The tableau économique and the doctrine of sterility

Abstract

Adam Smith held that the physiocrats' doctrine of the sterility of trade and industry rested upon an oversight or a false conclusion. The allegedly sterile class reproduces annually the prerequisites of its own production; it replaces the value of its own consumption and maintains in existence the ‘stock or capital’ that employs it. Farmers, admittedly, produce a net product over and above this, a free rent to the owner of land. Smith does not question this fundamental distinction. But the superior productivity of the one class does not ‘render the other barren or unproductive’, Even though no net product is created, the latter's activity is none the less productive-reproductive-in the same sense as a marriage that brings forth only a son and a daughter. The artisan who performs a piece of labour worth ten pounds contributes in fact precisely that much to ‘the real revenue of the society’, to the ‘annual produce of land and labour’, quite irrespective of whether at the same time he may have consumed goods to a similar value. This being so, the aggregate value of what has been produced and consumed in the period in question is not ten but twenty pounds.¹

This article is part of a study completed in February, 1960.

This article is part of a study completed in February, 1960.

Notes

This article is part of a study completed in February, 1960.