Lombard Enlightenment and Classical Political Economy

Abstract

This paper discusses the formative steps of ‘Classical’ Political Economy under the joint influence of the Italian and Scottish Enlightenment. Pietro Verri is a leading figure of the Italian Enlightenment and he belongs to the Lombard branch of the Italian School of Political Economy (sometimes named ‘School of Milan’) during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Schumpeter's treatment of the ‘School of Milan’ describes Pietro Verri as ‘the most important pre-Smithian authority on Cheapness-and-Plenty’. A careful canvass of the texts substantiates Schumpeter's suggestion. Verri stands out as a key figure in the transition from Physiocracy to the Smithian system.

Keywords:

• Political economy
• Verri
• Italian Enlightenment

Acknowledgements

A more extended draft of this paper was the Blanqui Lecture read at the XIII ESHET Annual Conference in Thessaloniki, April 2009. The author is grateful to Luigino Bruni, Roberto Scazzieri and the participants to the Camhist Seminar at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in May 2009.

Notes

1 Venturi (1983).

2 The ‘School of Milan’ is sometimes spoken of as the core of the ‘Lombard Enlightenment’. Cp. Quadrio Curzio (1996) and Porta (2009).

3 Schumpeter (1954, part 2, ch. 3, sec. 4d: 177).

4 For a discussion on the concept of economia civile, see Bruni and Zamagni (2007) and the Dizionario di economia civile (Bruni and Zamagni 2009). Also Jossa et al. (2007) and Stapelbroeck (2007a).

5 In a similar vein, for example, G. Romagnosi (in the nineteenth century) would discuss ‘civil competition’ and ‘civilizing processes’ in the economy (cp. Quadrio Curzio 1996). For other similar instances in the Italian tradition, see Quadrio Curzio (2007).

6 Sraffa (1931), Venturi (1978) and Reinert (2007).

7 Bianchini (2002) offers one of the best treatments of the pervasive influence of the spirit of empirical science on Political Economy in Italy through the modern age.

8 For more discussion on Mercantilism, see, in part, Magnusson (1994) and Coleman (1969).

9 See Murphy (1997).

10 See Sonenscher (2007: 192, for example). He argues that the idea was that the world had reached the stage – in Mirabeau's words – of ‘indispensable revolutions, of the collapse and fatal end of the effects of modern politics and their entirely mercantile and fiscal principles’. Physiocracy – the rule of Nature – was to provide the ‘only barrier against this terrifying prospect’: it merely put in analytic and sophisticated form the ‘widely shared view that the modern world's overcommittment to industry, trade, empire, war and debt could not last’ (Sonenscher 2007: 254–5).

11 See Robertson (2005).

12 A perceptive view of the monetary debate at the time is given by Cesarano (1990).

13 Cp. Quadrio Curzio and Scazzieri (1986, 2008).

14 Schumpeter (1954).

15 As Cossa (1892) would write, Count Pietro Verri is inferior to Beccaria in ingenuity and scientific culture, but he by far outpaces him as an economist.

16 Only at present, after two and a half centuries, are we able to appreciate Beccaria's as an economist of law. For a long time the idea prevailed that he was a genius in public law with little or no connection with Political Economy. That idea is not only defective in itself: it is also utterly unconvincing historically.

17 At the time, Milan was not yet the seat of a university in the proper sense of the term, but it was the policy of Maria Theresia to foster the development of the Scuole Palatine as a kind of ‘Institute for Advanced Studies’, designed to outperform Pavia, the medieval university town 20 miles south of Milan.

18 Verri (1760a). The first draft of this work was produced by Pietro Verri during his stay in Vienna in 1760. The work was then first published in 1764 in Il Caffé, the periodical founded in Milan by Verri himself. As noted above, Il Caffé became a product of the intellectual group established by Verri under the name of Accademia dei Pugni.

19 An Edizione Nazionale is a critical edition of the works of an author of recognized outstanding significance. It is approved and financed by the Secretary of State for Culture and the Environment on the advice of the Parliament. A Scientific Committee is in charge of supervising the work on each National Edition.Verri's archives, at the Mattioli Foundation, provide an outstanding example worldwide. They are fully described in Panizza and Costa (2000). See also the ASE-SIE: Archivio storico degli Economisti, accessible through the website of the Società Italiana Economisti (Italian Economic Society).

20 Volume II of the National Edition of Verri's Works was awarded the 2007 ESHET prize for the best monograph.

21 A locus classicus of moral Newtonianism is to be found in Adam Smith's Essays on Philosophical Subjects, and more particularly in his essay on the history of Astronomy. Following Hume on the method of the new science and on the connection or association of ideas, Smith is led to emphasize the idea of connection, thus turning a treatment on the physical world into something of interest in the realm of morals and politics. This is what Cohen (1980: esp. ch. 3) calls ‘Newtonian style’. See also Cremaschi (1984, 2009).

