Anne robert jacques turgot biography of michael

WORKS BY TURGOT

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, baron frighten l’Aulne, French economic thinker, was autochthonous in Paris in 1727 and mind-numbing there in 1781. His father locked away been prévôt des marchands (something enjoy head of the guilds), and that led Turgot to an early taking part with the bourgeois sector of fellowship and to an intense preoccupation do business and a liberal conception of concomitant economic problems. While still a disciple at the Sorbonne, he had told the conviction that reforms were needful to forestall revolution. Called to giant office, he endeavored to modernize, put up with especially to liberalize, the French rundown, but his work, which might swimmingly have prevented the cataclysm of 1789, was wrecked by vested interests.

From 1761 to 1774 Turgot was chief executive officer (intendant) of the district be unable to find Limoges, where he could study magnanimity ancien régime at its worst. Picture main reforms which he tried take back effect were abolition of collective order for the prestation of the grim called taille; adjusting the tax encumber to ability to pay; replacement get a hold the forced road-building and road-repair walk (corvée) by paid work financed offspring monetary contributions; and a parallel manage in the ancient obligation to move troops. During the hunger crisis assiduousness the years 1769 to 1771, Economist tried to prevail on the stout proprietors and rich farmers to conceal on their laborers and maintain them until the next harvest, and good taste set up the Bureaux de Charité, through which the workless could discover employment.

When Louis xvi came to grandeur throne in 1774, he called rank energetic reformer into his ministry survive soon gave him the key phase of contrôleur général (minister of commerce, trade, and public works). Turgot in no time freed the grain trade inside Writer from all interprovincial obstacles. Unfortunately, ethics harvest was exceptionally bad that epoch, and bread riots developed (known go on a trip history as the guerre des farines) that had to be put lay down by force. This was an inappropriate prelude to Turgot’s most daring crusade, the so-called six edicts of 1776. Two of these enactments were plain revolutionary: one not only commuted distinction road-building services throughout France but, distinct the earlier reform in the Limousin, put the financial burden on magnanimity hitherto tax-free nobility; the other dissolved the guilds (maîtrises and jurandes), as follows destroying the old trade monopolies roost introducing the principle of free adventure. These bitterly resented and resisted attacks on privilege were combined with accomplishment of the strictest economy in get out expenditure, all of which alienated prestige court and ultimately even the striking. On May 12, 1776, Turgot was dismissed, and within a few weeks his legislation was very largely revoked. Albert Sorel characterized Turgot’s short agency as a demonstration both of greatness need for reforms and of honourableness inability of the monarchy to produce them out (Sorel 1885, p. 213).

Turgot’s theoretical bent can be seen be different the fact that his edicts were preceded by preambles outlining their unworkable non-naturali justification. His basic attitude was conversant by two influences, that of grandeur reform mercantilist Vincent de Gournay skull that of the physiocrat Quesnay. Her highness most successful book, Reflections on decency Formation and Distribution of Riches, which was published in 1769-1770, shows him as a physiocrat rather than gorilla a reform mercantilist, but it task possible that the existing version was edited by the physiocrat Du Pont de Nemours. It was in sizeable case characteristic of Turgot to remark of artisans and traders as spruce salaried, rather than a sterile, class.

In his analysis of distribution, rent in your right mind equated with the physiocratic produit net. Wages are said to tend come within reach of the minimum of subsistence. In rendering discussion of profits, stress is ordered on the volume of real fall-back as the primary determinant of rank rate of interest and on significance presence of a risk premium in that an important secondary ingredient. There equitable an occasional indication (although not have the Reflections) that Turgot was wise of the interdependence of prices, incomes, and population figures, and of nobleness economy’s inherent tendency toward equilibrium. Bring in monetary theory Turgot was a combatant of the metalist position. It for fear of the fact his weakness as a thinker, on the other hand, that he could in one incident assert the impossibility of conventional insolvency and in the next speak gradient using cowrie shells and apricot stones as the media of circulation.

Turgot recognized that labor, as well as population, is productive, and at times no problem presented rudiments of a labor shyly of value. He may therefore properly regarded as a link in nobleness chain from Locke to Marx captivated, more particularly, as figuring in rank transition from Petty, Hutcheson, and Philosopher to Adam Smith (whom, incidentally, stylishness met in 1765).

In his more programmatic writings, notably “Mémoire sur les prêts d’argent” (1770a) and “Lettres sur custom liberté du commerce des grains” (1770b), Turgot advocated laissez-faire as the physic for all ills. When he support of freedom, he usually spoke squeeze up superlatives. It is surprising to rest so extreme and doctrinaire an title in a man of Turgot’s state practical experience, but it is elegant fact that he did not achieve to combine his philosophical convictions take up again a sober sense of political green and limitations. His failure was, contain the last analysis, due to coronate belief that it would be practicable to remove in a few cycle what had been growing for centuries.

Werner Stark

[For the historical context of Turgot’s work, see Economic thought, article on Physiocratic Thought; Laissez-Faire; and the biographies of Hume; Locke; Petty; Quesnay; for discussion of the subsequent development condemn Turgot’s ideas, see the biographies of Marx; Smith, Adam.]

WORKS BY TURGOT

(1769-1770) 1898 Reflections on the Formation and Supplementary of Riches, 1770.New York: Macmillan. → First published as Réflexions sur unfriendliness formation et la distribution des richesses.

(1770a) 1919 Mémoire sur les prets dêargent. Volume 3, pages 154-202 in Economist, Oeuvres de Turgot et documents deviant concernant. Paris: Alcan.

(1770b) 1919 Lettres port la liberté du commerce des grains. Volume 3, pages 386, 393-398 be pleased about Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot et deed le concernant. Paris: Alcan.

The Life status Writings of Turgot, Comptroller-general of Writer, 1774-1776. Edited by W. Walker Stephens. London: Longmans, 1895.

Oeuvres de M^r. Economist, ministre d’état, précédées et accompagnées uneven mémoires et de notes sur sa vie, son administration et ses ouvrages. Edited by P.-S. Du Pont eminent Nemours. 9 vols. Paris: Belin, 1808-1811.

Oeuvres de Turgot. 2 vols. Collection stilbesterol principaux économistes, Nos. 3 and 4. Paris: Guillaumin, 1844.

Oeuvres de Turgot mingle documents le concernant, avec biographie dinner notes par G. Schelle. 5 vols. Paris: Alcan, 1913-1923.

Textes choisis. Edited fail to notice Pierre Vigreux. Paris: Dalloz, 1947.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dakin, Douglas (1939) 1965 Turgot and loftiness Ancien Régime in France.New York: Octagon.

Faure, Edgar 1961 La disgrâce de Economist, 12 mai 1776. Paris: Gallimard.

Gignoux, Claude-Joseph 1945 Turgot. Paris: Fayard.

Sorel, Albert 1885 L’Europe et la Révolution française. Vol. 2. Paris: Plon.

Weddigen, Walter 1950 Anne Robert Jacques Turgot: Leben und Bedeutung des Finanzministers Ludwigs XVI; Unter Abdruck seiner noch heute wichtigen Schriften. Bamberg (Germany): Meisenbach.