ECONOMIC THOUGHT WITHIN ITS HISTORICAL
CONTEXT: A REVISION OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
EL PENSAMIENTO ECONÓMICO EN SU CONTEXTO
HISTÓRICO: UNA REVISIÓN DEL SIGLO XVIII
DOI:
Artículo de Revisión
https://doi.org/10.37135/chk.002.16.12
Recibido: (27/08/2021)
Aceptado: (17/12/2021)
Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo, Facultad de
Ciencias de la Educación, Humanas y Tecnologías,
Riobamba, Ecuador.
cnaranjo@unach.edu.ec
Christian Paúl Naranjo Navas
Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo,
Extensión Cambridge del Centro de Idiomas,
Riobamba, Ecuador.
zoyi_0@hotmail.com
Soraida Grimaldos Urrea
Número 16 / ABRIL, 2022 (194-210)
Christian Paúl Naranjo Navas - Soraida Grimaldos Urrea
CHAKIÑAN. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades / ISSN 2550 - 6722 195
ECONOMIC THOUGHT WITHIN ITS HISTORICAL
CONTEXT: A REVISION OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY
EL PENSAMIENTO ECONÓMICO EN SU CONTEXTO
HISTÓRICO: UNA REVISIÓN DEL SIGLO XVIII
The 18th century went from a state of economic stagnation, which occurred in the last
century, caused by rampant ination, climate change and the Thirty Years’ War, to a state
of economic growth based on population growth, banking expansion and commercial and
agricultural. revolution. These changes founded the technological and social elements
necessary for an era of industrialization that would take shape in the next century. Within
this historical context, the foundations of classical economic thought appear, represented by
Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, etc. The writing carries out a bibliographic
and hermeneutical analysis of the economic thought of the eighteenth century through,
on the one hand, the review of the theoretical contributions of these thinkers and the
most important conclusions made by later scholars, on the other hand, the theoretical
interpretation of the foundations of the economic thought of the eighteenth century. This
analysis is built on six arguments: law and natural order, income, the value of work, trade,
demography, and freedom. The objective of the article is to present the arguments of
the most important thinkers of the eighteenth century as the foundation of a Modernity
characterized by the economic growth based on the free market.
KEYWORDS: 18th century, history of economic thought, liberalism, Capitalism,
economic theory
El siglo XVIII pasa de un estado de estancamiento económico, ocurrido en el siglo pasado,
provocado por la inación galopante, el cambio climático y la Guerra de los Treinta Años,
a un estado de crecimiento económico basado en el crecimiento demográco, la expansión
bancaria, comercial y agrícola. Estos cambios fundaron los elementos tecnológicos y
sociales necesarios para una era de industrialización que tomaría forma en el próximo
siglo. Dentro de este contexto histórico, aparecen los fundamentos del pensamiento
económico clásico, representado por Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, etc.
El escrito realiza un análisis bibliográco y hermenéutico del pensamiento económico
del siglo dieciocho mediante, por un lado, la revisión de los aportes teóricos de estos
pensadores y las conclusiones más importantes realizadas por académicos posteriores,
por otro lado, la interpretación teórica de los fundamentos del pensamiento económico
del siglo XVIII. Este análisis se construye a partir de seis argumentos: la ley y el orden
natural, los ingresos, el valor del trabajo, el comercio, la demografía y la libertad. El
objetivo del escrito es presentar los argumentos de los pensadores más importantes
del siglo XVIII como fundamento de una modernidad caracterizada por el crecimiento
económico y basada en la libertad de mercado.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Siglo XVIII, historia del pensamiento económico, liberalismo,
capitalismo, teoría económica
ABSTRACT
RESUMEN
ECONOMIC THOUGHT WITHIN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT: A REVISION OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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INTRODUCTION
Traditionally, the 18th century extends from
1688 to 1815 under the convention that
homogeneous historical changes are observed
from the Glorious Revolution to the Battle of
Waterloo. This long eighteenth century thus
encompasses a sustained economic growth
that is based on new agricultural techniques,
on population growth, and on the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution, with Great Britain as
the main actor. This prominence is evident not
only in the technological transformations that
promote agriculture and trade, but also in the
impact caused by the theoretical advances of
economic thinkers.
The prosperity of the eighteenth century, which
represents a break with the economic crises
that occurred during the previous century,
opens the spectrum for the appearance of
various economic thinkers who established
the principles of classical liberal thought and
of a western capitalist system. The schools of
economic thought will be represented by the
mercantilists, the Physiocrats, then the classical
thinkers like Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus,
and David Ricardo. Although all agreed that
the forces of the economy could be represented
rationally, there were profound dierences on
best economic practices.
On the one hand, the thinkers of mercantilism
were against international free trade because
they had the conviction of a zero sum: while
some gained from commercial transactions,
others lost; therefore, the best economic policy
was protectionism. On the other hand, the
Physiocrats, and thinkers like Adam Smith and
David Ricardo, were convinced that, through
international trade, nations earned a positive
sum, that is, trade brought prots for both buyers
and sellers. In the free market, while competition
allows better products at lower prices, buyers
can survive and continue to enrich themselves.
