“WAR AND POLITICAL ECONOMY:
THE SMITHIAN AND SAYSIAN TRADITION”
(August, 2026 draft)

By David M. Hart

[Created: 8 Auguat, 2026] [Revised: 16 August, 2026]

This is part of a collection of Papers by David M. Hart

Introduction

Note: Parts of this paper are still in note form.

Conference title: "Adam Smith's Natural System of Liberty"

A Paper given at Campion College, 7-8 August 2026 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Smith's Wealth of Nations.

2:30-3:15 pm Saturday 8 August.

Abstract

David M. Hart, "War and Political Economy: The Smithian and Saysian Traditions"

Abstract (411 w):

There are two main traditions of thinking about liberal political economy which began in 1776: an Anglo-Scottish tradition begun by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and the francophone tradition begun by Condillac in Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (Commerce and Government) in 1776 and deepened by J.B. Say in the Traité in 1803. I call these the "Smithian tradition" and the "Saysian tradition" respectively. Within both these traditions there are many sub-themes, such as the better known one of free trade vs. protectionism (mercantilism), but also that of the political economy of war and peace which is the subject of this paper.

The paper begins with a survey of Smith's thinking about war and peace and the tradition he inspired throughout the 19th century leading up to the outbreak of the First World War (theorists like James Mill and John Stuart Mill, and others like John Wade, Richard Cobden, and Francis Hirst).

More substantial than this Smithian tradition was the French tradition which was inspired by both Smith and Say and which produced a considerable body of work by theorists such as Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, Frédéric Bastiat, Gustave de Molinari, and Leroy-Beaulieu among others. Molinari in particular incorporated key features of "war" in his theory of political economy, namely placing alongside the core Smithian notion of the "production of wealth" other factors such as the "destruction of wealth", "the prevention of the production of wealth", "the distortion of the production of wealth", "the 'spoliation' (plunder) or predation of wealth", the "conscription" of coerced labour and material for both the production and destruction of wealth, and the rise of a "military ruling and plundering class".

A key reason for the greater interest in war and peace shown by the French political economists is the part that war and empire played in French history as a result of the rule of the two Napoleons - Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte and Emperor Napoléon III. Some 100 years after the publication of Smith's and Condillac's works Molinari began incorporating these ideas into a broader notion of liberal political economy (or rather economic sociology) which he discussed in a tetralogy of works between 1880 and 1899.

Two figures who are often nelgected in the discussion of the economics of war and peace because they do not fit neatly into the history of economic thought are Joseph-Pierre Proudhon and Herbert Spencer. Their thinking on this topic will also be briefly discussed.

Table of Contents

War and Political Economy: The Smithian and Saysian Traditions

1. Opening Remarks
2. Some Terms and Definitions
3. Adam Smith on War and Peace
4. Jean-Baptiste Say on War and Peace
5. Gustave de Molinari on War and Peace: Building upon Both Traditions
6. Concluding Remarks: Molinari's plans to reduce the threat of war
7. Bibliography
8. Endnotes

Abbreviations:

• AS = Adam Smith
• JBS = Jean-Baptiste Say
• GdM = Gustave de Molinari
• CL = Classical Liberal/ism
• LJ = Lectures on Jurisprudence
• TMS = Theory of Moral Sentiments
• WoN = Wealth of Nations
• TEP = Traité d'Économie politique
• PLL = Portable Library of Liberty
• DEP = Dictionnaire de l'économie politique

Opening Remarks (434w)

This year we have the opportunity to celebrate several anniversaries of interest to CLs/libertarians. These are:

1. the 250th anniversary of
   1. George Mason’s (and others), “The Virginia Declaration of Rights” (May and 12 June, 1776).
   2. the American Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson et al. (4 July, 1776)
2. the 250th anniversary of the publication of some significant books:
   1. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
   2. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
   3. Condillac, Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (Commerce and Government) (1776)
3. the 200th anniversary of the publication of J.B. Say's second major work on economics, Cours complet with an outline of the entire work in 1826 followed by the first volume in 1828
4. the 100th anniversary of
   1. the publication of Ludwig von Mises’ essay on “Interventionismus” (Interventionism) (1926)
   2. the birth of Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1993)
5. the 50th anniversary of
   1. the publication of the Glasgow edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (OUP) in 1976 (the 100th anniversary of the publication of WoN)
   2. the founding of the Sydney-based Center for Independent Studies by Greg Lindsay
   3. Note: the Cato Institute was founded in January 1977 in San Francisco, thus making it a "near anniversary"

At this intellectual banquet, Adam Smith's WoN is surely one of the main courses, and I thank Jeremy Bell and Campion College for organising and hosting this event.

Some people might scoff at our efforts to revisit, reread, and revel in the ideas of long dead thinkers (dare I say "dead white males"?) but I would point out to them some benefits which they might have overlooked. One of course is the joy of seeing a great mind at work thinking through and presenting important ideas. This is the whole point of reading the "great books", something which is disparaged by most "right thinking" people in the intellectual class today. Another benefit is to see and appreciate what Murray Rothbard has called "lost knowledge" and Peter Boettke has called "left luggge", that is truths which were once known and accepted but which modern thinkers have forgotten or abandoned. The arrogance of many modern thinkers is to believe that there is a "Whig interpretation" of the steady and inevitable advancement of knowledge, in this particular case, economic knowledge. What is "modern" and accepted as true by "consensus" implies that what is old and not part of the consensus should be forgotten and remain unread.

I would argue that there is a lot of "left luggage" in the work of people like AS and JBS which we need to go back to and retrieve and to use where appropriate in our present work.

Some Terms and Definitions (2012w)

Let me begin with some definitions and terms which I will use in this paper.

