RICARDO, David.
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited by Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society, 1951 [– 1955].
10 vols, 8vo; very good copies in publisher’s blue cloth with dust-jackets printed in red and black, some tide-marks to cloth, light sunning to dust-jackets in places.
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The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, edited by Piero Sraffa with the Collaboration of M.H. Dobb.
First comprehensive edition of the works of the political economist David Ricardo (1772-1823).
‘Sraffa’s edition of The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo proved to be more than a great scholarly achievement. For in his introduction to The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation Sraffa presented an entirely new interpretation of Ricardo’s theory of value and distribution. Sraffa’s interpretation established a new, theoretically consistent version of the surplus approach to the analysis of distribution in the Essay on Profits. Further, he demonstrated that this approach was sustained in the Principles by Ricardo’s use of the labour theory of value, and that, contrary to the accepted view of Ricardo’s analysis presented by Jacob Hollander (1904), Ricardo did not retreat from his use of the labour theory of value in successive versions of the Principles.’
‘Sraffa’s interpretation of Ricardo had a considerable impact at the time of its publication … However, the real importance of Sraffa’s new interpretation was for the understanding of Marx’s analysis of value and distribution, which is based on Ricardo’s theory, and for the general rehabilitation of the surplus approach to value and distribution, which had, for so long, been regarded as logically deficient.’ (Palgrave).
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COMTE, Auguste, and Albert CROMPTON (editor).
Confessions and Testament of August Comte: and his correspondence with Clotilde de Vaux.
First edition in English of Comte’s Confessions, which first appeared with his ‘testament’ in French in 1884. These take the form of ‘Twelve Saint Clotildes’, a series of annual confessions which he recited to his muse’s grave. Clotilde de Vaux was a divorced woman whom Comte met in 1844 through one of his students; their first recorded letter was written in 1845, in which they are discussing Fielding’s Tom Jones. Clotilde rejected Comte’s love as a divorced woman and a devout Catholic, though they continued to correspond, until in the following year Clotilde died of tuberculosis, becoming a Saint of the Positivist religion. The ‘Testament’ is simply Comte’s legal will, in which can be found the details of the bequest of his books to various disciples, including the ‘small edition of the Divina Commedia, which serves me for daily use’.
FARMERS AND RULERS CAIROL, M. de.
Réflexions historiques et politiques, sur les revolutions qu’a essuyé l’agriculture sous différens gouvernemens, principalement dans le Languedoc, sur son état actuel dans cette province, & sur les moyens de l’améliorer.
Very rare essay on the state of agriculture in France, and in particular in the Languedoc, examining the ways in which the policies of various governments (from the Romans and Visigoths onwards) have affected agricultural production, the current situation, and the ways in which matters could be improved. Throughout, the author’s concerns, although concentrated on agricultural production, are broader: he constantly reminds the reader of the extent to which the rural people of the Languedoc, although blessed with a clement climate and fertile land, are nonetheless at the mercy of the whims of their rulers, whether through the imposition of taxation or arbitrary and ill-informed decisions made de haut en bas about the crops to be produced and the methods to be employed. A lengthy set of notes, taking up the second half of the book, quote Montesquieu and Hume, describe agricultural practice in England, and present a number of statistical tables. We have found no information about the author, but it would be reasonable to assume that he was not unsympathetic to the events of the end of the decade.