Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, also known as Jean Charles Leonard Simonde de Sismondi (; 9 May 1773 – 25 June 1842), whose real surname was Simonde, was a Swiss historian and political economist, who is best known for his works on French and Italian history, and his economic ideas. His Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819) represents the first liberal critique of laissez-faire economics. He was one of the pioneering advocates of unemployment insurance, sickness benefits, a progressive tax, regulation of working hours, and a pension scheme. He was also the first to coin the term proletariat to refer to the working class created under capitalism, and his discussion of mieux value anticipates the concept of surplus value. According to Gareth Stedman Jones, "much of what Sismondi wrote became part of the standard repertoire of socialist criticism of modern industry", earning him critical commentary in the Communist Manifesto.

Early life

His paternal family seem to have borne the name Simonde, at least from the time when they migrated from Dauphiné to the Republic of Geneva at the revocation of the edict of Nantes. It was not till after Sismondi had become an author that, observing the identity of his family arms with those of the once flourishing Pisan house of the Sismondi and finding that some members of that house had migrated to France, he assumed the connection without further proof and called himself Sismondi.

The Simondes, however, were themselves citizens of Geneva of the upper class, and possessed both rank and property, though the father was also a village pastor.

The future historian was well educated, but his family wished him to devote himself to commerce rather than literature, and he became a banker's clerk in Lyon. Then the Revolution broke out, and as it affected Geneva, the Simonde family took refuge in England where they stayed for eighteen months (1793–1794). Disliking—it is said—the climate, they returned to Geneva, but found the state of affairs still unfavourable; there is even a legend that the head of the family was reduced to selling milk himself in the town. The greater part of the family property was sold, and with the proceeds they emigrated to Italy, bought a small farm in Pescia near Lucca and Pistoia, and set to work to cultivate it themselves.

Criticism of economic orthodoxy

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As an economist, Sismondi represented a humanitarian protest against the dominant orthodoxy of his time. In his 1803 book, he followed Adam Smith; but in his principal subsequent economic work, Nouveaux principes d'économie politique (1819), he insisted on the fact that economic science studied the means of increasing wealth too much, and the use of wealth for producing happiness, too little. Sismondi also argued that classical economics failed to consider the negative social and environmental impacts of economic growth, and that it failed to address issues of income inequality and social justice. Although his thinking is characterized as "petty-bourgeois Socialism" in the Communist Manifesto, Sismondi was not a socialist. Nonetheless, in protesting against laissez faire and invoking the state "to regulate the progress of wealth",

As important was his role as an economist; Sismondi was renowned as a historian. He commonly applied economic thought and historical settings to explain the irrationality of past economic events.

Sismondi also contributed a great deal to economics with his thoughts on aggregate demand. Observing the capitalist industrial system in England, Sismondi saw that unchecked competition both resulted in producers all increasing individual production (because of lack of knowledge of other producers' production) this was then seen as forcing employers to cut prices, which they did by sacrificing workers' wages. This yielded overproduction and underconsumption; with most of England's workforce suffering from depressed wages, workers were then unable to afford the goods they had produced, and underconsumption of goods then followed. Sismondi believed that by increasing the wages of laborers they would have more buying power, be able to buy the national output and thus increase demand.

In his book On Classical Economics, Thomas Sowell devotes a chapter to Sismondi, arguing that he was a neglected pioneer.

Italian history

Meanwhile, he began to compile his great Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge, and was introduced to Madame de Staël. He became part of her Coppet group, he was invited or commanded—for Madame de Stael was of chief political importance—to form one of the suite with which the future Corinne made the journey to Italy, which contributed to Corinne itself during the years 1804–1805. Sismondi was not altogether at ease here, and he particularly disliked Schlegel who was also a participant. But during this journey he met the Countess of Albany, widow of Charles Edward, who all her life was gifted with a singular ability to attract the affection of men of letters. Sismondi's platonic relationship with her was close and lasted long, and they produced much valuable and interesting correspondence. who was married to Charles Darwin. This marriage appears to have been a very happy one.

