Physiocracy

Doctrine of classical French economics in the 1750–1770s. Its representative figures are Quesnay and Turgot, among which Quesnay’s Tableau économique is the representative work of the Physiocracy.

Physiocracy arose in opposition to mercantilism. In the second half of the 17th century, due to the introduction of mercantilism, the sacrifice of agriculture to the development of industry and foreign trade, resulting in the extreme decline of French agriculture, which then led to the entire national economy of France on the verge of collapse, the founder of classical French economics Boisguillebert put forward the idea of Physiocracy by criticizing mercantilism. Subsequently, it has been continuously promoted and improved, forming a more complete system of the theory system of Physiocracy.

The theoretical system of Physiocracy takes “natural order” as its philosophical foundation and “net product” (“produit net”) as its theoretical core. Its economic ideas find their concentrated embodiment in the Tableau économique. Physiocracy held that, like in nature, in human society there existed a natural order that is arranged by God, in line with reason, and independent of human will. In addition to the natural order, there was also a man-made order, which is manifested in the socio-economic and political system, as well as in the provisions of laws and decrees. Physiocracy holds that if the artificial order conforms to the natural order, the society will be in a healthy state, and the only way to realize the natural order is to abolish the State’s interference in the economy and realize economic freedom.

The theoretical core of Physiocracy is the doctrine of net product. They held that money was not real wealth because it could provide neither consumption nor reproduction, and that agriculture was the real source of social wealth, and that only the agricultural sector could provide a net product and realize a real growth of wealth. The net product is in fact the result of the combined action of the land and the forces of nature, and the doctrine of net product is in fact the doctrine of surplus-value of the Physiocracy. On the basis of net product, Physiocracy divided society into three classes: the productive class, the unproductive class, and the landlord class, thus examining for the first time in the history of economic doctrines the reproduction and circulation of social capital. These ideas of Physiocracy find their concentrated embodiment in Quesnay's Tableau économique.

The whole theoretical system of Physiocracy is dressed in the cloak of feudalism, but its essence was the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. This theoretical system was the “first systematic conception of capitalist production”, which Marx called “the true fathers of modern political economy”.