Mainline Economics

I think there are a number of different "traditions" which have contributed to the development of free market political economy, or what Peter Boettke of George Mason University and the Mercatus Center calls "mainline economics" (as opposed to "mainstream economics"). He defines this as: [1]

Mainline is defined as a set of positive propositions about social order that were held in common from Adam Smith onward, but mainstream economics is a sociological concept related to what is currently fashionable among the scientific elite of the profession.” (2012: xvii)

Furthermore Boettke believes that mainline economics is organised around three principal ideas: [2]

1. that the market is a process (the Austrian school)
2. that the institutional and cultural context (ideas) of a society shapes that market process (the new institutional economics school)
3. and that these political institutions are themselves the product of markets and exchange (the public choice school)

Within this broad category of mainline economics I include the following "traditions"

• the Smithian tradition
• the Saysian tradition
• the Mengerian/Misesian tradition post 1870 (which inlcudes Hayek, Rothbard, and Kirzner)
• the Public Choice tradition of Buchanan and Tulloch (1960s)
• the new institutional economics tradition of Elinor Ostrom and Douglass North

In this paper I want to look at the views about war and peace held by members of the first two of these traditons.

The Two Traditions: 1. The Smithian Tradition

Adam Smith is commonly known as the "father of economics" for having written WoN published in 1776 250 years ago. This began what is known as the "Classical School" of political economy which came to prominence and had its greatest impact on both economic theory and government policy during the 19th century. Some of the key thinkers include such stalwarts as Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill. The work of these thinkers is very well known and I will not discuss them any further here. Their thinking about war and peace was summarised and discussed by the Swiss historian of economic thought Edmund Silberner in a pair of books which appeared during WW2 (appropriately I would suggest). This work is old and badly in need of updating but still quite useful. [3]

AS's relationship with France and French economic thought was a rich and reciprocal one. As the tutor to the stepson of Charles Townsend, Henry Scott the duke of Buccleuch, AS travelled to France in 1764 and met many of the leading French economists and Physiocrats. In the opposite direction, soon after the publication of the WoN a number of partial translations into French (of variable quality) were published as extracts in serial form between 1778 and 1780. Of special note were the two editions with notes by the liberal philosopher and mathematician Condorcet during the early liberal phase of the Revolution, the first as part of the first full translation by Roucher in 1790, and the second as a condensed and abridged edition in 1794. Condorcet's contribution to promoting the Smithian tradition came to end later that same year when he died in custody by the Jacobins while awaiting his probable execution.

Another complete edition appeared in 1802 by Comte Germain Garnier which included an entire volume of his extensive notes and comparisons between Smith and the Physiocrats. The following year Jean-Baptiste Say published the first edition of his TEP which included 124 references to Smith and was also an extended commentary on and revision of Smith's work, which Say regarded as badly organised, confusing, and in error on key points (such as the nature of productive labour, the role of the entrepreneur, and the labour theory of value). Say continued this critique in subsequent editions of the TEP as well as his second major work on economics, the Cours complet (1828).

However, in spite of their criticisms, the French political economists regarded Smith more as an "uncle" rather than the "father" of political economy as they were proud of their own pre-Smithian tradition, as well of course their other French-speaking "uncle" who was JBS. This was made very clear when the Guillaumin publishing firm began their "monumental" 15 volume collection of classic economic texts in the 1840s. [4] They published 4 volumes of pre-Smithian economists (mostly French, including the Physiocrats and Turgot), 4 volumes by Say, as well as a 2 volume edition of the 1802 Germain Garnier translation of Smith with copious additional notes which appeared in 1843. In England, MacCulloch also published a heavily annotated edition of the WoN in 1828, 1838, 1846, and 1850. The next major edition in English was by Cannan in 1904. It should be noted that Cannan also published for the first time Smith's LJ based upon recently discovered student notes in 1896.

It was unfortunate that AS did not publish his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1763-1766) during his lifetime as these were a kind of "economic sociology" of the history of the rise of the state, the ruling elites/class, and markets at the various stages of the historical evolution of European society. War and conflict played an important role in this development and his analysis here was closer to what the Saysian tradition would produce later by writers such as Charles Comte abnd Charles Dunoyer in the 1810s and 1820s, Frédéric Bastiat in the 1840s, and then GdM over many decades beginning in around 1852 and reaching a conclusion in 1898 in a major work

The gap left by AS in not publishing these lectures left the door wide open to thinkers like Karl Marx to take the "Four Stage Theory" and class analysis in illiberal directions with dire consequence. [5]

The 100th anniversary of the publication of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith by Oxford UP in 1976 (the "Glasgow edition") kickstarted a renaissance in Smith scholarship by creating a modern definitive edition. Widespread distribution was made possible when the LF acquired the rights to publish the very expensive hardback edition in paperback in 1981 and then the electronic rights to distribute it free of charge online as part of the Online Library of Liberty of which I was the founding director. I also designed and edited the Portable Library of Liberty CD (later a data DVD when the file size got too big) which contained over 1,000 classic works including the Glasgow edition of Smith. Over 20,000 copies of the PLL were distributed free of charge over the lifetime of the PLL project.

More recently I have edited and put online my own "near replica" edition of the 1776 edition of the WoN which contains the original page numbers and a citation tool for scholars. I have also created a "Multi-pane" edition of Cannan's 1904 edition which displays more easily and conveniently his very detailed and numerous notes and commentaries.

