Concept
Political economy
Overview
study of production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Political economy is discussed.
An economic force, or tendency, can be likewise distinctly observed, although other influences, working at the same time, prevent the expected effect from following its cause. It is, in short, the aim of political economy to investigate the laws which govern the phenomena of material wealth. (Cf. Cossa, “Guide,” chap. iii.)
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph
The former method is the one which political economy had adopted in the past at its inception.
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
a chapter is titled for it; the book is about it; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
_I. Objects and Methods._ Political economy is, in the widest sense, the science of the laws controlling the production and exchange of the material necessities of life in human society. Production and exchange are two entirely different functions. Production may exist without exchange, exchange--since there can only be exchange of products--cannot exist without production.
Friedrich Engels, Landmarks of Scientific Socialism
names the idea; a chapter is titled for it; states what it is
To this definition is frequently appended a familiar illustration. Political Economy, it is said, is to the state, what domestic economy is to the family.
John Stuart Mill, Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign. The different progress of opulence in different ages and nations, has given occasion to two different systems of political economy, with regard to enriching the people. The one may be called the system of commerce, the other that of agriculture. I shall endeavour to explain both as fully and distinctly as I can, and shall begin with the system of commerce. It…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
a chapter is titled for it; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Political economy
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Thomas Carlyle
- John Stuart Mill
- Karl Marx
- Dugald Stewart
- Adam Smith
- Thomas Sowell
- Max Weber
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
- Intellectual
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- John Venn
- Sergei Bulgakov
- Marquis de Condorcet
- Young Marx
- Otto Neurath
- Charles Babbage
- Luce Irigaray
- Immanuel Wallerstein
- Louis Althusser
- Marx/Engels Collected Works
- Gabriel Biel
- Pierre Leroux
- James Frederick Ferrier
Related ideas
- Muqaddimah
- Ethnicity
- History
- Distribution of wealth
- Game theory
- Harvard University Press
- Historian
- Philosophy
- Equity (economics)
- International trade
- Interdisciplinarity
- John Stuart Mill
- Karl Marx
- Politics (Aristotle)
- Social choice theory
- Adam Smith
- Sociology
- Ibn Khaldun
- William Stanley Jevons
- Economic policy
- Noam Chomsky
- Classical economics
- Psychology
- Conceptual model
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of British philosophy.