What is physiocracy?

It is known that France, during the 18th century, was the country in which ideas were most likely to boil over, and this in various spheres, from the political and ideological to the economic and social plane. It was in this century that the Enlightenment, and the French branch of this movement was characterized by the banners of freedom, equality, human and citizen rights, etc. All these values ​​were the source of a large part of the political trends of the 19th century, such as the nationalism, O socialism it's the liberalism. With regard to specific reflection on the issue of commercial activity, production of wealth, etc., the so-called Physiocrat tradition, or simply, stood out in the 18th century. physiocracy. But what is physiocracy? Who were your representatives?

THE word "physiocracy" is formed by two Greek radicals, physis, which means nature, and Kratos, whose usual meaning is government, or order. Therefore, the broadest sense of the word is: government of nature. It was in this sense that the Physiocrats understood what we now call economics. These thinkers believed in the existence of something like a “science of the natural order”, whose objective was to point out correspondences between nature and life in society.

According to this doctrine, largely elaborated by FrancoisQuesnay, there was a primacy of agriculture about other forms of business relationships. This is because agriculture was the only form of authentic production, as it generates a product that comes directly from the environment natural, is not something that undergoes transformation in its natural essence, as is the case of products manufactured by industry. For Quesnay, there were three classes that made up modern society: the agricultural class, which is in the base of wealth generation, the owner class and the barren class, composed of industries. Each depended intimately on the other, forming a cycle.

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In addition, the Physiocrats also defended the right to private property and market freedom and fiercely criticized the mercantilist system, until then in vogue. It belongs to one of the physiocrats, Vincent de Gournay, the famous phrase that became the motto of liberal economic doctrine countries a few years later: "Laissez faire, laissez passer, le monde va de lui même", which means: “Let it be, let it go, the world will go by itself”.

As critics of mercantilism, the Physiocrats, like their Enlightenment contemporaries, defended enlightened despotism, that is, they believed that the absolutism monarch should abdicate some of the political assumptions that underpinned his government as a way to give more freedom of action for his subjects, especially with regard to the right to property and the exercise of freedom, as well highlighted by researcher José Guilherme Merkior:

The leading proponents of progressive absolutism in Western Europe, the French economists known as physiocrats (though not endorse the concept of social contract), made a distinction between ''legal despotism'' and simple despotism, speaking of a monarchy functional as an autocracy, identified with the protection of liberty and property, intelligently abstaining from the free game from the market. [1]

GRADES

[1] MERQUIOR, José Guilherme. Liberalism: ancient and modern. Trans. Henrique de Araújo Mesquita. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2014. P. 70.

By Me. Cláudio Fernandes