I would include as part of the Smithian tradition Malthus, Ricardo, James Mill, J.S. Mill, MacCulloch, Cairnes, and Fawcett and their thinking on the question of war and peace has been documented by Silberner. What I would note is that their interest in the topic is not great, in that they did not write long monographs on it, although James Mill did more than most with discussions of war's terrible economic consequences in his book Commerce Defended (1808) and in a couple of his entries in the Supplement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1824) especially in the "Law of Nations". This is contrast to the French Saysian tradition where the interest in war and peace was much greater, perhaps as a result of the activities of the two Napoleons.

The Two Traditions: 2. The Saysian Tradition

Less well known (especially among English speakers) is another tradition of thinking about political economy which emerged in the French-speaking world. It began with thinkers like Cantillon, Turgot (a Physiocrat), and Condillac (who also published an important book in 1776) but reached a peak with the treatise by JBS, TEP (1st ed. 1803, and multiple revised editions) and Destutt de Tracy (1823). There are some significant theoretical differences between the two traditions but also much shared ground. There was also considerable cross-fertilisation between the two traditions, but the French tradition has been handicapped by the paucity of translations into English of some of the key works, especially of Say's.

There is a poor and very old trans. of TEP from 1821 by Prinsep. There has not been a translation of his other major work the Cours Complet. Even in French JBS has not been treated with the respect he deserves. His Oeuves complètes only appeared in French relatively recently in 10 volumes edited by André Tiran, Philippe Steiner et al. (Economica 2006).

Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer

There is a clear line of thinking among those influenced by JBS beginning with the lawyers and journalists Charles Comte (1782-1837) and Charles Dunoyer (1786-1862) in the 1810s. They began as fairly convention classical liberals who were focused mostly on defending political freedoms such as free speech and assembly and constitutional limits on political power during the waning years of Emperor Napoleon and the early years of the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. A revolution occured in their thinking when their journal, Le Censeur (1814-1815), was closed down by Napoleon's censors and they were forced into temporary exile. It was during this period that they discovered the most recent edition of JBS's TEP, the 3rd edition, which appeared in 1817, and which they rapturously reviewed in their successor journal, Le Censeur européen (1817-1819). [6]

JBS opened their eyes to additional dimensions to liberalism which they had not considered before, namely economic liberty, the rise of "l'industrie" and "l'industrielisme" as an entirely new era of human development, the productive "industrial class" who created the wealth and paid the taxes, the parasitical and unproductive class of politicians, bureaucrats, the military (as exemplified by Napoleon's Empire), and the monarchy and nobility (as exemplified by the restored monarchy), and the class struggle which emerged as the industrial class fought against the controls and confiscations imposed upon them by the ruling class (whether Napoleonic or Bourbonic - the term I have invented to describe this). They spent the next 20 years expanding on Say's ideas in a series of articles and books. Dunoyer's books included L’Industrie et la morale considérées dans leurs rapports avec la liberté (1825) which was much enlarged as Nouveau traité d’économie sociale (1830). From exile in Switzerland where he had a post teaching law Comte wrote a massive 6 volume work on legislation and property: Traité de législation (1826-27) and Traité de la Propriété (1834). He also found time to write a history of the French Natonal Guard, which he thought was the best way for a free people to defend themselves from encroachments on their liberty, instead of having to rely on mercenaries or conscripts who served the interests of the emperor or the king rather than those of the people: Histoire complète de la Garde national (1827, 1831)

Frédéric Bastiat

Comte and Dunoyer in turn influenced Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) who read their works avidly during the 1820s before using their (and thus Say's) ideas as the basis for his theory of "la spoliation" (plunder) and his campaign for free trade during the 1840s. He was active in the peace movement, as was Cobden, giving a speech before a large audience at the Friends of Peace Conference in Paris in 1849, in which he stressed the enormous and rising costs of war, its destruction of wealth, its dislocation of labour and capital from productive consumer activity into unproductive and destructive military activity, its hampering of economic prosperity, and its violation of the rights of those who were conscripted into the army - or what the French liberals called "the blood tax". I have dealt with FB's theory of exploitation, class rule, and the part played by war and militarism, in detail elsewhere so I will not discuss it any further in this essay. [7]

Adam Smith on War and Peace (3112w)

This is not the place to give a detailed analysis of what Smith thought about matters relating to war and peace. Instead, I will briefly mention some key passages which are important for my topic here. I will also refer to some passages which AS did not use in his discussion of war and peace but which GdM later would use in his writings on the matter.

Adam Smith on War and Peace

AS made many references to war and peace in his writings but never wrote a separate piece on this topic. He made the most references in his Lectures on Jurisprudence which of course were never intended for publication (why??) and only existed in the form of student notes until Cannan published them in 1896. Thus some of his thoughts on war and peace were not available to later thinkers, although much of this was implied in the works which he did publish, like the WoN.

According to my calculations using my own online versions of the texts AS referred to war and peace and related terms the following number of times

TMS (1859)

• war x 21
• warrior x 6
• militar* x 11
• peace x 27
• violence x 60
• force x 55
• conqu* x 29
• slavery x 2

LJ (1763)

• war 155
• warrior 5
• warlike 7
• martial 9
• militar* 81
• peace x 147
• violence x 25
• force x 80
• conqu* x 108
• plunder x 12
• pillage x 3
• slavery x 74

WoN (1776)

• war 107
• warlike 2
• militia 65

• martial 3
• militar* 31
• "standing arm* 71
• peace = 49
• violence 7
• force 29
• conqu* 40
• plunder 5
• pillage 2
• slavery x 28

Since we are here to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of WoN, let me limit my remarks to some passages from that work:

1. he discusses the costs of wars at II.iii.35, IV.i.26, IV.viii.53, and V.iii.92; cf. V.iii.88
2. a comparsion of the cost of war in the ancient world compared to that of the modern V.i.a.12–14 and 43
3. the army and navy are made up of "unproductive labourers" II.iii.2 and II.iii.30 (on the opportunity costs of war II.iii.35-36)
4. war and the growing public debt V.iii.37
5. cost-benefit analysis of a state having colonies and using the army and navy to defend or extend them

I will limit myself here to commenting on two passages about "unproductive labourers" which highlights some differences between the Smithian and the Saysian traditions. We can trace the change in thinking about what constituted "productive labour" from

• the Physiocrats who thought that only agriculture and thus agricultural labour was productive
• to AS who thought that one should add to this the creation of material things by means of labour such as digging coal out of the ground, making iron, growing corn, etc.
• to JBS who added two other important components to the mix, namely the creation of non-material things (or "services") like health, education, and entretainment by doctors, teachers, and opera singers; and the activities of entrepreneurs who chose what should be produced, and organised its production and distribution to consumers.

