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Whose Sismondi? Which Italy? The Reception Italy Gave Sismondi’s Economic Thought

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Economic Thought and Institutional Change in France and Italy, 1789–1914

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Abstract

This article focuses on Sismondi’s role in the development of Italian political thought in the long term. We argue that the scientific community’s interest began with the publication of the Nouveaux Principles, which were regarded as a manual, but ended following Francesco Ferrara’s renewed advocacy. The study of Sismondi in Italy did not proceed from the debate on the law of outlets, which was deemed too ‘theoretical’, and found no champions—as it had in France—among socialist theorists. It focused, rather, on ideas relating more to practical issues of immediate use: state intervention in the economy, seen as the principal novelty in comparison to the prevailing paradigm, and the agricultural economic model. This essay suggests that Sismondi’s influence was short-lived and intermittent; indeed, whilst during the liberal era the economic classics were not interpreted via his work, his theory of economic crises was only rediscovered in the 20th century.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Sismondi 1801, 1803, 1810, [1817]–(1830) for the examples that may be cited on this manner of proceeding.

  2. 2.

    “It is because present-day economists imagine that wealth consists in an indefinite increase in production and in the consumption that they regard as its inevitable consequence that they refuse to see the growing wretchedness of the proletariat, while the value of output and wealth are increasing” (Sismondi 1835).

  3. 3.

    “The fundamental change that has come about in society, in the midst of the universal struggle created by competition and by the immediate effect of said struggle, is the introduction of the proletarian as one of the human conditions, the proletarian, whose name is ancient, being borrowed from the Romans, but whose existence is entirely new. In the Roman Republic, the proletarians were the men with no property, who paid no taxes, and whose sole bond to their native land was via the progeny (proles) that they gave it; for, like ourselves, the Romans had noted that those people have the largest families, who, having nothing, put themselves to no trouble to raise them” (Sismondi 1837, II: 34).

  4. 4.

     “I can hardly wait for this latest work [New Principles] to be read and appraised by colleagues such as yourself, for I feel strongly that I am going to attack powerful philosophical prejudices, but never have I had such a firm conviction of having arrived at the truth, never have I felt that I was serving the cause of mankind, by attacking errors of the greatest importance for the fate of the entire existence of the poor”; letter from Sismondi to James Mackintosh (London), Paris, 18 March 1819.

  5. 5.

    See Sismondi (1836, I, p. 1) for the final elaboration of the concept.

  6. 6.

    Augello and Guidi (2000)

  7. 7.

    See Augello (2013, I, 1, pp. 229–248).

  8. 8.

    Cagnazzi (1813, p. 45).

  9. 9.

    For his own part, Sismondi gave up reading the classic Italian economists included in Pietro Custodi's major compendium (Sismondi 1803–1805, 1816), published in the Napoleonic capital, but held Giuseppe Pecchio in high esteem as an un-provincial thinker and, despite not being acquainted with him, read the Storia della economia pubblica in Italia [History of the Public Economy in Italy] (Pecchio 1829), in which Custodi's publishing undertaking culminated.

  10. 10.

    See Sofia (2012).

  11. 11.

    Say (1820) had identified the need to respond to some parts of Malthus’ work (1820) which directly attacked a number of his theories (the law of outlets, ‘immaterial’ goods and ‘unproductive’ consumption) presented in Chap. 22 of the first edition of the Traité (1803, entitled Des débouchés—On Outlets) and in Chap. 15, under the same heading, in subsequent editions of the work. Apart from Malthus' theory, Say's letters also referred directly to the Genevan, who was the first (Sismondi 1819b; 1820a, b) to respond to the law of outlets. From Paris Say sent his essay to Sismondi in Geneva, together with a letter, 16 August 1820 (Eyguesier 2013). Say's five letters (1821) in the Antologia were not published in full but as excerpts and translated by the abbot Domenico de Vecchi (1768–1852), a lecturer in theoretical and experimental physics at Siena University. Say's second article (1824) in the Antologia was taken from the Paris Revue Encyclopédique of the same year, and Sismondi was able to respond to him in the second edition of the Nouveaux Principes (1827).

