Jean Baptiste Say (1767–1832)

French bourgeois economist; founder and representative of vulgar political economy.

Say was born on January 5, 1767, in Lyon, France, into a merchant’s family. In 1786, he went to England to study, where he learned about the development of the British Industrial Revolution and came into touch with Smith’s doctrines. In 1787, She entered a French life-insurance company, where he first came into touch with The Wealth of Nations by his director. From 1794 to 1799, he served as editor-in-chief of La Decade philosophique, litteraire, et politique, and published economic articles in that journal. In 1803, Say published A Treatise on Political Economy; or The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (abbreviated as A Treatise on Political Economy), which propagated Smith’s ideas of free trade and laissez-faire market economy. In 1815, Say published Catechism of Political Economy. In 1817, he published Questions and Answers on Political Economics, which was an abridged version of A Treatise on Political Economy. From 1816, Say lectured on political economy at the Athénée and the Conservatoire des arts et métiers (Conservatory of Arts and Crafts) in France. His lectures were arranged and published in 1828-1830 under the title Complete Course in Practical Political Economy, which was basically an expanded version of A Treatise on Political Economy. In 1831, he became professor of political economy at the Collège de France, and died on November 15, 1832, in Paris.

In economic theory, Say discarded the scientific elements in Smith’s system of classical political economy, and was the first to systematically put forth the utility theory of value of the “doctrine of three factors of production” and the “trinity” theory of distribution in defense of the capitalist system, and established vulgar political economy different from classical political economy. (1) He opposed the classical English theory of value based on labor value. He was the first of the economists to replace the labor theory of value with a utility-based subjective theory of value. He asserted that wages, interest and rent were derived from labor, capital and land respectively, and that wages, interest and profit were the remuneration of workers, landowners and entrepreneurs respectively, thus denied the capitalist system of exploitation and established the so-called “trinity” theory of distribution. (2) Say was the pioneer of neoclassical school and its equilibrium analysis. Say held that economics was a pure science whose abstract concepts had nothing to do with reality or history and did not need to provide practical policy guidance to politicians. (3) He put forth the so-called “Say’s Law”: Supply creates its own demand, neither excess supply nor excess demand will exist, and there will not be a universal surplus of commodities.

Say’s denial of the labor theory of value on the basis of utility theory of value, holding that capital and land, like labor, are also sources of value, is a fallacy contrary to facts and science. On the basis of his scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production and relations of production, Marx has made a profound critique of Say’s utility theory of value of the “doctrine of the three factors of production” and his “trinity” theory of distribution, and has scientifically revealed the essence and secret of capitalist exploitation.