In two passages in Book II, chap. iii, "Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of productive and unproductive Labour" AS makes the claim that the sovereign, "all" his judicial and military officers, along with the entire army and navy are "unproductive labourers". [8]

2 The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial ser–[3]vants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realize itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. [5] They are the servants of the publick, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. [6] Their service, how honourable, how useful, [7] or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security, and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year, will not purchase its protection, security, and defence, for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds; players, buffoons, musicians, opera–singers, opera–dancers, &c. [8] The labour of the meanest of these has a certain value, regulated by the very same principles which regulate that of every other sort of labour; [9] and that of the noblest and most useful, produces nothing which could afterwards purchase or procure an equal quantity of labour. Like the declamation of the actor, the harangue of the orator, or the tune of the musician, the work of all of them perishes in the very instant of its production. [10]

And a few paragrpahs later, he says: [9]

30 Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by publick prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole publick revenue, is in most [21] countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands. Such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in time of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquire nothing which can compensate the expence of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. Such people, as they themselves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men’s labour. When multiplied, therefore, to an unnecessary number, they may in a particular year consume so great a share of this produce, as not to leave a sufficiency for maintaining the productive labourers, who should reproduce it next year.

JBS would say later that AS was wrong to call soliders "unproductive". He would go further as he viewed them as "destructive" of wealth. GdM took the view that they acquired wealth for themselves by using the coercive powers of the state from the exploited industrious classes. So they were "productive" from their own perspective, but "destruction" from the perspective of those who were plundered. Molinari would also add that, to the extent that soldiers and judges did provide some "security" (protection) of life, liberty, and property to society they did provide a useful "service" (and were thus "productive") but more often than not they were the violators of life, liberty, and property rather than its protectors. In the absence of free markets, competitive prices, and the free choice of consumers it was hard to tell what part of their actions were "productive" and what part were "unproductive" or "destructive".

Other ideas developed by Adam Smith and later used by GdM

Two ideas in particular were put forward by AS and later seized upon by GdM to use for an entirely different purpose. They were the idea of

1. the charging of fees to pay for so-called public goods or other government-supplied goods and services:
   1. the "fees of court" (V.i.b.20 to 21), officers of the mint (IV.vi.31), lawyers and attorneys (V.i.b.18), students in the universities (V.i.f.6), those who worked in the land registry office (V.ii.h.9)
   2. other fees and tolls charged for the use of turnpikes and canals
2. competition between courts for paying customers (LJ (A) v.25–6 and LJ (B) - 68-69; WoN V.i.b.21)
3. the cost-benefit analysis of government policies and programs

Adam Smith and the "fees of court"

GdM first quoted the passage from WoN concerning the "fees of court" charged by the English courts to pay for their services and the competition which existed between them for business in his article "PoS" in JDE (Feb. 1849) and then in chapter / Soirée 11 published later that year. He would would quote it repeatedly during the course of his life.

The full quote from WoN is as follows:[10]

THE whole expence of justice too might easily be defrayed by the fees of court; and, without exposing the administration of justice [ii-325] to any real hazard of corruption, the public revenue might thus be entirely discharged from a certain, though, perhaps, but a small incumbrance. It is difficult to regulate the fees of court effectually, where a person so powerful as the sovereign is to share in them, and to derive any considerable part of his revenue from them. It is very easy, where the judge is the principal person who can reap any benefit from them. The law can very easily oblige the judge to respect the regulation, though it might not always be able to make the sovereign respect it. Where the fees of court are precisely regulated and ascertained, where they are paid all at once, at a certain period of every process, into the hands of a cashier or receiver, to be by him distributed in certain known proportions among the different judges after the process is decided, and not till it is decided, there seems to be no more danger of corruption than where such fees are prohibited altogether. Those fees, without occasioning any considerable increase in the expence of a law-suit, might be rendered fully sufficient for defraying the whole expence of justice. By not being paid to the judges till the process was determined, they might be some incitement to the diligence of the court in examining and deciding it. In courts which consisted of a considerable number of judges, by proportioning the share of each judge to the number of hours and days which he had employed in examining the process, either in the court or in a committee by order of the court, those fees might give some encouragement to the diligence of each particular judge. Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them. In the different parliaments of France, the fees of court (called Epices and vacations) constitute the far greater part of the emoluments of the judges. After all deductions are made, the neat salary paid by the crown to a counsellor or judge in the parliament of Toulouse, in rank and dignity the [ii-326] second parliament of the kingdom, amounts only to a hundred and fifty livres, about six pounds eleven shillings sterling a year. About seven years ago that sum was in the same place the ordinary yearly wages of a common footman. The distribution of those Epices too is according to the diligence of the judges. A diligent judge gains a comfortable, though moderate revenue by his office: An idle one gets little more than his salary. Those parliaments are perhaps, in many respects, not very convenient courts of justice; but they have never been accused; they seem never even to have been suspected of corruption.