Another very clear dierence is the demographic
perspective in relation to economic development.
While Thomas Malthus believed that the increase
in population would bring misery and poverty,
Adam Smith and David Ricardo believed that
population growth came hand in hand with
economic development and that, with the use
of technology, the increase in buyers as well as
the increase in producers would bring prosperity
to the nations. However, this prosperity would
only be possible in a free market where prices
and quantities are established through free
competition.
On the conception of natural law, that is, that
morality can be discovered through reason, the
Physiocrats believed that the economy developed
through natural laws came inherently in the
human being and in their social relationships.
These economic natural laws are based on the
idea that human beings always want to benet,
in the case of buyers, good products at a lower
price, and in the case of producers, lower costs
and higher prots.
The research questions that lead the essay were:
What are the main dierences among the schools
of thought and the economic thinkers? What
are their main similitudes? Is this century the
foundation of a capitalist future? The problem
of the article is the systematic revision of the
development of the economic thought in order to
appreciate the similitudes and dierences, taking
into account that, even though this century is
considered as the philosophical foundation of
the economic thought, its representatives did not
agree in specic issues. Thus, this revision has the
objective is to present the arguments of the most
important thinkers of the eighteenth century as
the foundation of a Modernity characterized by
the economic growth based on the free market.
METODOLOGY
The article has taken into consideration two
main methodological approaches: rst, the
bibliographical; second, the heretical. The
bibliographical approach has become an
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essential tool to discriminate the previous
written works within the topic. Two criteria were
selected for this discrimination: rst, original
works from the authors studied; and, second, the
most relevant analysis published in well known
and cited articles or books about the eighteenth
century and the economic thought that emerged
in this century. In this way, this essay revises the
eighteenth century economic thought within its
historical context.
On the other hand, the hermeneutic approach
has been used to read, interpret and analyze the
most relevant propositions from the dierent
economic schools of thought within the
eighteenth century. These propositions have
been analyzed having in mind their historical
context and their theoretical presuppositions that
come from earlier philosophical and theological
approaches.
The article is divided in two sections. The rst
section builds the historical economic context
in Europe in the eighteenth century. In this
section, the context is built in three areas: the
population growth; the expansion of the central
banking and commerce; and, the agricultural
revolution. The second section presents and
analyses the economic thought of the century
in ve areas: mercantilism; phisiocracy; Adam
Smith; Thomas Malthus; and, David Ricardo.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The 18th century is full of technological and
demographic changes, with relevant economic
thinkers who, although they do not develop
similar theories and, in fact, are critical of each
other, they have a clear homogeneous basis, that
is, the belief that economics can be analyzed
through logic and human nature, in a kind of
rational and coherent science. These economic
thoughts are presented below within their
historical context.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC
CONTEXT
The eighteenth century is rapidly putting aside the
austerity and economic crisis of the seventeenth
century, a crisis born from the Ice Age, ination
and the Thirty Years’ War (De Vries 2009). The
Little Ice Age caused huge economic losses in
the agricultural sectors, as well as the increase of
deaths from hypothermia, the decrease in birth
rates, and greater cases of cannibalism (Working
2019). On the other hand, ination was caused
by the reduction of the agricultural supply, as
well as by the increase in income that came from
raw materials from the New World. Finally, the
Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) destroyed central
Europe, leaving behind millions of deaths and
an immediate famine. This crisis culminated in
a dramatic reduction in the European population
(Zhang, Brecke, Lee, He & Zhang (2007).
Climatic changes gradually diminished during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while
the Peace of Westphalia (1648) had created a
prolonged space of relative peace between the
Catholic and Protestant kingdoms. The return
to social and political stability is evident with
population growth, the expansion of banking
and commerce, and the agricultural revolution
(Spielvogel 2004). This renewed economic
expansion gave a great boost to the beginnings
of industrialization.
POPULATION GROWTH
It is hasty to place causes and eects properly;
nonetheless, the main questions on population
growth are: was economic growth the cause
of population expansion? Or was population
expansion the cause of economic growth?
Although the rst option seems more intuitive,
the most adequate presentation is an evident
positive correlation between both facts. In fty
years, the population of this region grew by
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about fty percent, mainly due to the use of new
food crops such as potatoes and a decrease in
epidemic diseases.
Krause (1958) suggests that if a population is
growing rapidly it must be caused by a decrease
in the death rate or an increase in the fertility
rate, or a combination of both. However, this
argument is based on a problem widely discussed
by Wrigley (1994), the number of births and
deaths far exceeded the number of registered
baptisms and burials. Nonetheless, it is clear that
the improvement of agricultural productivity is
one of the most important elements to understand
the growth of the population (gure 1).
