destined to enter into circulation is distributed among the two other classes through the medium of a number of individual payments, purchases and sales. These movements separated, following each other in succession, and stretching over a whole year, are however as was bound to happen in any case in the Tableau combined into a few characteristic transactions each of which embraces a whole year's operations at once. This, then, is how at the close of the year 1758 there has flowed back to the farmer class the money paid by it to the landlords as rent for the year 1757 (the Tableau itself will show how this comes about), amounting to two milliards; so that the farmer class can again throw this sum into circulation in 1759. Since, however, that sum, as Quesnay observes, is much larger than is required in reality for the total circulation of the country (France), inasmuch as there is a constant succession of separate payments, the two milliard livres in the hands of the farmers represent the total money in circulation in the nation. The class of landlords drawing rent first appears, as is the case sometimes even today, in the role of receivers of payments. On Quesnay's assumption the landlords proper receive only foursevenths of the two milliards of rent: two-sevenths go to the government, and one-seventh to the receivers of tithes. In Quesnay's day the Church was the biggest landlord in France and in addition received the tithes on all other landed property. The working capital (avances annuelles) advanced by the sterile class in the course of a whole year consists of raw materials to the value of one milliard only raw materials, because tools, machinery, etc., are included among the products of that class itself. The many different roles, however, played by such products in the industrial enterprises of this class do not concern the Tableau any more than the circulation of commodities and money which takes place exclusively within that class. The wages for the labour by which the sterile class transforms the raw materials into manufactured goods are equal to the value of the means of subsistence which it receives in part directly from the productive class, and in part indirectly, through the landlords. Although it is itself divided into capitalists and wage-workers, it forms, according to Quesnay's basic conception, an integral class which is in the pay of the productive class and of the landlords. The total industrial production, and consequently also its total circulation, which is distributed over the year following the harvest, is likewise combined into a single whole. It is therefore assumed that at the beginning of the movement set out in the Tableau the annual commodity production of the sterile class is entirely in its hands, and consequently that its whole working capital, consisting of raw materials to the value of one milliard, has been converted into goods to the value of two milliards, one-half of which represents the price of the means of subsistence consumed during this transformation. An objection might be raised here: Surely the sterile class also uses up industrial products for its own domestic needs; where are these shown, if its own total product passes through circulation to the other classes? This is the answer we are given: The sterile class not only itself consumes a portion of its own commodities, but in addition it strives to retain as much of the rest as possible. It therefore sells the commodities thrown by it into circulation above their real value, and must do this, as we have evaluated these commodities at the total value of their production. This, however, does not affect the figures of the Tableau, for the two other classes receive manufactured goods only to the value of their total production. So now we know the economic position of the three different classes at the beginning of the movement set out in the Tableau. The productive class, after its working capital has been replaced in kind, still has three milliards of the gross product of agriculture and two milliards in money. The landlord class appears only with its rent claim of two milliards on the productive class. The sterile class has two milliards in manufactured goods. Circulation passing between only two of these three classes is called imperfect by the physiocrats; circulation which takes place between all three classes is called perfect. Now for the economic Tableau itself. First (imperfect) Circulation: The farmers pay the landlords the rent due to them with two milliards of money, without receiving anything in return. With one of these two milliards the landlords buy means of subsistence from the farmers, to whom one-half of the money expended by them in the payment of rent thus returns. In his Analyse du Tableau conomique Quesnay does not make further mention of the state, which receives two-sevenths, or of the Church, which receives one-seventh, of the land rent, as their social roles are generally known. In regard to the landlord class proper, however, he says that its expenditure (in which that of all its retainers is included) is at least as regards the great bulk of it unfruitful expenditure, with the exception of that small portion which is used for the maintenance and improvement of their lands and the raising of their standard of cultivation . But by natural law their proper function consists precisely in provision