THE fees of court seem originally to have been the principal support of the different courts of justice in England. Each court endeavoured to draw to itself as much business as it could, and was, upon that account, willing to take cognizance of many suits which were not originally intended to fall under its jurisdiction. The court of king's bench, instituted for the trial of criminal causes only, took cognizance of civil suits; the plaintiff pretending that the defendant, in not doing him justice, had been guilty of some trespass or misdemeanor. The court of exchequer, instituted for the levying of the king's revenue, and for enforcing the payment of such debts only as were due to the king, took cognizance of all other contract debts; the plaintiff alledging that he could not pay the king, because the defendant would not pay him. In consequence of such fictions it came, in many cases, to depend altogether upon the parties before what court they would chuse to have their cause tried; and each court endeavoured, by superior dispatch and impartiality, to draw to itself as many causes as it could. The present admirable constitution of the courts of justice in England was, perhaps, originally in a great measure formed by this emulation which antiently took place between their respective judges; each judge endeavouring to give, in his own court, the speediest and most [ii-327] effectual remedy, which the law would admit, for every sort of injustice. Originally the courts of law gave damages only for breach of contract. The court of chancery, as a court of conscience, first took upon it to enforce the specific performance of agreements. When the breach of contract consisted in the nonpayment of money, the damage sustained could be compensated in no other way than by ordering payment, which was equivalent to a specific performance of the agreement. In such cases, therefore, the remedy of the courts of law was sufficient. It was not so in others. When the tenant sued his lord for having unjustly outed him of his lease, the damages which he recovered were by no means equivalent to the possession of the land. Such causes, therefore, for some time, went all to the court of chancery, to the no small loss of the courts of law. It was to draw back such causes to themselves that the courts of law are said to have invented the artificial and fictitious writ of ejectment, the most effectual remedy for an unjust outer or dispossession of land.

The connection between AS's idea of the "fees of court" and Molinari's ideas about war and peace is the following:

AS thought that fees for legal and court services were legitimate and had been used historically in England. Furthermore, the courts had competed against each other to attract "customers"/litigants and this had made the English court system far superior to the slow, expensive, and corrupt courts in France. Molinari took that idea and applied it to all kinds of the "production of security", both local and domestic police and court services, as well as national and even international defense services. He thought the difference between the two was a matter of scale not of kind.

Adam Smith on cost-benefit analyses of government policies

In WoN AS gave what today we would call a "cost-benefit" anaysis of a state having colonies and he concluded that the British colonial system failed to pass that test. See WoN, Book IV, chap. 7 "Of Colonies".

He also did this in regard to the cost of defence in Book V, Chap. 1 "Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth", Part First "Of the Expence of Defence".

He provided a summary of the principle involved in making such as analysis in a passage dealing with the thinking of an individual counsellor at law who weighs up the costs and benefits in any given year in order to judge the overall gains (if any) (Book I, Chap. X "Of Wages and Profit in the different Employments of Labour and Stock" I.x.b.22) :

Compute in any particular place, what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be an–[162]nually spent, by all the different workmen in any common trade, such as that of shoemakers or weavers, and you will find that the former sum will generally exceed the latter. But make the same computation with regard to all the counsellors and students of law, in all the different inns of court, and you will find that their annual gains bear but a very small proportion to their annual expence, even though you rate the former as high, and the latter as low, as can well be done.

AS thought the same principle of asking "what is likely to be annually gained, and what is likely to be annually spent … (to) make the same computation with regard to all …" should be applied to government policies like maintaining the system of colonies, waging wars against the other European colonial powers like France and Spain, and granting privileges to favourned merchants and manufacturers under the policy of mercantilsm and "protection." His conclusion was that his "computation" showed that the gain from having colonies, waging wars, and protectinig trade was outweighed by the costs.

Molinari concluded from this that economists should be "les teneurs de livres de la politique” the official "book-keepers" of government policy / spending / activity, who would gather data concerning the costs and benefits and present this information to the taxpayers so they could make an informed decision. [11] He did this repeatedly for the costs of war and colonial expenditure which he published in annual "Chronicals" (Chronique) in the JDE or in lengthy appendices in his published books.

However he thought AS had ignored a crucial aspect of this cost-benefit analysis because he looked only at the benefits or costs to "society" as a whole. Molinari thought a truer picture could be got by looking at the costs and benefits to particular classes within a society. The ruling class of politicians, military leaders, slave owners, privileged merchants and industrialists benefited enormously from war, the slave system, the mercantilist sytem, and government contracts at the expense of the exploited class of tax-payers and consumers. As long as these classes controlled the coercive powers of the state, and as long as the productive, industrial classes acquiesced in or remained ingnorant of these policies this system of exploitation would continue.

The issue of Militias vs. Standing armies

For reasons of space I am leaving out the important issue of the place of militias in defending a free society and the comparison to large standing armies.

There is a tension in CL thinking between local voluntary militias and national professional standing armies.

Local voluntary militias were an example of the decentralation of power and local control of the protection of life, liberty, and property.

However, as the technology of fighting wars changed it required, as with all other branches of human activity, specialisation and the division of labour in carrying out these tasks. This required larger expenditure and greater manpower to accomplish. Large standing armies could be used by the state to repress their own people, such as local or regional "national groups" (defined by language, religion, custom), and to fight wars against other nation states in opposition to their own interests.

The moral values required by voluntary, local militias and large standing armies funded by coercive taxation and manned by conscripts or mercenaries were also disputed by CLs, some of whom admired "ancient" "martial values" (AS) and others who admired "modern" "industrial" values. [12]

The ideas of Benjamin Constant are important here, “De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes" (1819).