Source: Wrigley 1994:107
Figure 1: Population growth in England, thousands
of people
Europe’s population doubled to nearly 200
million during the eighteenth century (Baird
2010). Likewise, Spielvogel (2004) indicates
that the European population grew from 120
million inhabitants in 1700 to 140 million in
1750, and 190 million in 1790. This change can
be understood by the care of all infants, not only
the rst-born, in addition to pressuring upper-
class women to breastfeed their own children,
and not leaving this practice in the hands of
nurses.
The changing practices of caring for children
helped population growth, although the practices
of infanticide were maintained. Infant death was
the most viable option for food shortages and
economic problems,
until the middle of the 18th century, this
practice of indirect infanticide did not
diminish, which made it easier for people
to become conscious or unconsciously,
some mothers got rid of their children by
suocating them while they slept with
them. (Rodríguez 2018:295)
Population growth forced peasant children to
engage in new forms of paid work, their space
in the labor market increased as demand grew
in Europe and the world. Production expanded
at the end of the century, one of the causes was
the new consumption of rural wage earners, who
bought the same merchandise they produced,
while urban middle-class families enjoyed new
tastes such as books or toys for their children.
EXPANSION OF CENTRAL BANKING
AND COMMERCE
The proliferation of central banking dates back
to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The
most relevant was the Swedish central bank,
founded in 1668, then, in 1694, the Bank of
England. The rst central banks issued private
banknotes that served as currency. Central banks
helped nance government debt, while trying to
sustain price stability through money circulation.
The banking system provided nancial security
to the states, landowners and nobles.
Johan Palmstruch, after several negotiations
with the kings of Sweden, founded the Bank
of Stockholm (1656), the rst Swedish bank.
In 1661, Palmstruch issued the rst banknotes
that could be exchanged for coins at any time.
This form of currency was quickly accepted
by Swedish society. However, the temptations
to issue more notes than the saved coins led
to bankruptcy. In 1668, the Central Bank of
Sweden, Riksens Ständers Bank, was created
from the experience of the Bank of Stockholm,
becoming the oldest central bank in the world
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(Sveriges Riksbank 2020).
In 1694 the Bank of England was created
through the association between King William
III and the merchant William Patterson (1658-
1719), who had become a lender to the crown.
These loans, although they came from private
hands, were made within a central banking
gure. Patterson, unsurprisingly, was its founder
and director, although he resigned after a year,
he is also credited with founding the Royal Bank
of Scotland in 1727. The Bank of England grew
rapidly.
Private banking is proliferating signicantly: by
1750 there were 20 banks; 30 banks in 1765; 50
banks in 1770; and, 70 banks in 1800 (Ashton
2006). Later, in 1800, the Banque de France
was founded to promote economic recovery. In
1774, the banks of Amsterdam were open, the
German princes like the Danish courts borrowed
2 million orins, a debt that multiplied to 12
million (Braudel 1984).
Given the low interest rates, many of the English
capitalists began to invest in the metal industries
and in railways, which stimulated national
growth and production. Also, the production
of textiles was among the most consumed and
exported products, wool, cotton, silk and linen
clothing accounted for two-thirds of England’s
exports at the beginning of the century. By the
early nineteenth century, the textile industry
began its growth journey with the use of steam
machinery, as a result, production increased
considerably (Taylor 1988).
The growing demand for textiles prompted new
forms of production, such as that of Richard
Arkwright (1732-1792), with his invention
known as the water frame. This system consisted
of a rotating frame with a hydraulic wheel.
The water frame could rotate the thread faster.
Because it worked eciently, this system was
adopted in many modern textile factories.
International trade based on manufactures
expanded signicantly during the 18th century,
which produced the high prots and promoted
the development of the industry. In the words of
Spielvogel (2004:660):
From 1726 to 1789, France’s total exports
quadrupled, while intra-European trade,
which made up 75 per cent of these exports
in 1716, comprised only 50 per cent of the
total in 1789. This increase in overseas
trade has made some historians speak of
the emergence of a truly global economy in
the eighteenth century.
Finally, the slave trade between Europe, Africa
and America acquired a special importance for
being one of the most protable commercial
enterprises. The transatlantic slave trade began
in the sixteenth century, and it quickly became
a very protable venture for Portuguese, British,
Spanish, French, and Dutch traders. Rönnbäck’s
(2018) estimates it reached about 11% of the
British economy at the beginning of the 19th
century.
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
Improved agricultural techniques led to higher
yields and better food quality: extension of
farmland, introduction of new crops, and crop
rotation, reallocation of land ownership to
make farms more compact, as well as increased
investment in new machinery, drainage, and
new crop improvement methods. This growth
supported the rapid growth of the population:
from 1700 to 1790, England increased from 5
to 9 million people, Spain increased from 6 to
10 million, Brandergurg-Prussia from 1, 5 to 5.5
million (Spielvogel 2004) although for authors
like Keeridge (2013), the agricultural revolution
is a plausible argument only for the case of Great
Britain and the Netherlands.