22 The opening sentence of the Discorso sulla economia politica declares that ‘[h]uman societies which know no other needs than the physical have, of necessity, little or no reciprocal trade’ (cp. Groenewegen 1986: 4–5).

23 ‘L'eccesso de' desiderj sopra il potere è la misura della infelicità’, in Introduzione to the Discorso sulla felicità, Edizione Nazionale, vol. 3, p. 198. Verri's theory, as hinted above, explicitly moves from Maupertuis, who proposed to measure pleasure and pain and argued that the total amount of pain exceeds the total amount of pleasure, as we saw above in the previous section.

24 These important links between Verri's work on happiness and his analysis of political economy are aptly brought out by Francioni (1999: esp. 376 ff) in his brilliant analysis of the substantial transformation of Verri's text in the transition from the Meditazioni sulla felicità of 1763 to the Discorso sulla felicità of 1781.

25 It is important to observe that overcoming the unavoidable relational difficulties of human life becomes possible (in Verri's view) due to two ‘natural principles’ ruling the human heart: compassion (better translated as sympathy) and man's natural bent for friendship. See the section ‘Dei movimenti del cuore’, § 7 of Discorso sulla felicità (Nat. Edn., III, pp. 256–64). Verri, incidentally, was familiar with Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments in the French edition under the title Métaphysique de l' âme. Creative enjoyment of human beings is itself the product of a special movement toward the others. Sociability is an essential ingredient of Verri's Political economy. The point is analysed by G. Francioni in his introduction to the Discorso sulla felicità, Nat. Edn., III, pp. 155–94 (esp. 176–82). The issue is also at the centre of significant links of the two main ‘branches’ (as we have called them above) of the Italian school. See Stapelbroeck (2007a, 2007b) and Robertson (2005). Cp. Bruni and Sugden (2007).

26 P. Verri ‘Gli studi utili’, Il Caffè, vol. I, sheet xxviii; cit., pp. 311–18 (see p. 315). Concerning utility, we shall see presently that Verri's thinking can be encompassed within what has been called ‘an accomplished rendering of the Italian utility-cum-scarcity version of the natural-law theory’ (Hutchison 1988: 304) within limits only. In particular, the active meaning of the term ‘utility’ should never be forgotten. That undoubtedly makes of Verri a rather more interesting animal than a mere precursor of the marginal utility theory.

27 Society, in fact, is analysed, ever since the Meditazioni of 1763, as ‘industriosa riunione di molte forze cospiranti’ based on a ‘patto’, the end of which is ‘il ben essere di ciascuno-, il che si risolve nella felicità pubblica o sia la maggiore felicità possibile divisa colla maggiore uguaglianza possibile’.

28 Discorso sull'indole del piacere e del dolore, in Verri (1781: sec. xi) (‘Il dolore precede ogni piacere ed è il principio motore dell'uomo’); cp. Edizione Nazionale, vol. 3, pp. 131 and 134–5.

29 The idea that the only real thing is pain – while happiness is, in fact, negative pain – was debated throughout the eighteenth century; it appears to embody a neo-stoic view on self-control. The contrary view of two principles, pleasure and pain (comparable in algebraic terms), bears a more neo-epicurean imprint. Differently from Verri, Bentham would side with the latter view. Verri's line of descent came from Locke's analysis of ‘uneasiness’ and was shared by Genovesi and other authors. The issue is discussed by Guidi (2007); cp. also the Introduction by S. Contarini to Pietro Verri's Discorso sull'indole del piacere e del dolore, in the Edizione Nazionale (2003–: vol. III, pp. 25–61. In Verri's analysis there is also the novel remark that, in measuring pleasure and pain, of the two fundamental dimensions of intensity and duration it is intensity that matters more to the subject compared with duration (see Verri's Discorso, sec. X, in Edizione Nazionale 2003–: vol. III, pp. 123–5), which appears to correspond closely to the phenomenon of ‘duration neglect’ discussed by Kahneman in various places (see, for example, Kahneman 2003: 1465). See also Porta (2009a).

30 See Porta and Scazzieri (2002: esp. 95 ff).

31 See Verri (1986: esp. § vii, 24–6).

32 In Reflections on the corn laws, cp. Edizione Nazionale, II.2, p. 248.

33 On the formative stages of Verri's political economy, see Venturi (1978, 1990: esp. ch. 3). Also Capra (2002: esp. ch. 6–8).

34 This is akin to the distinction made by Hannah Arendt (1958), where the author separates labor from work as ingredients (together with action) of her vita activa. Similarly animal laborans is different from homo faber, in Arendt's language.

