of the world-market; still, there asserts itself here a deeper antagonism of principles which constantly recurs between true English and true French[1] Political Economy. Boisguillebert sees, in fact, only the material substance of wealth, its use-value, the enjoyment[2] of it, and considers the capitalistic form of labor, i. e. the production of use-values as commodities and the exchange of those commodities, as the natural social form in which individual labor attains its end. When he is, therefore, confronted with the specific character of capitalistic wealth as in the case of money, he sees in it the usurping interference of extraneous elements and gets into a rage about the capitalist system of labor in one form while utopian-like he praises it in another.[3] Boisguillebert furnishes us with proof that one may
- ↑ But not Romance Political Economy, since the Italians re-produce the contrast between the English and French economists in the two respective schools of Naples and Milan, while the Spaniards of the earlier period are either pure Mercantilists; modified mercantilists like Ustariz; or, like Jovellanos (see his Obras, Barcelona, 1839-40), hold to the "golden mean" with Adam Smith.
- ↑ "La véritable richesse . . . jouissance entière, non seulement des besoins de la vie, mais même de tous les superflus et de tout, ce qui peut fair plaisir à la sensualité," Boisguillebert, "Dissertation sur la nature de la richesse," etc., l. c., p. 403. But while Petty was a frivolous, rapacious and unprincipled adventurer, Boisguillebert, though an intendant under Louis XIV, championed the interests of the oppressed classes with a daring that was equal to his keenness of mind.
- ↑ The French Socialism of the Proudhon type suffers from the same national hereditary disease.