Riches (1967) suggests that the changes had
a clear commercial purpose, the spirit of
competition and nancial growth was emerging
in Europe, which led to experimenting with
new methods and new crops. New techniques
were beginning to be explored in Europe such
as crop rotation as the main method to maintain
the fertility of the land; in addition to the
introduction of articial grass, which made it
possible to sustain a greater number of livestock,
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which served as a supplier of natural fertilizer,
while consuming the crops necessary for the new
rotation scheme. The development of cattle was
made possible by their cooperation in the new
farming systems and by the selective breeding
of local cattle.
In Europe, the two-eld crop rotation system was
well known, the rst being turned into pasture
for a time to try to recover some of the nutrients
from the plants. Later, a three-year, three-eld
crop rotation routine was employed, with a
dierent crop in each of the two elds (Allen
1999). Lord Charles Townhend (1674-1738)
invented a four-year crop rotation: wheat in the
rst year and turnips in the second, followed
by barley, with clover in the third, and alfalfa
in the fourth. Similar systems have been found
in the Netherlands. Agriculture in Great Britain
should be divided into three periods. From 1520
to 1739, the production doubled; from 1740 to
1800, production increased by 10 percent; from
1800 to 1850, production grew by approximately
65 percent. Authors such as Hoderness (1989)
propose an even greater increase.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC
CONTEXT
The eighteenthth century is inuenced by
technological changes and economic growth
shipping to Britain rst, and then to all of
Europe and the United States. This century has
been characterized as the point of emergence
of mercantilism rst, then various theoretical
foundations ourished from philosophy, natural
theology, and political thought: from the
Physiocrats of France to classical economists
like Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David
Ricardo.
The one with the greatest impact was Adam
Smith, with his Wealth of Nations, the most
inuential work in economic theory in recent
centuries. Smith armed that a free market
has a natural regulatory pattern, to say: if there
is a shortage of product, the price of products
increases, while, if there is abundance, the prices
will decrease. He opposed the mercantilist
regulations of the markets, although he accepted
government intervention in infrastructure,
communications, and a national defense system.
After Smith, the most inuential are Thomas
Malthus and David Ricardo. The Reverend
Malthus proposed that population growth occurs
geometrically, while food production increases
arithmetically. On the other hand, Ricardo,
proposed the idea of comparative advantage,
that is, countries can have an advantage over
the rest if they specialize in ecient production
of a good. In addition, he proposed the idea of
dierential rent theory and natural price.
Apart from their dierence, all of them agreed
on the nature of economics, meaning a state
where humans behave in a rational way based
on freedom. In the words of John Locke, the
state all men are naturally in is “a state of perfect
freedom to order their actions, and dispose of
their possessions and persons, as they think t,
within the bounds of the law of nature, without
asking leave, or depending upon the will of any
other man” (Mack 2019:11).
MERCANTILISM
Mercantilism appears as the economic thought
from the 16th to the 18th centuries regarding
trade. Its initial purpose was the promotion
of the gold and silver trade as the basis of the
economy of a nation, which required an increase
in exports and a limit to imports such as the
implementation of the Sugar Law of 1764 in the
British Empire, which produced annoyances in
the exporters of the American colony.
The merchants founded a new area of knowledge
through pamphlets on the economic problems
they encountered in their commercial relations.
Many tended to an idea of nationalism that
helps the citizens prot and the nation develop.
Nicholas Machiavelli in his most relevant works,
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the Prince (1531), recommended political and
economic policy regulations (Landreth and
Colander 2006). Mercantilism comes from the
Latin mercāns, popular in the 16th century, yet it
barely appeared in the mid-18th century.
Thoman Mun (1571-1641) is considered to
be the rst of the English mercantilists who
emphasized the importance of trade and the
exchange of merchandise. He claimed that trade
arms the honor of the kingdom because it
enriches the nation and the reputation of the king
(Hinton 1955). The importance of international
trade also lied on the idea of a trade with zero
sum, that is, the commercial gains of one nation
meant the loss of another. This idea was refuted
by David Hume, Adam Smith, and David
Ricardo, who armed that all nations benet
from cooperative trade, on the contrary.
The theory had an important inuence on the
international trade in gold and silver considered
important for the prosperity of nations. At the
same time, the demand for mental increased, the
wealth of a country was measured by the amount
of gold and silver it had. From the seventeenth
century, gold and silver served as a backup,
generally 20%-30% of banknotes. To sustain
this economy, there was a need for a prosperous
agriculture that avoided the importation of food,
foster the increase of maritime power to control
smuggling, and a strong imports tax (Wallerstein
2011).
Mercantilists argued that a strong nation
should have a large, vibrant population that
provides labor, but also becomes a market that
generates strong demand. However, as the
zero-sum conception was widespread, it was
assumed that consumption should be kept to a
minimum, especially for imported luxury goods,
as they consumed valuable foreign exchange.
Saving was a virtue that generate capital and
investments.
