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From International Socialism (1st series), No.29, Summer 1967, p.38.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
An Inquiry Into Physiocracy
Max Beer
Cass, 42s
‘The physiocratic school,’ wrote Engels, ‘left us ... a nut on which all former critics and historians of political economy have up to now broken their jaws in vain.’ Beer’s short account of the reaction of these seventeenth and eighteenth century French economists against mercantilism, and the causes of their contradictory attitudes, is a convincing work which makes interesting reading.
Yet it is sad that in 1939 the author of the History of British Socialism should have felt impelled to devote his talents to the rescue of the physiocrats from their well-earned obscurity; this is surely a measure of the demoralisation of the European labour movement in the 1930s. What is less explicable is that the publishers should have chosen to re-issue this slim volume today – and at a price of two guineas.
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Last updated on 6 May 2010