  12. 12.

    Say (1821, 1824).

  13. 13.

    McCulloch (1823).

  14. 14.

    The article on economic balance (Sur la balance des consommations avec les productions) was subsequently re-printed in the second edition of the Nouveaux Principles (Sismondi [1827] 1991).

  15. 15.

    Sismondi (1823, 1824).

  16. 16.

    See Landucci (1838).

  17. 17.

    “(…) on more than one occasion, I called for the intervention of the State to regulate the progress of wealth, instead of reducing political economy to the simplest and apparently most liberal motto of laisser faire et laisser passer”; Sismondi ([1827] 1991, p. 7).

  18. 18.

    Forti (1865, p. 75).

  19. 19.

    Sismondi (1836, p. 102).

  20. 20.

    See Coppini (2001); Cini (2014).

  21. 21.

    Ricardo (1821, Chap. XXXI: On machinery).

  22. 22.

    Lapi (1824).

  23. 23.

    Bosellini (1826, p. 196).

  24. 24.

    Bosellini (1827, p. 14).

  25. 25.

    Ricardo (1821, pp. 501–502).

  26. 26.

    The only member of the Saint-Simon circle that Sismondi appreciated was Michel Chevalier, because he thought his contributions to the Journal des Débats referred to his own political economics (Ricci 2008, p. 426).

  27. 27.

    Bonald (1796, I, pp. 272–273).

  28. 28.

    Rubichon (1811, p. 226).

  29. 29.

    Blanqui (1838, p. 75).

  30. 30.

    See Li Donni and Simon (2011).

  31. 31.

    Montgomery Stuart (1860).

  32. 32.

    See Febvre (1935).

  33. 33.

    A quantitative assessment of historical output between the wars shows that Sismondi was regarded more as a historian, and “pioneer” of the early Italian Risorgimento, than as an economist. That trend contrasts with what happened in Switzerland, where Sismondi still tended to be portrayed as a precursor of the social sciences.

  34. 34.

    See Einaudi (1941).

  35. 35.

    See Fanfani (1938); Bellieri (1940).

  36. 36.

    Battista (1940, pp. 30–31).

  37. 37.

    “I propose a return, it may be said, towards medieval conceptions of separate autonomies. But, in England at any rate, corporations are a mode of government which has never ceased to be important and is sympathetic to our institutions” (Keynes 1926, p. 186).

  38. 38.

    Augello (2013, I.3, pp. 1513–1538).

  39. 39.

    Supino (1907, p. 37).

  40. 40.

    Sismondi (1936, p. 198).

  41. 41.

    Bresciani Turroni (1942, p. 227).

  42. 42.

    It is worth bearing in mind that Sismondi also reviewed the work of Tuscan economist Giovanni Fabbroni not in an Italian journal but in the Bibliothèque Universelle (Sismondi 1819a).

  43. 43.

    In the language of Italian economists of the time, the public authorities' action in economic affairs was usually referred to as intervention by the social powers, intended as guidance, stimulus, support and compensation for the weakness of private initiatives.

  44. 44.

    Sismondi (1837, pp. 278–330).

  45. 45.

    The work was published in translation in Tübingen, see Sismondi (1805), by a veterinary surgeon with an interest in agronomy, Johann Burger (1773–1842), who presented it as an educational manual for students.

  46. 46.

    Mirabeau (1769, p. VI).

  47. 47.

    It is worth remembering that a crucially important impetus to the debate on agricultural management methods stemmed from a competition in 1821, whose aim was to assess the economic benefit of share farming compared to tenancies. In this specific context, with the emphasis on discussing the agrarian system, both the Tableau and the Nouveaux Principes remained marginal, whilst the Etudes enjoyed a critical assessment.

  48. 48.

    Sismondi (1837, p. 14).

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Letizia Pagliai

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    Riccardo Soliani

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Pagliai, L. (2017). Whose Sismondi? Which Italy? The Reception Italy Gave Sismondi’s Economic Thought. In: Soliani, R. (eds) Economic Thought and Institutional Change in France and Italy, 1789–1914. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25354-1_4

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