The mercantilists would take on later fame
also for their advances in the mathematical
measurement of the economy. William Petty
(1623-1687), English mercantilist, coming from
a poor home, became a sailor, doctor, and the
rst economist to write on economic variables.
He used arithmetic to understand politics and
economics, in his book Political Arithmetic
(1690), he dened the art of reasoning through
gures relevant to the work of the government.
McCormick (2009) argues that Petty’s social
engineering was articulated as a mode of
statistical analysis.
During the second half of the 18th century,
mercantilism would be severely criticized.
Future economic thinkers, those promoters of
laissez-faire argued that there really was no
dierence between domestic and foreign trade.
All trade was benecial to both the merchant
and the public. To this, they denied zero sum
in international trade relations: the amount of
money or resources that a state needed would be
adjusted automatically.
PHISIOCRACY
This movement of economic thinkers emerged
in France around 1750 and had a relevant impact
in subsequent decades, its most relevant thinkers
were Francois Quesnay (1694-1774), Anne
Robert Turgot (1727-1781), and the Marquis
Nicolas Condorcet (1743-1794). They argued
that the economy owed in the same sense as
natural moral laws. Physiocrats believed that
government policies should not interfere with
natural economic laws: the natural order allows
coexistence in society because justice is common
to all human beings and is derived from nature.
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas
developed the idea that reason, common to all,
is the basis for understanding the law of nature,
which is nothing other than the participation of
the eternal law in the rational creature: rational
creatures have a natural inclination to understand
eternal reason (Lott 2016). In the seventeenth
century, John Locke described the state of nature
as a state where man conceived of natural law
as natural rights expressed in life, liberty, and
property.
Likewise, Physiocrats armed that economic
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theory is based on natural law, which governed
the operation of the economy through the
independence of human will. Natural law and the
functioning of the economy are independent of
human will, and could be discovered objectively.
The Physiocrats realized that economic laws
are innate insofar as they are deduced from the
principles of knowledge (Neill 1949). Economy
is nothing more than the application of the
natural order to the government of society.
They proposed that the origin of wealth was
agriculture, underestimating the added value of
manufacturing. They attacked mercantilism not
only because of its large number of economic
regulation. While the mercantilists held that
each nation should regulate commerce and
manufacturing to increase its wealth and power,
the Physiocrats held that labor and commerce
should be freed from all restrictions. Also, while
the mercantilists asserted that coins were the
essence of wealth, the Physiocrats asserted that
wealth consisted of the products of the soil.
Quesnay’s Tableau Economique attempted to
show how an entire economy works, a geometric
representation of the sources and circulation of
wealth and the ows of goods. This will inspire
Adam Smith to theorize about the division of
labor (Mattelart 2007). The landlord receives the
rent of the land, which he spends on products
from artisans and farmers. Artisans (sterile
class) transform agricultural products into edible
products such as using wheat in bread, and by
spending their income on inputs and their own
subsistence. Finally, the farmer, after spending
on inputs, generates a surplus that is delivered in
the form of income.
Physiocrats lay out the basic natural principles
of economics in two ideas: people want to
maximize their prots; and, the prices are
freely adjusted in the market depending on the
need. These principles were understood in the
reduction of production costs, leaving wages
at low levels (Landreth and Colander 2006).
Although they did not present a coherent theory
of prices and their relation to the market, they
emphatically armed that a society improves as
long as its individuals are carried away by their
own interests, and that free competition would
improve market prices.
ADAM SMITH
Adam Smith (1723-1790) is perhaps the most
prominent thinker in the history of economic
thought, especially for the theory of the invisible
hand. He was born in Scotland, at the age of
fteen, he began studying moral philosophy at
Source: Orain and Steiner 2016:32
Figure 2: Tableau Economique
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the University of Glasgow, and at the age of
seventeen he entered Balliol College, Oxford.
In the 1950s, Smith published short essays that
lead him to write his magnicent work Inquiry
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations. In 1759, he published his Theory of
Moral Sentiments, based on the usefulness of
sympathy. His most important contributions are
on moral and political philosophy.
Smith takes an in-depth look at the relationship
between the economy and freedom as an
intertwined sustenance for development. He takes
into account the constant adjustments between
freedom and control, continuity and change,
and hierarchy and equality (Samuel 1977).
These elements are based on the requirement
of a systematic handling of freedom in relation
to the principles of civilization. Adam Smith
(1977 [1776]) argued about market restrictions
as a limitation for freedom and, therefore, for
development, restrictions are to be found in the
same market.
Market freedom would enter into an appropriate
game as long as there is a signicant number of
buyers such as a signicant number of sellers,
the free market as the representation of high
competition between sellers and buyers. Smith
was against monopolies, as well as against
state intervention: the rst, because the price in
monopoly markets is always the highest that can
be achieved; the second, because it can create
overabundance when there is a minimum price,
or it can create scarcity when a maximum price
is imposed.