for the good management and expenditure for the maintenance of their patrimony in good repair , or, as is explained further on, in making the avances foncieres, that is, outlays for the preparation of the soil and provision of all equipment needed by the farms, which enable the farmer to devote his whole capital exclusively to the business of actual cultivation. Second (perfect) Circulation: With the second milliard of money still remaining in their hands, the landlords purchase manufactured goods from the sterile class, and the latter, with the money thus obtained, purchases from the farmers means of subsistence for the same sum. Third (imperfect) Circulation: The farmers buy from the sterile class, with one milliard of money, a corresponding amount of manufactured goods; a large part of these goods consists of agricultural implements and other means of production required in agriculture. The sterile class returns the same amount of money to the farmers, buying raw materials with it to the value of one milliard to replace its own working capital. Thus the two milliards expended by the farmers in payment of rent have flowed back to them, and the movement is closed. And therewith also the great riddle is solved: If it were not for this interest, the farmer the chief agent in agriculture would not advance the capital for investment in it. Already from this standpoint, according to the physiocrats, the appropriation by the farmer of that portion of the agricultural surplus proceeds which represents interest is as necessary a condition of reproduction as the farmer class itself; and hence this element cannot be put in the category of the national net product or net income ; for the latter is characterised precisely by the fact that it is consumable without any regard to the immediate needs of national reproduction. This fund of one milliard, however, serves, according to Quesnay, for the most part to cover the repairs which become necessary in the course of the year, and the partial renewals of invested capital; further, as a reserve fund against accidents, and lastly, where possible, for the enlargement of the invested and working capital, as well as for the improvement of the soil and extension of cultivation. The whole process is certainly fairly simple {110}. There enter into circulation: from the farmers, two milliards in money for the payment of rent, and three milliards in products, of which two-thirds are means of subsistence and one-third raw materials; from the sterile class, two milliards in manufactured goods. Of the means of subsistence amounting to two milliards, one half is consumed by the landlords and their retainers, the other half by the sterile class in payment for its labour. The raw materials to the value of one milliard replace the working capital of this latter class. Of the manufactured goods in circulation, amounting to two milliards, one half goes to the landlords and the other to the farmers, for whom it is only a converted form of the interest, which accrues at first hand from agricultural reproduction, on their invested capital. The money thrown into circulation by the farmer in payment of rent flows back to him, however, through the sale of his products, and thus the same process can take place again in the next economic year. And now we must admire Herr D hring's really critical {D. Ph. 404} exposition, which is so infinitely superior to the traditional superficial reporting {D. K. G. 105}. After mysteriously pointing out to us five times in succession how hazardous it was for Quesnay to operate in the Tableau with mere money values which moreover turned out not to be true he finally reaches the conclusion that, when he asks, Just as the long stroke drawn through the years 1691 to 1752 removed all of Hume s predecessors, so another stroke obliterated Sir James Steuart, who came between Hume and Adam Smith. There is not a syllable in Herr D hring's enterprise {9} on Steuart s great work, which, apart from its historical importance, permanently enriched the domain of political economy. But, instead, Herr D hring applies to him the most abusive epithet in his vocabulary, and says that he was a professor {136} in Adam Smith s time. Unfortunately this insinuation is a pure invention. Steuart, as a matter of fact, was a large landowner in Scotland, who was banished from Great Britain for alleged complicity in the Stuart plot and through long residence and his journeys on the Continent made himself familiar with economic conditions in various countries. In a word: according to the Kritische Geschichte the only value all earlier economists had was to serve either as rudiments {1} of Herr D hring's authoritative {1} and deeper foundations, or, because of their unsound doctrines, as a foil to the latter. In political economy, however, there are also some heroes who represent not only rudiments of the deeper foundation {D. C. 11}, but principles {5} from which this foundation, as was prescribed in Herr D hring s natural philosophy, is not developed {353} but actually composed : for example, the incomparably great and eminent {16} List, who, for the benefit of German manufacturers, puffed up the more subtle mercantilistic teachings of a Ferrier and others into mightier words; also Care, who reveals the true essence of his wisdom in the following sentence:
1877: Anti-Duhring - from Kritische Geschichte