Introduction

This book deals with the tools needed for understanding political, social and economic life. Our main subject, political economy, gained – according to a widely held view – the status of a distinct area of study in the 18th and 19th centuries, in other words, well before the modern disciplinary classification was introduced. The early practitioners of political economy were moral philosophers rather than economists or political scientists. The devolution of economics, sociology and political science from the master science, philosophy, was still many decades away at the time when Adam Smith and David Hume outlined their ideas of political economy. In his classic treatise of 1776, the former defined political economy as follows (Smith [1776] 1961):

Political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves: and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.