Smith was concerned with studying the
relationship between the protection of private
property and a just state. In his argumentation on
natural law, he considered property of work as
the just result of eort, that is, property of work
as the fundamental right on which all other more
developed property rights are based (Gronow
2015). The property that each man has in his
own work is the philosophical basis for all other
properties, and is therefore the most sacred and
inviolable. The work is only the last standard
to establish the price of the products, the real
price is the work, while the nominal price is
represented in money.
The voluntary transactions within the mutual
agreement deserves respect and protection
because it becomes the image of a state that
seeks justice. Thus, justice is found in the
protection of labor property and, by extension,
in the protection of private property (Johnson
1990). Negotiation is the basis for maximizing
salary fairly for both parties as it represents the
relationship between individual interests.
Smith argued that the free market is the place
for the emergence of self-interest, which
would promote greater prosperity. The natural
tendency of humans towards self-interest would
create spaces of prosperity that would benet
the whole of society. Hence, Smith explored the
balance between economic individualism and
social morality in his Moral Theory of Feelings,
in which he emphasized that self-control and
prudence can be degraded in the market that
is strongly impersonal, then, the limits of
the market depend on other modes of social
interaction. Smith
paid a great deal of attention to a ourishing
society’s dependence on virtues, including
the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and
benevolence, and he worried also about their
fragility in the face of the changed incentives
and social conditions of commercial society.
(Graaand and Well 2021:31)
The passions that are identied in individuals as
selsh interests can be considered as legitimate
elements that appear a priori in any market
relationship, until they go through the complex
process of social adaptation. Social and political
interactions create limits for the functioning of
the market in response to the dangers, deviations
or threats. Also, laws can shape and promote
certain desirable forms of behavior, at the same
time he recognized that even the most common
degrees of goodness or benecence cannot be
imposed by force (Smith 1984).
Regarding employment and wages, Smith argued
that when an entrepreneur tries to establish a
new business, he must rst attract workers from
other jobs by oering higher wages compared
to other companies or compared to his own
trades. However, these new industries can
more easily enter scenarios of instability and
ECONOMIC THOUGHT WITHIN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT: A REVISION OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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bankruptcy. Labor wages are likely to be higher
in manufacturing industries based on fashion or
articial needs than in manufacturing industries
based on basic needs, and yet they are weaker
over time (Smith 1984) as these created needs
change rapidly.
The accusations to Adam Smith about
individualism are weak as the basis for individual
interests are possible as long as the interests of
society are pursued at the same time. Individuals
who take care of their own, as well as their
environment, can generate enormous benets
for the nation. As Newbert (2003) suggests,
the art of protecting individual interests comes
hand in hand with social welfare, contemporary
entrepreneurs not only seek to satisfy their
selsh motivations, but also seek to contribute
substantially to the well-being of society. “when
Smith claims we all desire mutual sympathy
of sentiments, he means that we long to see
our own judgments and sentiments echoed in
others” (Otteson 2018:14). Smith’s contributions
became the political and economic foundation of
a large part of Western societies.
THOMAS MALTHUS
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), English
economist, educated at home until his admission
to Jesus College Cambridge in 1784, graduated
in 1788 and completed his master’s degree in
1791. He received his reverend degree in 1897.
His father, Daniel Malthus, was a well-known
thinker, a friend of David Hume and Jean Jacques
Rousseau. It is presumed that conversations with
his son inuenced his intellectual development
(Pavlik, 2016). In 1805, he was chosen as
professor of history and political economy at
East India College in Haileybury. In 1819, he
was elected as a member of the Royal Society.
Malthus argued that the population tends to grow
at a faster rate than the supply of food, the growth
of the population had no limits and was repressed
by death. Habakkuk (1959) believed that a part
of this thesis may well have been inuenced by
Darwin’s theories on the power of reproduction.
The novelty of the thesis was its presentation
based on three elements: rst, the population
pressure on food production; second, growing
poverty; third, misery was the product of social
and political institutions. Malthus lived within
anxiety “by worrying about overpopulation,
rather than overspending” (Weber 2021: 409) as
other thinkers of the same century.
His theory on population pressure and food
production was the result of an increase in
English food imports at the end of the 18th
century that tried to supply the growing demand.
Malthus proposed that food is the rst basic
need of the human being and that, at the same
time, sexual passion would not disappear, but
would increase as the population increases. In
the absence of any birth control, in his essay On
the Population Principle he concluded that the
population growth rate is higher than the growth
rate of food as population expansion cannot be
kept under a strong control.
On growing poverty, he believed that the main
cause of indigence is the dierence between
population growth and food growth: food
production is not fast enough to supply population
growth, which it would inevitably lead to an
increase in poverty. The diculty of acquiring
food would increase over time, generating a
clear problem in the despair reected in various
forms of misery. Therefore, it was essential to
implement articial birth controls such as the
postponement of the marriage.
