Book Reviews 5 13

whatever was necessary to maintain the highest possible level of capital accumu-
lation. It so happened that in the early 1800s this goal was best pursued by using
laissez-faire as a “tactical” device, while in a later period, under ‘good govern-
ment,’ intervention was more acceptable. Kanth’s argument deserves the attention
of anyone interested in the formation of classical economic thought in the nine-
teenth century.

Vanderbilt University WILLIAM

D. SOCKWELL
A N D WILLIAM
0. THWEATT

Petty: the origins of political economy. By Alessandro Roncaglia. Armonk, New

York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1985. Pp. 118. $25.00.

In the first sentence of his Theories of surplus value, Karl Marx states: “The
founder of modem political economy is Sir William Petty.” Marx then explains
Petty’s importance in a lengthy subchapter. Schumpeter replies that Petty was
obliged for his reputation simply to “Marx’s decree to the effect that Petty was
the founder of Economics.” Roncaglia himself gives the main credit for his Petty
research to his professor at Cambridge, Piero Sraffa; but it seems obvious that
much of his zest comes from the Marxian accolade.
Notwithstanding Schumpeter’s denial that Petty ever entertained a concept of
“surplus value,” the concept still plays a prominent part in Roncaglia’s study.
Roncaglia credits Petty with an awareness of “surplus value” a century before
Adam Smith. Petty’s “surplus” was, to be sure, vastly different from the “surplus”
that appears in the work of Marx. Petty’s “surplus” arises mainly in agriculture,
as the landlord appropriates a portion of the produce of land and labor, without
arresting the productive exertions of either. Both Roncaglia and Marx comment
on Petty’s similarity to the Physiocrats, and suggest that the true lineage of polit-
ical economy flows from Petty to Cantillon to the Physiocrats to Ricardo. Smith
is conspicuously omitted.
In close association with the discussion of “surplus value,” Roncaglia also
searches Petty’s work for concepts of exploitation and of a labor theory of value.
Petty does, indeed, show an understanding of exploitation, but with no trace of
indignation. Assuming that labor in general could not long continue to be paid
more than a bare subsistence wage, he shows determination to emulate other
landlords in extracting surplus from his own Irish acres. Though subsistence-level
wages are understood to be set by the market, Petty suggested that the hours of
labor might be increased at a given level of wages. This is analytically similar to
Marx, despite the great difference in social norms. Roncaglia notes that Petty
lived in an era of “primary accumulation,” so that behavior that would be anti-
social in the time of Marx might have been appropriate in an era two centuries
earlier.
The use of a labor theory of value can be traced earlier than Petty’s era, but
Roncaglia commends Petty for employing the concept of “labor” in an abstract
fashion, including quantities of land and of capital with each dose of labor. Petty

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 5 I4 History of Political Economy I9:3 ( I 987)

is credited with originating the “triad” theory; that land, labor, and capital are
distinct classes of resources that cooperate in the productive process. His most
famous quotation is: “Labor is the father of wealth, as lands are the mother.” As
might be expected in that pre-capitalist era, capital comes out a poor third among
these productive resources. Nevertheless, Roncaglia finds “bourgeois” sentiments
in Petty, for which he shows leniency on account of Petty’s stage in history.
One reason for Roncaglia’s apparent admiration of Petty is his freedom from
“absolutist” natural-law concepts that encumber and flaw the reasoning of Adam
Smith. Roncaglia correctly observes that Pufendorf meant nothing to Petty. In-
stead, Petty’s political ideal was the Hobbesian Leviathan, which was quite amo-
ral in its behavior, though providing qualified guarantees for the life and property
of its subjects. Petty’s analogies are generally more corporeal than mechanical.
Petty and Hobbes, both practicing physicians, held an image of the state as an
artificial body.
Petty’s philosophy was mechanistic, deterministic, and materialistic, in keep-
ing with the prevailing outlook of an age dominated by Hobbes, Bacon, Des-
cartes, and Newton. This is expressed in repeated terms of contempt for
metaphysics, for scholasticism, for comparatives and superlatives, and for nearly
any concept that could not be quantified. Nevertheless, in a systematic sense,
Petty’s political economy was less mechanical than that of Adam Smith. Petty’s
claim, which is endorsed by Roncaglia, is that he has emancipated himself from
moral judgments other than the necessary requisition on the state to provide
“peace and plenty.” To non-Marxists, Petty is best known as the creator of politi-
cal arithmetic. This is usually described as a prototype of economic statistics,
which is instrumental to economics. Adam Smith referred to political arithmetic
in a condescending way. But Roncaglia assigns a much larger role to political
arithmetic in Petty’s work, indicating that it was an integral part of his economic
system. Petty’s use of it expresses his determination to eschew all reasoning not
quantitatively defined.
In the chapters on money, on international trade, and on the fiscal system,
Roncaglia is ingenious in discovering anticipations of classical economic doctrine
in Petty’s works. The resemblances are well documented, and the work itself is
compact and well organized. We would have preferred more discursiveness, with
a closer relationship to the stages in Petty’s own intellectual growth.
Even Marx, whose assessment of Petty is one of the highest, notes that his
flashes of insight are confused, scattered, and disconnected. Roncaglia prefaces
this brief work with a biographical chapter on Petty that falls far short of bringing
his subject to life as a person living and thinking within his own century. Petty
was, at various stages of his career, a surveyor, a demographer, a professor of
music at Oxford, and later professor of anatomy and chancellor, an inventor of
sailboat hulls, a mimic, a member of both the English and the Irish parliaments,
on terms of friendship or intimacy with both the Cromwells and the Stuarts, and
the creator of a vast and enduring family fortune. He was a founding member of
the Royal Society. Like Benjamin Franklin, he was liked for his personal traits
and admired for his achievements.
Roncaglia must be commended for his versatility and self-discipline in produc-

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 Book Reviews 5 15

ing this work in the same year with a book on the international oil market. Ron-
caglia is currently teaching at the University of Rome and is serving as an editor
of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review.

Muskingum Coltege HERBERT

FERGUS
THOMSON

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