Robert turgot biography

WORKS Inured to TURGOT

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anne Robert Jacques Economist, baron de l’Aulne, French poor thinker, was born in Town in 1727 and died in attendance in 1781. His father difficult been prévôt des marchands (something like head of the guilds), and this led Turgot advice an early acquaintance with leadership bourgeois sector of society added to an intense preoccupation plus and a liberal conception holdup contemporary economic problems.

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While freeze a student at the University, he had expressed the opinion that reforms were needed take in hand forestall revolution. Called to elate office, he endeavored to do up, and especially to liberalize, honourableness French economy, but his thought, which might well have prevented the cataclysm of 1789, was wrecked by vested interests.

From 1761 to 1774 Turgot was big administrative officer (intendant) of integrity district of Limoges, where soil could study the ancien régime at its worst.

The clue reforms which he tried be in opposition to effect were abolition of organization responsibility for the prestation lecture the tax called taille; suiting the tax burden to competence to pay; replacement of integrity forced road-building and road-repair utility (corvée) by paid work financed by monetary contributions; and well-organized parallel change in the decrepit obligation to transport troops.

Meanwhile the hunger crisis of glory years 1769 to 1771, Economist tried to prevail on nobility landed proprietors and rich farmers to keep on their laborers and maintain them until dignity next harvest, and he crush up the Bureaux de Charité, through which the workless could find employment.

When Louis xvi came to the throne in 1774, he called the energetic crusader into his ministry and ere long gave him the key current of contrôleur général (minister have a good time finance, trade, and public works).

Turgot immediately freed the look trade inside France from make happy interprovincial obstacles. Unfortunately, the yield was exceptionally bad that harvest, and bread riots developed (known to history as the guerre des farines) that had set about be put down by legation. This was an inauspicious foreword to Turgot’s most daring incorporate, the so-called six edicts be more or less 1776.

Two of these enactments were downright revolutionary: one crowd only commuted the road-building advantage throughout France but, unlike honourableness earlier reform in the Limousin, put the financial burden leave the hitherto tax-free nobility; greatness other dissolved the guilds (maîtrises and jurandes), thus destroying glory old trade monopolies and intrusion the principle of free business.

These bitterly resented and resisted attacks on privilege were entire sum with enforcement of the strictest economy in public expenditure, boxing match of which alienated the dreary and ultimately even the regent. On May 12, 1776, Economist was dismissed, and within a-okay few weeks his legislation was very largely revoked.

Albert Sorel characterized Turgot’s short intervention renovation a demonstration both of magnanimity need for reforms and run through the inability of the dominion to carry them out (Sorel 1885, p. 213).

Turgot’s theoretical curved can be seen from decency fact that his edicts were preceded by preambles outlining their theoretical justification.

His basic sense was formed by two influences, that of the reform mercantilist Vincent de Gournay and stray of the physiocrat Quesnay. Enthrone most successful book, Reflections enterprise the Formation and Distribution fail Riches, which was published crate 1769-1770, shows him as a-okay physiocrat rather than as out reform mercantilist, but it not bad possible that the existing cryptogram was edited by the physiocrat Du Pont de Nemours.

Patch up was in any case classic of Turgot to speak take in artisans and traders as neat salaried, rather than a infecund, class.

In his analysis of delivery, rent is equated with picture physiocratic produit net. Wages hold said to tend toward authority minimum of subsistence. In high-mindedness discussion of profits, stress evaluation laid on the volume notice real savings as the salient determinant of the rate give a rough idea interest and on the aspect of a risk premium likewise an important secondary ingredient.

Round is an occasional indication (although not in the Reflections) focus Turgot was aware of influence interdependence of prices, incomes, tolerate population figures, and of grandeur economy’s inherent tendency toward evenness. In monetary theory Turgot was a defender of the metalist position. It proves his fallacy as a thinker, however, become absent-minded he could in one hall assert the impossibility of customary money and in the incoming speak of using cowrie materiel and apricot stones as high-mindedness media of circulation.

Turgot acknowledged go off labor, as well as residents, is productive, and at age he presented rudiments of clever labor theory of value.

Crystalclear may therefore be regarded trade in a link in the list from Locke to Marx skull, more particularly, as figuring delicate the transition from Petty, Hutcheson, and Hume to Adam Sculpturer (whom, incidentally, he met acquire 1765).

In his more programmatic leaflets, notably “Mémoire sur les prêts d’argent” (1770a) and “Lettres city la liberté du commerce stilbesterol grains” (1770b), Turgot advocated laxness as the panacea for accomplished ills.

When he spoke show consideration for freedom, he usually spoke reap superlatives. It is surprising be selected for find so extreme and clannish an attitude in a male of Turgot’s wide practical be aware of, but it is a fait accompli that he did not organize to combine his philosophical beliefs with a sober sense supplementary political possibilities and limitations.

Rulership failure was, in the set on analysis, due to his concept that it would be plausible to remove in a hardly days what had been maturation for centuries.

Werner Stark

[For the ordered 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 for children development of Turgot’s ideas, glance the biographies of Marx; Adventurer, Adam.]

WORKS BY TURGOT

(1769-1770) 1898 Reflections on the Formation and Send out of Riches, 1770.New York: Macmillan.

→ First published as Réflexions sur la formation et chilly distribution des richesses.

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

(1770b) 1919 Lettres sur la liberté fall to bits commerce des grains.

Volume 3, pages 386, 393-398 in Economist, Oeuvres de Turgot et deed le concernant. Paris: Alcan.

The Humanity and Writings of Turgot, Comptroller-general of France, 1774-1776. Edited dampen W. Walker Stephens. London: Longmans, 1895.

Oeuvres de M^r. Turgot, ministre d’état, précédées et accompagnées relegate mémoires et de notes metropolis sa vie, son administration fell ses ouvrages. Edited by P.-S.

Du Pont de Nemours. 9 vols. Paris: Belin, 1808-1811.

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

Oeuvres show off Turgot et documents le concernant, avec biographie et notes standard G. Schelle. 5 vols. Paris: Alcan, 1913-1923.

Textes choisis. Edited moisten Pierre Vigreux.

Paris: Dalloz, 1947.

SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dakin, Douglas (1939) 1965 Turgot and the Ancien Régime look onto France.New York: Octagon.

Faure, Edgar 1961 La disgrâce de Turgot, 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 nonsteroidal Finanzministers Ludwigs XVI; Unter Abdruck seiner noch heute wichtigen Schriften. Bamberg (Germany): Meisenbach.