Jean-Baptiste Say on War and Peace (459w)

References to "Guerre" and Paix"

I did the same analysis for JBS's works, the TEP (1803, 6th ed. 1841) and his lectures and book Cours complet (1828) with the following results. Like AS, JBS used terms like "war" and "peace" more frequently in his lectures than in his published treatise on economics.

TEP:

• guerre 122
• paix 14
• spoli* 20
• conqu* 24
• pill* 10
• esclave* 29
• milit* 41
• milic* 2
• entrepreneur 154

Cours:

• guerre 219
• paix 75
• spoli* 20
• conqu* 55
• pill* 22
• violence 17
• esclav* 96
• milit* 88
• milic* 13
• entrepreneur 288
• industrieux 104
• industrieuse 35
• industriel* 208
• industrie 494

Some specific observations by Jean-Baptiste Say about war and peace

[Note: this section needs to be expanded by adding more examples.]

Of the very many references to war and peace made by JBS in his two major works I will limit my comments to just a handful to give some flavour of his thinking.

The first from TEP is how the coerced labour known as conscription in to the army is a violation of the person's property rights and is a form of slave labour: [13]

[135] C’est violer la propriété industrielle d’un homme que de lui interdire l’usage de ses talens et de ses facultés, si ce n’est dans le cas où ils attentent aux droits d’un autre homme [117].	(translation to come)
C’est encore violer la propriété industrielle que de mettre un homme en réquisition pour certains travaux, lorsqu’il a jugé à propos de se consacrer à d’autres travaux ; comme lorsqu’on force un homme qui a étudié les arts ou le commerce, à suivre le métier de la guerre, ou simplement à faire un service militaire accidentel.

Another passage concerns how destructive war is to an "industrious society" and how AS is wrong to simply see the actions of a soldier as being "unproductive" when more often they are actually "destructive: [14]

Enfin ce serait apprécier imparfaitement les frais de la guerre, si l’on n’y comprenait aussi les ravages qu’elle commet, et il y a toujours un des deux partis pour le moins exposé à ses ravages, celui chez lequel s’établit le théâtre de la guerre. Plus un état est industrieux, et plus la guerre est pour lui destructive et funeste. Lorsqu’elle pénètre dans un pays riche de ses établissemens agricoles, manufacturiers et commerciaux, elle ressemble à un feu qui gagne des lieux pleins de matières combustibles ; sa rage s’en augmente, et la dévastation est immense. Smith appelle le soldat un travailleur improductif ; plût à Dieu ! C’est bien plutôt un travailleur destructif ; non-seulement il n’enrichit la société d’aucun produit, non-seulement il consomme ceux qui sont nécessaires à son entretien, mais trop souvent il est appelé à détruire, inutilement pour lui-même, le fruit pénible des travaux d’autrui.

(translation to come)

Gustave de Molinari on War and Peace: Building upon Both Traditions (1307w)

Introduction

GdM wrote on many topics over the course of his long life. He wrote over 40 books and hundreds of articles. A topic to which he returned time and again was that of war and peace. Some of the first things he wrote were the entries on "War and Peace" for the DEP (1852); and two of the last books he wrote were largely devoted to this topic - Grandeur et décadence de la Guerre (1898) and Esquisse de l'organisation politique et économique de la Société future (1899) - nearly 50 years later.

He eventually wrote a tetralogy of works which dealt with the evolution of the state and of markets, and in which war played a key part. These works are:

1. L’évolution économique du XIXe siècle: théorie du progrès (Economic Evolution during the 19th Century: A Theory of Progress)(1880);
2. L’évolution politique et la Révolution (Political Evolution and the Revolution) (1884); and
3. Grandeur et décadence de la guerre (The Rise and Fall of War) (1898), all of which would be summarised in the
4. Esquisse de l’organisation politique et économique de la Société future (A Sketch of the Political and Economic Evolution of the Society of the Future) (1899).

He would have been very aware of the contributions of AS and JBS to the development of the political economy of war and peace since soon after his arrival in Paris in 1841 he came to the attention to the Guillaumin publishing firm as a result of his journalism and was employed by them to work of the massive CPE which was underway under the editorship of Eugène Daire which published critical editions of AS's WoN as well as JBS TEP and CC. GdM was tasked with editing 2 of the volumes in the Collection which dealt with some of the lesser 18th century economists.

Inspiration from Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say

What is important for this paper is the inspiration he got for this work which came from the two traditions of liberal thought I have been discussing here.

From AS he got the following:

1. the idea of tolls and fees being charged for the production and supply of so-called public goods - in particlar AS's discussion of "fees of court"
2. that competition between courts would keep costs down and provide speedier service to litigants,
3. the application of a cost-benefit analysis to government policies
4. the "unproductiveness" of the military / the work of soldiers
5. the idea that militias could be a better way for a free people to defend themsleves effectively and economically
6. however he explcity rejected one of AS's ideas, that the "martial spirit" was useful for a modern commercial / industrial society

The ideas which GdM got from from JBS and adapted / applied to his own analysis of the state and the economy were the following:

