L’ILLUMINISMO DELLE RIFORME CIVILI: DIVISIONE DEL LAVORO, COMMERCIO, PRODUZIONE DELLA RICCHEZZA

The Enlightenment of Civil Reforms: Commerce, Division of Labour, and the Production of Wealth. The formation of political economy is closely associated with the intellectual traditions of the enlightenment. However, the economists’ enlightenment is a complex process characterized by a plurality of roots and expressions. It encompasses analyses and policy proposals remarkably distant from each other and yet pointing to a common matrix of concepts and beliefs. To take one example, the enlightenment of the Physiocrats, who take the standpoint of ‘external advisors’ to the Sovereign, is different from the enlightenment of those ‘cultivated traders’ who emphasize the relative autonomy of division of labour and markets relative to the state; as it is different from the standpoint of economists who focus on the middle ground between markets and governmental structures and explore their interdependence both at the level of analysis and at that of administrative and political action. The contributions of the Lombard Enlightenment are characterized by the ability to visualize both the ‘horizontal’ standpoint of division of labour and exchange, and the ‘vertical’ perspective of administrative structures. In this way, the Lombard economic enlightenment brings into focus a scheme of economic analysis and economic governance that is distinct from the radical Enlightenment of Condorcet, Morellet and Paine, as it is distinct from the ‘topdown’ laisser faire of Quesnay and Physiocracy in France, and from Genovesi’s, Galiani’s and Tanucci’s more active and context-dependent approach to economic policy in Naples. Many economists of the Lombard Enlightenment, such as Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, were part of the Milanese social elite but were also active in the administrative structures of government. This makes their intellectual and policy activity of special interest. The principal objective of this paper is to discuss the contribution of the Lombard Enlightenment to the definition of a body of economic knowledge in which it is possible to see a clear overlap. between the point of view of commercial society and that of governmental structures (an overlap. that is characteristic of the intellectual make up. of civil enlightenment). This overlap. is of distinctive importance for investigating the relationship. between division of labour and markets, legal arrangements, and governance of the economy. Division of labour and markets are central to economists considering the initiatives of individuals and groups independently of political decisions and of their administrative consequences. This explains the central position of trade and division of labour in the writings of Beccaria and Verri. However, the perspective of the civil enlightenment suggests including division of labour within a complex organizational hierarchy of productive activities (Beccaria). The same point of view also calls attention to the need of investigating commerce and markets by focusing on institutional and administrative conditions rather than on choice criteria derived from abstract rationality principles (Verri). The Lombard enlightenment economists emphasize the central position of governmental actions as external interventions with respect to division of labour and markets, and for this reason capable of triggering the activation of possibilities existing within a given social context. Law, administration and monetary policy bring about an analytical and policy framework focusing on the process of wealth formation and considering this process as embedded in the institutional and administrative arrangements of society. In this way, the economists of the Lombard Enlightenment emphasize the mutual relationship. between administrative governance, economic improvement, and social structures, and take this relationship. to be at the core of the enlightenment of civil reforms.