Nonetheless, his theory did not stand since it
did not oer any evidence about the growth
rate of population or food, or any statistical
approximation to it. In addition to this, he left
aside the theory of the principles of diminishing
returns proposed by Turgot in 1765, who stated
that the xed factor of production was land, which
did not change substantially over time, while
other factors of production such as investment
and work can increase. Several decades after
his death, certain criticisms appeared about his
lack of regard for the impact of technology on
the production of agricultural goods and on birth
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control.
Finally, the controversy with his father revolved
around the genesis of misery and poverty,
Malthus criticized the thesis of his father, and his
close friend, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, on the future
of nations. Daniel Malthus, his father, believed
that the future will be full of prosperity, with
fairness and perfect happiness, as long as the
human being frees himself from the limitations
of custom and institutions (Habakkuk 1959). On
the contrary, Thomas Malthus argued that hopes
of social happiness are vain because population
will always tend to outpace production growth,
creating war, poverty, famine and abstinence:
human being was condemned to misery.
The Malthusian model can be seen as a prediction
of possible repercussions in the absence of
continuous technological improvements and in
the absence of birth controls. Despite subsequent
criticism, his model was inuential in Europe
and America until the beginning of the industrial
revolution, a period that generated evidence
contrary to the predictions made. On the other
hand, it is clear that, in many countries with
increasing income levels, demographic rates
are constantly decreasing, which has produced
economic problems in social security systems.
Finally, Weil and Wilde (2010) believe that
reductions in population growth increase per
capita income.
DAVID RICARDO
David Ricardo (1772-1823), English economist
who gave a classical and systematized shape to
the nascent economic science of the 19th century.
Of Sephardic Jewish descent, he was the third
son of a wealthy family who had migrated from
Spain to Italy, then to the Netherlands, from
where they left for England. His grandfather,
Joseph Israel Ricardo, worked at the Amsterdam
Stock Exchange, his steps were followed by his
son and then by his grandson, Abraham Israel
Ricardo and David Ricardo (Read 2016). When
they moved to London in 1760, David Ricardo
went into business with his father, creating the
name of a very wealthy family. In 1810, he
published his book The High Prices of Bullion;
however, his main work, Principles of Economic
and Tax Policy, was published in 1817.
Ricardo made several important advances in
theories of value, international trade, diminishing
returns, and income. Ricardo’s theory of value
attempts to answer the controversy in England
over grain import taris. While Malthus argued
in favor of the creation of import taris, Ricardo
believed that these would reduce prots, which
would impact economic growth: when taris
increase, the need to produce more to cover the
unsatised demand also increases causing an
increase in wages, in addition to the overuse of
land, meaning capital to decrease.
While the protectionists refuted Ricardo, and
supported the Grain Law, arguing that the
elimination of import taris would cause the
prices of products and wages to fall, David
Ricardo was forced to propose a theory of value.
In his book Principles of Economic and Tax
Policy, and later in the essay Absolute Value and
Exchange Value, he mentioned that the value
of a product depends on the relative amount of
work to arrive at the nal product and not on the
salary that is pays for its production. Thus, the
value of a good depends on the existing demand,
based on scarcity, and the total amount of work
required to produce the good (Landreth and
Colander 2006).
Ricardo’s labor theory of value attempted to
explain why goods were exchanged for prices
that uctuated in the market, he claimed that
the value of a product could be objectively
determined by the average number of hours of
labor required to produce it, this value being the
value of work, the main source for measuring
the value of a good. Ricardo was interested in
the relative prices of basic products of which he
would say that the cost of production involves
direct and indirect costs. It is clear to Ricardo
that the relative price of products is determined
by demand and by the total work required for
production (Johnson 1984).
As an example of comparative advantage,
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Ricardo wrote:
The quantity of wine which she [Portugal]
shall give in exchange for the cloth of
England, is not determined by the respective
quantities of labour devoted to the production
of each, as it would be, if both commodities
were manufactured in England, or both in
Portugal. England may be so circumstanced,
that to produce the cloth may require the
labour of 100 men for one year. (Bernhofen
and Brown 2018:227)
On international trade, Ricardo is well known for
his theory of comparative advantages, by which
he showed that specialization in the production
and export of specic goods contributes more
to the economic development of a nation than
diversication in production. Specialization in
the manufacture of a good contributes to the
decrease in the relative cost of this product,
which makes its commercialization even more
competitive (Maneschi 1992). Ricardo admitted
that no country is absolutely more competitive
than another; however, specialization in the
production of a good will enable countries to
increase their comparative advantage.
For Ricardo, the comparative advantages are given
by the dierences in technology, the dierences
in the acquisition and commercialization of
primary goods, the dierence in demand, the
dierence in the existence of economies of scale
in production, and nally by the existence of
government policies that favor the production
of goods and services. These elements will
intervene in the decision of nations about the
products to be produced and marketed, the
impact of these decisions will inuence the
economic development of the countries.
Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantages
would be criticized decades later by various
economists and social thinkers because the
countries that export raw materials have not
succeeded in creating competitive manufacturing
companies in relation to other regions of the
world. For example, Latin America were
dedicated to the export of primary goods and
that did not achieve the impulse or advancement
of the manufacturing. In 1950, Raúl Prebisch
argued that the prices of manufactured products
would rise while the prices of primary products
would remain or fall, producing a problem in the
terms of trade.
