François Quesnay

François Quesnay [ fʀɑswa kɛnɛ ] ( born June 4, 1694 Méré at Versailles; † December 16, 1774 in Versailles) was a French physician and economist. He is considered the founder of the school of economics physiocratic and encyclopedist.

The doctor

Quesnay was born the eighth of 13 children of his parents in a village in the district Rambouillet, located about 90 km from Paris. His father worked as a farmer and business next to a general store; when he died, François was only eight years old. At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship with a Paris engraver who created illustrations for the surgical academy. Here Quesnay developed his interest in medicine, following his apprenticeship, he trained as a surgeon in the surgical college of Saint -Côme in Paris, 1718, he was a surgeon.

A medical pamphlet gave him some attention. It was directed against the personal physician of the king and his - then widespread - view virtually every disease must be treated with a vigorous bloodletting. Quesnay, however, recommended to deal cautiously with blood as a useful substance. In Paris he got an honorable position as physician to the Duke of Villeroy, 1744 doctor of medicine and finally appointed in 1749 by the influential mistress of King Louis XV. , Madame de Pompadour, to the court of Versailles. When her intimate personal physician he had a small apartment in the castle; to his duties was to examine all the food that she ate. He was ranked among the official court physicians, with the stated claim to the succession as chief physician to the king. In 1751 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences, in 1752 he received a title of nobility, the crown prince after he had cured of chickenpox.

The economist

It was not until a very advanced age, Quesnay busy with matters of national economy. Around the middle of the 18th century published in France numerous writings on this subject. Also in the Encyclopedia of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d' Alembert -Baptiste, a central work of the Enlightenment, these problems took a large room. Quesnay was a friend of d' Alembert, in the years 1756/57 he wrote several encyclopedic article, however - for some unknown reason - not about medicine, but about agriculture and its overall economic importance. 1758 he developed his revolutionary model of the economic cycle and its laws, the tableau économique, and thus became the founder of the Physiocrats. Often, the obvious assumption is expressed that Quesnay transferred his medical knowledge of blood circulation to the national economy; a proof does not exist.

A substantial progress in Quesnay's economic model was the recognition that expenditure was not just consumed, but published elsewhere as receipts which again made ​​possible issues and so on. No more individual phenomena of economic life were examined, but there was a scheme that was recognizable, such as production, distribution and consumption were connected and related to each other. The resulting circuit would, so to speak regulate natural law itself, the state should intervene as little as possible: " Laissez faire et laissez passer " became the motto of the Physiocrats. As the support of all economic activities Quesnay identified three "classes" ( groups or sectors): Agriculture ( classe productive ) generates the economic surplus. The landowner ( the classe classe propriétaires or distributive ), mostly noblemen, operate by letting the distribution of land and provide for its amelioration; they consume the entire surplus. The merchants and traders ( classe stérile ) generate with their work, no economically relevant surplus, hence its classification as sterile.

The school of thought of the physiocrats had numerous supporters among French intellectuals. In magazines there was with her ​​writings since 1765 supplements. Quesnay himself published it under the pseudonyms H., N., Isle or Nisaque regular articles such as " Observations sur le droit naturel " and " Mémoire sur les avantages de l'industrie et du commerce ". In Paris ten years found twice weekly meetings at the Palais des Count Mirabeau held social events with discussions, which were also used for preparation of new publications on physiocratic economy. During his long stay in France since 1764 also the British moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith famous later took part in the events. Also Quesnay came when he was seventy occasionally to these meetings to Paris. On December 16, 1774 in the then unusually high age of 80, he died in his home in Versailles. A few months earlier, was a supporter of his theory, the statesman and economist Turgot, finance minister of Louis XVI. become.

Quesnay's approach to the economy as a cycle marked a scientific breakthrough and paved way for the development of classical economics. His characterization of the different "classes" but soon called forth opposition, especially the assessment of the distinguished manufactures as unproductive and " sterile". Adam Smith corrected then 1776 in his economic magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, the thesis of the primacy of agriculture as a source of national wealth. He wrote the productive power at all to any particular sector of the economy to, but generally the work that underlies all forms of production based. It is crucial that sufficient capital is made available to use productive work.

An alternative and historical view

The usual representation of Quesnay's economic theory follows the texts, which are then understood from the perspective of today's economic theory, Neoclassical. In a historical context and the perspective of the classical economic theory read these texts have different content.

Quesnay's thinking characterizes the bloodstream. Whom he knew well, as he earned his degree by the drawing of anatomical engravings. In his time doctors of the opinion that to allow for the relief of inflammation due to the vein, the blood pressure was lower and that at a distant from the wound site. Quesnay had a model of pipes after that it is meaningless where the bleeding occurs because the pressure decreases, regardless of where the system is opened. The fact that such proof is supplied by a surgeon, someone who is socially a medical professional, this made annoying for the physicians; it made the Country Doctor Quesnay but famous and 1749 personal physician of Pompadour.

This dispute was not a trivial matter, but a clash of theory - building: the respect of the vein omission still dominant medical view of Galen (AD 129-216 ), whose texts were known again until the Renaissance in Western Europe, and the new empirical point of view of blood circulation by Harvey (1578-1657), the first won by Malpighi's discovery of capillaries 1661. Since, according to Galen, the produced blood is consumed by the institutions, while it is recirculated back to Harvey, Galen's medical point of view has a structure similar to the economic neo-classicism, are consumed by the goods to increase well-being, while according to the classical economics productive work, an input of the next economic cycle is.