1. the idea that the world had entered a new stage of economic and political development beyond that of "commerce", namely that of "industry"
2. that everything was an "industry" which had costs and benefits, and might have profits (if it was successful) and losses (if it was not)
3. every industry had a producer, a consumer, and an entrepreneur
4. that things of value could be "produced" privately and competitively on the free market, by producers and entrepreneurs (one of JBS's key insights) for the use of consumers who were voluntarily willing to purchase them; that competition between producers kept prices low, created innovation, and thus benfited consumers - GdM's innovation was to argue that this applied to everything including "security"
5. that all societies were divided into two classes : an unproductive class who used the coercive powers of the state to gain benefits (profits) from the productive classes who created the wealth and were "exploited" / plundered by the ruling class of exploiters (plunderers)
6. that plunder could take two forms:
   1. domestic /internal where the plundering class gained its wealth by coercion via taxes, special privileges, coerced labour 9slavery and serfdom), monopolies
   2. foreign / exrernal by means of war and conquest of others
7. that the military / work of a soldier was not just "unproductive" but "destructive" of value
8. that the costs of colonialism / empire had grown so much that taxation and debt were crippling the ability of consumers / taxpayers to pay for them
9. that war and war funding was a form of "spoliation" (plunder) which enriched a particular class of rulers, military leaders, politicians, bureaucrats, and industrialist/businessmen who supplied the weaponry, and bankers
10. that alternatives to fighting needed to be found to resolve disputes, such as international arbitration

Gustave de Molinari's innovations

GdM's innovations which went beyond AS and JBS:

1. that the state (in which the military and military spending was the dominant component, before the mergence of the welfare state) , should be regarded as a "firm" (la société), or "la maison" (a family owned business), or "l'établissement " (business enterprise) which "owned" the state (la société propriétaire de l'Etat) and sought profits for its "owners" and "shareholders" (les actionnaires) by means of taxes, monopolies, other privileges, and well-paid and secure jobs in the bureaucracy, church, and the military
2. that the role of war and the military was central to the formation and evolution of the state:
   1. that the early state began as a small band of warriors ("la société conquérante" (the conquering firm)) who would periodically invade a territory in order to kill and pillage the inhabitants (what Mancur Olson called "roving bandits"),
   2. this later changed when they realised that they could increase their "profits" by remaining in place over time, subjecting the population to slavery or sefdom, letting them keep a small portion of what they produced for themselves, and confiscating the rest for their own benefit (what Olson called "stationary bandits"). The ruling "warrior class" also found it in their own interest to make alliances with other groups in order to manage better their control over the "subject population" and to "buy off" challenges to their rule.
   3. over time this arrangement evolved into a broader "oligarchie gouvernante" (ruling oligarchy) which, in addition to the military, also included senior members of the church as well as the privileged members of "les corporations" which controlled industry and commerce. In the modern era when political parties had emerged to compete with each to win office and control of the state, "l'oligarchie gouvernante" expanded again to include politicians (creating what he termed "le politicianisme" (rule by politicians)) and government bureacrats (creating "le fontionnarisme" (rule by functionaries or civil servants)).
3. however things had changed in the modern era - in the mid- and late 19th century - since the world (Europe and the US) had entered a new era of economic activity (competition, free trade, industrialism) - what he called "la société future" (the society of the future) - where military activity had completely lost any raison d'être (which it once had in the early middle ages) and should now be dispensed with
4. that private firms, insurance companies, could engage in the "production of security" for the provision of local police and justice / courts services - GdM repeatedly quoted AS's passage in WoN on the "fees of court"
5. at a city level, private "property development companies" would build entire cities or communities where all public goods (streets, lighting, gas, electricty, police, defence, etc.) would be provided and paid for by annual fees by members who had bought into the community
6. on a larger scale, centralised nation states should be broken up into independent provinces which would compete against each other for "citizens" / tax-payers / inhabitants by offering lower taxes / fees for public services ; thus he advocated secession at the national, provinciual, and local level ("serial secession")
7. at an international level, while nation states still existed, that a "league of neutral states", that is of the smaller, militarily weaker states who sought peace, needed to be formed to deter the larger states from starting wars

Concluding Remarks: Molinari's plans to reduce the threat of war (757w)

In the second part of the Esquisse Molinari discusses what will happen when people realise that war had outlived its usefulness to the further development of society, and that instead it now posed one of the greatest threats to the liberty and prosperity of ordinary working people. He had earlier expressed his oppostion to war and his support for peace groups such as "Les Amis de paix" in entries in the DEP in 1852 and in a book on the ideas of "perpetual peace" by Abbé Saint-Pierre in 1857.

In the detailed appendices of one of his last books Grandeur et Décadence de Guerre (1898) he showed yet again how much money states spent on war and armaments. The savings to made by reducing or eliminating military expenditure and the "destructive competition" which it engendered between states was enormous. This could only be achieved, he thought, in two ways. First by reducing the risk of war, especially by a rising military power, by the formation of a "League of Neutral States" which, when combined, their forces would have enough enough military and economic clout to discourage or even prevent a dominant military power from threatending its neighbours and taking control of the continent of Europe. He put forward this suggestion in an article on "League of Neutrals" in the London Times in July 1887. [15]

Secondly, by reducing the power of the ruling class, especially the part of the oligarchy made up of military elites whose livelihood was provided by taxpayers. The aim was to use the political process to withhold this tax money and force them to retire or seek employment in some "productive industry". His hope was that the liberal party and the socialist party might form a political alliance to make this happen within the Parliaments and Chambers of Deputies of his day.

Once major cuts could be made to military expenditure this would allow more investments in the productive sectors of the economy which would deepen the division of labour and extend the possibilities for international free trade. He thought this would then open up the floodgates to a new era of "productive industrial competition".

Eliminating the power of the military oligarchy would also make possible other reforms of the expensive and highly regulatory states which had emerged in late 19th century in Europe. He thought the very nature of the state was "anti-economique" (uneconomic) which meant that its services were expensive, poorly provided, and open to graft and corruption.

