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Of goats and dogs: Joseph Townsend and the idealisation of markets—a decisive episode in the history of economics

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  • Philipp H. Lepenies

Abstract

Joseph Townsend’s Dissertation on the Poor Laws (1786) played a major role in the development of economic thought. Its originality lies in the fact that the notion of competitive markets was defined as a ‘natural law’, a principle of nature that should not be meddled with. This principle was explained by describing the struggle for survival between goats and dogs on a remote Pacific island. The Dissertation stands in the shadow of Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. Yet Malthus has been accused of plagiarising Townsend. I argue that an overlooked aspect in this debate is that Townsend’s Dissertation and Malthus’s Essay share a revolutionary methodology that removed the market mechanism from any cultural and social context in the name of science—a feature that has been a part of market-fundamentalist economics ever since.

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  • Philipp H. Lepenies, 2014. "Of goats and dogs: Joseph Townsend and the idealisation of markets—a decisive episode in the history of economics," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 38(2), pages 447-457.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:38:y:2014:i:2:p:447-457.
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bet024
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    Cited by:

    1. Remig, Moritz C., 2017. "Structured pluralism in ecological economics — A reply to Peter Söderbaum's commentary," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 533-537.

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