Be employed only by virtue of his position at the court Quesnay in 1750 with economic policy matters, because France was threatened with bankruptcy. He saw in the economic cycle of the goods a type of blood circulation, which he did not respond to the pulmonary circulation, since the function of the lung was still unknown. Lavoisier's experiments on the function of oxygen took place a little later. As for the body, the heart, the agriculture for the economic cycle has been particularly important.

In the beginning, kings of France against their princes very weak and they were trying to reduce their independence. So Versailles was created to force the nobles to keep there big yard to neglect their possessions and poverty. One half of one percent of the population - the high nobility who claimed to be descended from the Germanic conquerors, and the assembled nobles with church - based almost the entire net income of the country. Therefore, almost was the total demand for artisanal and industrial services demand by the nobility and church. Since nobility and the church does not contribute to the economic cycle do - they provide no output, the input of the next period - even those working for them craftsmen were irrelevant for productive economic cycle. The related needs for this work was therefore unproductive, a key analytical element took over the classical economic theory from Adam Smith to John Stuart Mill of Quesnay. In the Tableau économique, an input-output scheme shows Quesnay that landowners (nobility and church) services of artisans and agriculture related, but other than the transfer of land to the farmers afford anything that the artisans pay as much as of agriculture and other craftsmen relate and that farmers needle and craft supply, their own final consumption of artisanal and agricultural services, however, is low. Only agriculture provides more than she relates.

Quesnay can not say openly that the landowners and all who work for them are parasites. This would be a criticism of the social system he tried to save. But between the work of craftsmen who work primarily for the nobility and the church, and those of the farmers, he sees a difference. The price corresponds artisanal products - as in the entire classical economics - the cost of reproduction: the cost of the materials plus the Subsistenzlöhnen of craftsmen. Temporarily higher prices reduces the competition again this year. The prices of agricultural products are according to Quesnay, however, about the cost of reproduction, so that only agriculture creates wealth, while other areas only reproduce. An increased agricultural production lowers prices and therefore less because the demand is almost unlimited.

Quesnay's distinction between agriculture and handicrafts (industry) is a declaration to the British classics: For this rise with increased agricultural production unit costs and prices of agricultural products because poorer soils are taken under the plow ( Ricardo ). If, however, industrial products produced in higher quantities, unit costs and prices fall due to the recessed division of labor (Adam Smith). Quesnay sees it the other way around, but historically quite correct:

• Adam Smith's famous thesis of declining costs due to a deepened division of labor induced by growing markets applies only to industrial mass production. French craftsmen operated single production for the nobility; reduced costs can not occur in luxury products. Therefore it was Adam Smith, the Physiocrats in Paris taught to think in economic cycles, this ultimately did not understand because his thinking went out of the background information of his country.

• Prior to the industrial revolution England revolutionized its agriculture through - not openly known - Acquisition of Chinese models. In the north of France, there were already examples of this successful capitalist agriculture. The adoption of the British model for the whole of France promised to boost their development, which can be the basis of an industrial development as in England. Quesnay's statement that France's future lies in the development of agriculture and not industry, is an analytical feat that probably no economist reached him again.

• The demand of these future capitalist agriculture for industrial goods creating a new market for French industry. To the extent, however, in which manufactures the craft for this market, its products input of the next economic cycle and thus "productive"; this production would be associated with lower unit costs. Quesnay's designation of the craft and the industry as " classe stérile ." Is thus generally wrong and historically correct.

The entanglement of food for thought from the bloodstream to the historical development opportunity in France to a "politically correct" by the word choice theory, which should save a corrupt social system reforms, is probably unique in this way. As in England, the distribution of income and thus production and markets were different, even Adam Smith had difficulty understanding these French statements. But Smith's cycle theory followed the physiocrats and he had dedicated his " Wealth of Nations " Quesnay, this would not have died before. Among the difficulties of the British economic classics to understand the Physiocrats, were used for the later neo-classicists nor the differences which will separates the classical economics of the diametrically different neoclassicism. Statements of most subsequent economists about the Physiocrats only show that the theoretical elements of one's theory does not allow one to understand the meaning of the Physiocrats.

Turgot 1774 contrôleur général des finances and begin the first steps to implement the program of the Physiocrats. Because of the corruption all benefit reforms to meet its resistance. When he picks up the grain duties within France, lose their income tax- noble ( they paid the king a fixed amount and raise three times the taxes). As increased by a poor harvest in 1774, grain prices, winning the sponsored by the tax collectors rumor credibility by free trade would now speculators, even the king, earn the price of grain; the people went up to the gates of Versailles. As Turgot in January 1776 proposes to abolish the corvée of peasants and dissolve the craft guilds, as a first step to remove all privileges, the king has to give his opponents and ask for his resignation. The Physiocrats thought thus lose their importance politically and in the salons of Paris. With Jacques Necker comes in 1776 Turgot's enemies to power, the more debt by promoting France's comparative advantage industry, the production of luxury goods, and the French Revolution.

Works (selection)

• Observations sur les effets de la saignée ( 1730)
• Essai sur l' phisique Oeconomie animale ( 1736)
• L'art de guérir par la saignée ( 1736)
• Traité de la suppuration ( 1749)
• Traité de la Gangrene ( 1749)
• Traité des Fièvres Continues (1753 )
• Auguste Oncken (ed.): Oeuvres économiques et philosophiques. Frankfurt / M.: Joseph Baer; Paris: Jules Peelman, 1888
• Marguerite Kuczynski (Ed.): Economic writings. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1971 / 76th 1: writings from the years 1756 to 1759. 1971 ( 2 vols ). 2: Writings from the years 1763 to 1767. 1976 (2 vols )