On the other hand, about diminishing returns, as
Rogelio Huerta (2001) wrote, citing Samuelson
and Nordhaus, there are the xed cost factors
and the variable cost factors, when the latter
increases in a short time will result in a smaller
and smaller production increase because the
xed cost factors remain the same. Thus, labor
is the variable factor most used to increase
production. However, in the long term all the
factors of production can be variable including
capital such as land. In this case, production is
not limited by the law of diminishing returns,
but, on the contrary, it can increase each time at
higher rates.
The Ricardian presents a way of mitigating the
eects of diminishing returns. In the long run,
if one takes into account that all the factors
of production become variable, the problem
dissolves because returns increase as variables
such as capital and land grow with investment.
However, in the short term, Ricardo believed
that it can be solved through free international
trade (Rent 2018), which allows a country to
specialize in the production of certain goods,
while importing the goods in those that are less
productive.
Regarding income, although it was not Ricardo
who started the studies of land rent, it was the
one who tried to construct determinants and
principles of political economy to understand its
three main sources: land, labor and capital (Rent
2018). In relation to land, Ricardo’s formulation
is the one that found the greatest impact in
academia and in the practice of economics
because he carried out a deeper and more real
theoretical approach to rent. Thus, this did
not only mean the contract of payment to the
landlords, but included total productivity minus
the rental contract, less wages and capital.
The rent of the land was related to the price of
agricultural products. The price of an agricultural
product would be determined by the cost of
the least fruitful unit produced that satises
the demand, that is, it would be agreed around
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CHAKIÑAN. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades / ISSN 2550 - 6722 207
the marginal cost (Márquez and Silva 2008).
Ricardo recognized that, when speaking of land
rent, an important element was the fertility of the
land, the more fertile the more productive it was,
and the less fertile the land the less productive it
was. Then the price would be determined by the
marginal cost of the least ecient land.
Ricardo was a prominent economist, but also a
politician, a member of the Parliament of Great
Britain, and very successful in his business
endeavors, as well as on the Stock Exchange.
He died at a young age, 51, from a brain
infection. After his death, the impact he had on
academia, on commerce, nance, the economy,
and the stock market, served to found the main
European schools of economics of the 19th
century. Ricardo is considered the second most
inuential economic thinker in the eighteenth
century after Adam Smith.
CONCLUSIONS
The long eighteenth century, led by Great
Britain, the nation with the greatest importance
and impact in the West, was imposed by
technological transformations, agricultural
advances, commercial and banking expansion.
Within this context, thinkers appear who
become the most relevant western economic
theorists. The principles of classical liberal
thought are found in this century, namely: the
mercantilists, the Physiocrats, then the classical
thinkers like Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus,
and David Ricardo. Although they all share
the idea that the forces of the economy can be
understood rationally, there were also important
dierences that made them confront each other
on an ongoing basis.
The problem of the article was the systematic
revision of the development of the economic
thought in order to appreciate the similitudes
and dierences and the objective was to present
the arguments as the foundation of a Modernity
characterized by the economic. In this sense, the
following are the main conclusions:
First. The dierences were clear: while the
thinkers of mercantilism opposed international
free trade for the conviction that some won
and others lost, considering wealth as static,
with no option to increase, on the other hand,
the Physiocrats, plus Adam Smith and David
Ricardo, were convinced that all nations won
in trade. Another clear dierence was the
demographic impact, while Thomas Malthus
believed that the increase in population would
bring misery, Adam Smith and David Ricardo
believed that the population increase came hand
in hand with economic development.
Second. The most interesting element of this
century was the conception of natural law seen
in principle as a moral law, but seen by economic
thinkers as natural laws that could be analyzed
through logic and human nature, in a kind of
rational and coherent science. The economy
developed through natural laws based on the
rational idea that human beings always want the
best benet, in the case of buyers, good products
at a lower price, and in the case of producers,
lower costs and higher prots.
Third. The Century of Light, full of technological
and demographic changes, and full of political,
social and economic thinkers, is not a period of
a homogeneous current, but, on the contrary, is
full of arguments, against arguments, ideological
battles and academic impacts. Despite this,
they have a clear common line, the idea that
economics can be analyzed through logic and
human nature, in a kind of rational and coherent
science. This economic rationality will be
questioned in later centuries.
DECLARACIÓN DE CONFLICTOS DE
INTERESES: Los autores declaran no tener
conictos de interés.
DECLARACIÓN DE CONTRIBUCIÓN DE
LOS AUTORES: Christian Paúl Naranjo Navas
(50%) y Soraida Grimaldos Urrea (50%).
ECONOMIC THOUGHT WITHIN ITS HISTORICAL CONTEXT: A REVISION OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Número 16 / ABRIL, 2022 (194-210) 208
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