Political economy and other idioms: French views on English development, 1815-48

This article investigates the role of political economy in the shaping of French views of British economic performance. It is argued that the potential of political economic for spreading a favourable interpretation of British development was not in fact realized until the end of the period considered. One reason for this was that earlier on, the image of economic Britain suffered from the legacy of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, with a link often being established between British pauperism and British aristocratic, ‘feudal’ society and government. Additionally, political economy struggled to gain ascendancy over other modes of social analysis, like Saint-Simonism and the science of administration, which either combined with it, thus affecting its potential for a favourable understanding of Britain, or directly challenged it.     

西斯蒙第与凯恩斯的经济危机论

西斯蒙第和凯恩斯既是古典经济学的继承者，又对古典经济学的根本原则提出了挑战。在经济危机问题的研究方面，他们存在许多相近之处又各具特色。对二者经济思想的比较研究，不仅可以揭示危机理论发展演进的轨迹，在某种程度上也能够加深对当代西方宏观经济政策的思考。     

Marx,primitive accumulation,and the impact of Sismondi

Abstract

This article re-examines Marx’s well-known concept of “primitive accumulation” in relation to Marx’s successive attempts to give a historical explanation for the birth of “capitalism”. Marx formulated this concept for the first time in Value, Price, and Profit (1865), and extrapolated upon it further in the first edition of the first volume of Capital (1867). It signified an appreciable alteration to Marx’s original historical theory. Indeed, in his writings, preceding the publication of volume 1 of Capital, such as The Communist Manifesto or The German Ideology, Marx had presented a more straightforwardly linear conception of the evolution of human society, consisting of various stages, “capitalism” being the penultimate stage, and “communism”, the last. Within this framework, the most advanced nations, such as Great Britain and Germany, were assumed to be those closest to being on the pre-revolutionary cusp of realising socialism. However, from the publication of volume 1 of Capital onwards, Marx embraced a less deterministic conception of progress, focussing more than previously on economically backwards countries or societies “at the margins” (Anderson 2010 Anderson, Kevin D. 2010. Marx at the Margins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and envisaging for them possibilities for historical development that did not inevitably entail the sort of industrialisation that Great Britain had experienced. This was particularly true regarding Russia, where volume 1 of Capital was welcomed and discussed precisely in light of these questions, as has been underscored by many scholars, notably Shanin, Wada, White, and Stedman Jones.