Volume 7, Number 2 (1985)

Introduction and textual comments by Friedrich A.

Each day in America, white males face government-sponsored discrimination. If in high school, the white male may be denied a chance to apply for special programs because he is not a preferred minority, or in some cases, a female. There are scholarships available, but many cannot be awarded to white males. In applying for university, admissions will admit “basically qualified” minorities, but reject better qualified whites. When applying for a job, the same type of discrimination occurs.

Professor Spengler’s, “Richard Cantiilon: Fist of the Modems,” published in 1954, remains the classic survey article of Cantillon’s contributions to economic thought. These contributions consist of views on population and related matters, theory of value, monetary theory, and international trade and finance. Many of his ideas became a part of the economic thought of the closing years of the eighteenth century, and, as Professor Spengler points out, unfortunately, Cantillon’s name had been stripped from most if not all of his ideas.

Can anyone take seriously the question posed by the title of this paper? History clearly reveals the following facts. Austrian economics began in 1871 with the pioneer work of the Viennese economist, Carl Menger. Cantillon’s Essai sur la nature du commerce en général was written almost 150 years earlier. It remained virtually undiscovered until reintroduced to economists by W. S. Jevons in 1881. There is definitely no chronological link between Cantillon and Menger, and any intellectual connection is speculative.

The question of immigration has become acute in virtually all Western nations, including the United States. Here, as elsewhere, leaders of movements to limit immigration, especially from the “Third World,” often combine this with uninformed attacks on the free market, particularly on international free trade. But there is no necessary connection between battling to curb immigration and rejecting such key elements of the free market as free trade.

Volume 13, Number 2 (1998)

Volume 7, Number 2 (1985)

Since I admittedly know more about Austrian economic theory than about Richard Cantillon, I would like to focus my comments on the Austrian aspects of Prof. Hébert’s paper, in particular his discussion of entrepreneurship. Hébert is correct in his discussion of the differences between Mises’s and Kirzner’s concept of the entrepreneur and in his critique of the Kirzner approach.

Students and admirers of Adam Smith will welcome Edwin West’s reappraisal of the relationship between Smith and Cantillon. They have come to expect that each new effort by West will be a treat, and they have come to accept that each will be ever so slightly biased in favor of Smith. West’s readers will not be disappointed with the present treat, and they will find that West has been eminently fair to both Adam Smith and Richard Cantillon.

Volume 7, Number 2 (1985)

Volume 7, Number 2 (1985)

Introduction

Richard Cantillon’s life and his Essai occurred at a time of transition in European political, economic and intellectual history. The late seventeenth century had experienced the crisis in European thought which paralleled the Scientific Revolution. Accompanying the scientific revolution was a revolution in economic thought. Criticisms of mercantilism began to lay the groundwork for the Economic Revolution of the eighteenth century.

One of the most important areas in which Cantillon influenced J. B. Say involves a set of issues which receives no explicit treatment in the Essai. I refer to the distinctive and pathbreaking methodology employed by Cantillon in his treatise.

Volume 7, Number 2 (1985)

Is there any “good” reason for a country such as the U.S. to deny entrance to persons who wish to immigrate, but who are not desired as immigrants by some or most of the current citizens? My argument will assume without further justification that an individual has a right to life, liberty, and property in the traditional Anglo-Saxon sense of freedom from coercion by the state or other persons (unless a criminal act has been committed).

Volume 13, Number 2 (1998)