Thoughts on Political Economy (1820): A Theory of Productive Power

by Daniel Raymond

This is the first modern edited and annotated edition of the nineteenth-century American economist Daniel Raymond's 'Thoughts on Political Economy' (1820). Once widely influential on both sides of the Atlantic, Raymond's 'Thoughts' established the fundamental principles of a tradition of practical economics which historically made America both wealthy and powerful but which now has been completely forgotten. In republishing this classic treatise with a richly researched historical introduction and Charles Patrick Neill's famous 1896 essay on Raymond, Anthem's Economic Ideas that Built America series makes available to a wider public the most systematic American response to Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations'.

Clearly written and easily accessible, Raymond's treatise shows that nations produce and increase their wealth through mechanisms completely different from those of individuals. Starting from a new definition of national wealth, expressed in terms of a general 'capacity' for sustainment and comfort generated by the 'productive power' of the whole population, Raymond shows how most of the economic solutions elaborated by his predecessors aimed at favouring only a part of the population, often subordinating the activity of real production to mere exchange or speculation. Raymond further identifies government as the only agent capable of supervising the road to national prosperity by maintaining an equilibrium between different economic applications of productive power and assuring a fair distribution of the national income.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0857289713
• ISBN13: 9780857289711
• Release Date: July 2020
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Length: 350 Pages