Abstract
Autore:
Dal Degan Francesca
Titolo:
"Repubblicanesimo ed economia politica: una chiave di lettura dell’opera di Sismondi"
Liberal or republican? Was
he a Smith acolyte or was he in favour of
State intervention in the economic system?
Sismondi’s political and economic positions
were often discussed and sometimes misunderstood.
A multidisciplinary approach to
the analysis of the intellectual production of
the author, which sweeps through history,
politics, economics and even literature, is
the methodological approach adopted in
this article in order to better understand how
Sismondi perceived the functioning of the
human and social world. In particular, the
article seeks to shed light on his ideas about
the dynamics at the basis of the formation of
links and unity within modern societies, the
cement of society in Hume’s words. Furthermore,
by focusing on the relational dimension
of life the article tries to define his belonging
to a specific political and economic
tradition. This operation is useful to re-articulate
the problem of continuity between the
writings of the young economist and works
like New Principles of Political Economy,
which was written in a second phase of his
economic research. This difficult passage
from a young to a mature economist is defined
as an intellectual conversion from a
classical perspective to a heterodox one. The
thesis of my work is that these two phases of
Sismondi’s scientific research do not respond
to different paradigms, but have to be placed
within his particular conception of republicanism.
Certainly the contexts of application of
republican perspectives changed from Commercial
Wealth (1803), in which the virtuous
economic and social system of the republic
of Geneva was analysed, to New principles
(1819-2nd edition 1827) which deals with
the conflictual life of a society based on industrial
production and concentration of properties
and capital like that of England during
the first decades of the Nineteenth Century.
But Republicanism remains the source in
which Sismondi searches for images and
forms to suggest how to maintain or how to
reconstitute social links which are always
considered at the basis of virtuous behaviour
and the production of unity and wealth within
society.