In 1826 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

After spending the last years of his life in Geneva preparing new editions of his writings, finishing his study of the French, and serving as a member of the Geneva Assembly, speaking for freedom with order, he died in 1842 of stomach cancer. a historical novel entitled Julia Severa ou l'an 492 (1822), Histoire de la renaissance de la liberté en Italie (1832), Histoire de la chute de l'Empire romain (1835), Précis de l'histoire des Français, an abridgment of his own book (1839), and several others, mainly political pamphlets. He warned that industrial competition could create unemployment, overproduction, and unequal distribution of income when economic activity was left without restraint. Later historians of economic thought have described these arguments as an early foundation for welfare economics and broader critiques of capitalism, especially because Sismondi emphasized that economies should serve people rather than treat labor only as a cost of production. He was also a passionate opponent of slavery. Jean-Baptiste Say referred to Sismondi as "that enlightened author, ingenious, eloquent and selfless".

His critique was noticed by Malthus, David Ricardo and J. S. Mill, who called his writing "sprightly, and frequently eloquent". Sismondi's Italian histories were read and esteemed by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Stendhal.

Sismondi influenced many major socialist thinkers including Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and Robert Owen. Marx thought Sismondi embodied the critique of the "bourgeois science of economics". In his notes, Marx excerpted various aspects of his analysis. Marx was particularly fond of Sismondi's statement that "The Roman proletariat lived almost exclusively at the expense of society. One could almost say that modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat, from the share which it deducts from the reward of his labor." In 1897, Vladimir Lenin wrote an article refuting Sismondi's work. Lenin said,

<blockquote>

The contributor to Russkoye Bogatstvo states at the very outset that no writer has been "so wrongly appraised" as Sismondi, who, he alleges, has been "unjustly" represented, now as a reactionary, then as a utopian. The very opposite is true. Precisely this appraisal of Sismondi is quite correct.

</blockquote>

In 1913, Rosa Luxemburg wrote a critique of Sismondi in The Accumulation of Capital.

The historian Jerzy Jedlicki writes:

<blockquote>All sorts of labels were pinned on this humanist from Geneva who lived in the period of the beginnings of industrial capitalism: he was regarded as a reactionary and a radical, a petty-bourgeois socialist and a romanticist. But when we read his work a hundred and fifty years later, we discover in him a precursor of the democratized, corrective liberalism of the twentieth century and also, in spite of all the defects of his economic theory, a precursor of concepts for the development of overpopulated countries with a low national income. Sismondi’s thought, unfettered by doctrine, has stood the test of time, something which cannot be said of many of his contemporaries.</blockquote>

Main publications

  • Tableau de l'agriculture toscane (1801)
  • De la richesse commerciale (1803)
  • The History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages (Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen Âge) (16 vols.) (1807–18). His most important historical work, on Italy's republican past, which became an inspiration to 19th-century Italian nationalists.
  • De l'intérêt de la France à l'égard de la traite des nègres (1814)
  • Nouvelles réflexions sur la traite des nègres (1814)
  • Examen de la Constitution française (1815)
  • Political Economy (1815)
  • Nouveaux principes d'économie politique, ou de la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population (1819)
  • Histoire des Français (1821–1844)
  • Les colonies des anciens comparées à celles des modernes (1837)
  • Études de sciences sociales (1837)
  • Études sur l'économie politique (1837)
  • Précis de l'histoire des Français (1839)
  • ' (1857)

References

Further reading

  • Henryk Grossman [2017] Simonde de Sismondi and His Economic Theories (A New Interpretation of His Thought) orig. in French [1924] Warsaw, English translation in Henryk Grossman [2017] Capitalism’s Contradictions: Studies in Economic Theory before and after Marx Ed. Rick Kuhn (Trans. Birchall, Kuhn, O’Callaghan) Haymarket, Chicago.
  • Mazzei, Umberto (2018). Sismondi, précurseur ignoré de Marx, Slatkine, Genève.