Books

First edition of Say's utopia, his first publication, written in response to a competition organised by the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. "Say conceived of Olbie as an effort to solve the great problem thrown up by the Revolution: France's failure to establish a stable republic. In Olbie Say squarely confronted the question of how to establish a stable republic and especially how to establish the citizen virtues necessary for a stable republic. His answer is something of a combination of Adam Smith and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and involves remaking society from the ground up, without coercion. He recommends a free economy, the practice of industry and frugality, a widely-shared prosperity, a virtuous and exemplary elite, popular enlightenment, and an understanding of human happiness that revolves around moderation and a stable family life" (Trepanier, p. 111). The work illustrates "the state of [Say's] thinking on the topics of industrialism, social class and gender, the relationship between civil society and economic progress and that between civic virtue and economic analysis before he published the first edition of his Traité d'économie politique in 1803" (Forget, p. 10). As the work treats the question from an economic viewpoint, it can be seen as a preface to his later work. Say proposed a new economic order which would lead to a well-ordered share in the general wealth, rather than either the vast inequality of the ancien régime, or the destructiveness of the Terror. This greater equality would be effected in part by free market economics, an economic basis notably not shown in most of the utopias and dystopias of the following two centuries. The work is bound second with two other works on political economy: i) ROEDERER, Pierre-Louis. Mémoires d'économie publique, de morale et de politique. Paris: de l'imprimerie du Journal de Paris [1799]. Part one only. ii) BOISAYMÉ, Jean-Marie-Joseph du. Examen de quelques questions d'économie politique. Paris: chez Pelicier, 1823. Inscribed on the half-title "hommage de l'auteur". Einaudi 5117; not in Goldsmiths'; INED 4109; Kress B 4266. Evelyn L. Forget, The Social Economics of Jean-Baptiste Say: Markets and Value, 1999; Lee Trepanier, The Free Market and the Human Condition, 2014. Three works bound in a single vol., octavo (196 x 122 mm). Early 19th-century marbled calf, smooth spine tooled in gilt with black label, marbled endpapers, brown speckled edges. Neatly restored at extremities, faint damp mark in fore margin towards rear else contents clean. A very good copy.