35 Verri, 1986a, section xiii, p. 42.

36 The similarity is noticed by P.D. Groenewegen (1999: 702–3).

37 Verri (1986a: § iii, p. 11). Here, as well as elsewhere in same book (see in part, 1986a: § xiii,pp. 43–4), Verri clearly, although implicitly, seems to refer to the standpoint taken by David Hume on the issue, particularly in the latter's Essays of 1741/42. On the precise identification of Verri's reference on this point, the English edition of Meditazioni has a useful footnote (Verri 1986a: 43, n. 17). It should be recalled that Verri's Meditazioni do not include the usual set of references and quotations, which would be expected in a fully worked out scientific treatise, which the Meditazioni, by open admission of the author, certainly are not.

38 On the notion of ‘automatic mechanism’, see for example Schumpeter (1954: part. I, ch. VII, §§ 4 and 5a).

39 Again, as noted in the previous section of this paper, wherever ‘unflagging industry and flourishing trade in a nation gradually add to the universal commodity, this will provide a new spur to industry and will increase the number of contracts, encourage the flow of internal circulation and lead to the introduction of new comforts and conveniences, to a refinement of the arts and crafts and to the invention of ways of perfecting them and speeding up their production. Everywhere cultivation, good living and prosperity will be diffused’ (Verri 1986a: 42).

40 Going deeper on this important point is beyond the scope of this paper. For the significance of this concept of competition, particularly in the Italian tradition of economic thought, see Einaudi (1949).

41 Among others, Genovesi. Although Verri does share a positive approach to sociability with the Neapolitans, and with Genovesi in particular, he (particularly in his mature works) develops a difference with Genovesi on luxury and saving. Cp. the Editorial Introduction (by the present author) to vol. II.2 of the Nat. Edit. of Verri. See also Porta (2009b: esp. 253–56).

42 See also the present author's Editorial Introduction to Vol. II.2 of the National Edition of Verri.

43 The first three points spelt out here have been discussed above. This last point on taxation has not been treated in this paper: it is the best known element to prove that Smith did gain something from his reading of Verri, as also Schumpeter suggests (1954: II.3.7, p. 205). For deeper analysis of Verri on taxation, see Bognetti (1999).

44 Still most interesting and informative, among other sources, is the paper by Einaudi (1933) on the Italian items in Adam Smith's library. Smith's early commitment to learning modern languages, including Italian, is reported by Dugald Stewart in his well-known Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith (Smith 1980: 269–353; see part I, 10, p. 272). See also Smith's own essay ‘Of the Affinity between certain English and Italian Verses’ (1980: 220–8). See also Rae (1895: 23) and Ross (1995: 77).

45 I am grateful to Piero Barucci, who expresses stimulating criticisms (to which I shall respond more fully in my forthcoming book on a new interpretation of the Classical School of Political Economy) toward the interpretation outlined here. See Barucci (2008).

46 Let me refer the reader, in particular, to the work of Bellanca (2000). See also Augello and Guidi (2008).

47 We mainly refer here to the work of Luigi Pasinetti. We may simply mention, in addition, that another case within the Anglo-Italian school (a case not mentioned in the text), concerns value theory. It should be recalled that Sraffa developed a Classical-Marxian model by taking inspiration from an Italian tradition of Marxism in which the labour theory of value had almost no role. See, for example, Bellanca (1997).

48 Pasinetti takes an interesting view of some of the recent happiness literature in his ‘Paradoxes of Happiness in Economics’, in Bruni and Porta (2005: 336–43).

49 See especially Book 3 of Pasinetti (2007). It is hardly surprising that, in a reconstruction of the experience of the Italian economists during the post-war years, Pasinetti's experience is linked with the Italian tradition by Quadrio Curzio and Rotondi ‘Sulle ricerche di economia politica in Cattolica’, in Garofalo and Graziani (2004: 361–422).

50 Pasinetti (1981, 2007). Let me refer here also to Porta (2005, forthcoming 1, forthcoming 2). Robertson (2005), who treats almost exclusively the Neapolitan branch of the Italian School, makes quite a convincing case for the line of continuity between the Italian School and the Scottish Enlightenment. Vivian Walsh (2003) deals with Pasinetti's structural dynamics as an offspring of Cambridge, but he emphasizes that it exhibits special characters leading to place it near what he calls ‘Sen's enriched classicism’. A contact between Pasinetti's structural dynamics and Sen's theory of capabilities is a serious perspective. Both are connected with Cambridge in some way, while at the same time both are linked to the Enlightenment: explicitly to Smith and implicitly to the Italian School as the source of the tradition of economia civile.