Molinari envisaged a "future society" which would be "le régime de paix assurée et de liberté de gouvernement" (a regime with guranteed peace and freedom of government) (p. 173), where there would be "un marché d'une étendue illimitée" (a market of unlimited extent) and "la concurrence illimitée et universalisée" (unlimited and universal competition, i.e. competition in all things) (p. 128), and "la suppression des entraves à la liberté du travail, de l'association et de l'échange dans toutes les branches de l'activité humaine" (an end to all restraints on the freedom of working, of association, and of exchange in all branches of human activity) (p. 153).

Molinari admitted in the conclusion of his book Grandeur et décadence de la guerre (1898) that his radical liberal ideas sounded like "toutes les idées nouvelles, elle fut considérée d’abord comme une pure utopie" (all new ideas were at first thought to be a pure utopia) (p. 78). He returned to the question of "utopia" in one of his last articles in the JDE published in 1904, where he asks "Where is utopia?" Did it lie with the protectionists, statists, militarists, and socialists who were trying to impose their utopian vision for society by force as he was writing these words? Or did it lie with the liberals and economists like Molinari, who had seen some victories during the 19th century, but who now seemed to be very much in retreat intellectually and politically? The choice people faced at the beginning of the 20th century was between the vision offered by the "étatistes" (the statists) in the form of militarism, protection, or socialism on one side, and that offered by the small number of liberals who had reained completely faithful to their principles. Unfortunately, he sadly concluded that the number of these liberals had become so small that "ils tiendraient sur un canapé" (they could all fit on one sofa). [16]

I fear that we could probably say the same today. Maybe two sofas if we are lucky.

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David M. Hart, “Frédéric Bastiat on Plunder, Class, and the State” (2025) HTML.

David M. Hart, “The Paris School of Liberal Political Economy, 1803-1853”. A Paper given at the History of Economic Thought Society of Australia Annual Conference, Melbourne VIC, 22 Sept. 2022. HTML.

David M. Hart, "Gustave de Molinari on Economists as the Bookkeepers of Politics: “Unfortunately, no one listens to Economists" (2020) HTML.

[ikeda and rossellini] War in the History of Economic Thought : Economists and the Question of War. Edited by Yukihiro Ikeda and Annalisa Rosselli (Abingdon: Routledge Studies in the History of Economics, 2018).

Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge University Press, 1976).

Edmund Silberner, La guerre dans la pensée économique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Sirey, 1939.

Edmund Silberner, The Problem of War in Nineteen Century Economic Thought (Princeton U.P. 1946).

Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge University Press, 1978).

Endnotes (530w)

[1] Peter J. Boettke, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 2012).

[2] Chap. 2 "The Core Themes of Mainline Economics" in Matthew D. Mitchell, Peter J. Boettke, Applied Mainline Economics : Bridging the Gap between Theory and Public Policy (Arlington, Va.: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2017). Also Mainline Economics: Six Nobel Lectures in the Tradition of Adam Smith, ed. Peter J. Boettke, Stefanie Haeffele-Balch, and Virgil Henry Storr (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2016). Peter J. Boettke, Stefanie Haeffele- Balch, and Virgil Henry Storr, "Introduction: What is Mainline Economics?" pp. 1-22.

[3] An old, comprehensive but out of date survey of "war in economic thought" is the two volume work by ther Swiss economist Edmund Silberner: vol. 1: La guerre dans la pensée économique du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Sirey, 1939) and vol. 2: translated as The Problem of War in Nineteen Century Economic Thought (Princeton U.P. 1946). This volume covers not only the free market "Classical School" (English and French: Malthus, Ricardo, James Mill, J.S. Mill, MacCulloch, Cairnes, Fawcett; J.B. Say, Bastiat, Molinari) but also "the Protectionists" (List, the German historical school), and the Socialists (Saint-Simon, Marx, and Engels). More recently, there has been an anthology edited by Yukihiro Ikeda and Annalisa Rosselli as part of the Routledge Studies in the History of Economics: War in the History of Economic Thought : Economists and the Question of War (2018).

[4] Daire et al. Collection des principaux économistes (Paris: Guillaumin, 1840-48), 15 vols.

[5] See Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge University Press, 1976).

[6] See my anthology and translation of a selection of their essays from Le Censeur: Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, An Anthology of Articles from Le Censeur (1814-1815) and Le Censeur européen (1817-1819). Ed. David M. Hart (2021) and Censoring the State Part 1: An Anthology of Articles by Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer from Le Censeur (1814-1815). Edited and translated by David M. Hart (Pittwater Free Press, 2026).

[7] See Frédéric Bastiat, La Spoliation, la Classe, et l’État (Plunder, Class, and State): An Anthology of Texts (1845-1851). Edited and with an Introduction by David M. Hart (Sydney: The Pittwater Free Press, 2023); and my introductory essay “Frédéric Bastiat on Plunder, Class, and the State” (2025).

[8] WoN II.iii.2 (pp. I-401-2) HTML

[9] WoN II.iii.30 (p. I-416) HTML

[10] (V.i.b.20-21); my edition of the 1776 ed. pp. II-324-6 HTML. Molinari quoted it on pp. 320-21 in S11 HTML. This is in bold in the quote below.

[11] Molinari, Les Révolutions et le despotisme envisagés au point de vue des intérêts matériel (Revolutions and Despotism considered from the Perspective of Material Interests) (October 1852), p. 116 in French HTML and English HTML.

[12] See Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge University Press, 1978), Chap. 5 "Martial spirit and mental mutilation," pp. 103-20.

[13] Say, TEP, pp. 134 ff. HTML.

[14] Say, TEP pp. 485 ff. HTML

[15] Gustave de Molinari, The London Times 28 July 1887. Republished in Grandeur, Appendice III. P. "La ligue des neutres", pp. 258-301.

[16] “Où est l’utopie?,” JDE, 1904, p. 387.