Economic Harmony

Abstract

This term has been introduced frequently into economic discussion, and especially into discussions concerning the history of economic thought. Yet there seems to be a good deal of ambiguity as to what it is to mean. Moreover, there has developed considerable disagreement concerning the centrality of the ‘harmony’ idea to the development of economic thought, and similar disagreement concerning the extent to which the classical economists, in particular, are to be seen as harmony-theorists. We will return a little later to distinguish various different senses that have been attached to the term ‘harmony’ in economics. For each of these different senses, however, acceptance of the harmony thesis has been held to imply a favourable stance towards a policy of laissez-faire. It is thus not surprising that 18th-century precursors of the notion of harmony have been discovered in Cantillon and in Quesnay (Schumpeter, 1954, p. 234). And we are not surprised to find some writers emphasizing the harmony ideas they see in the classical economists, especially in Adam Smith (Halévey, 1901–4, p. 89: Heimann, 1945, p. 65), while others vehemently question the unqualified identification of these writers with harmony theories (Robbins, 1952, pp. 22–9; Samuels, 1966, pp. 6–8; Sowell, 1974, pp. 16f). It was in the middle of the 19th century that the best-known writings appeared concerning economic harmony. The term appeared in the title of two books by the American economist Henry C. Carey (Carey 1836, 1852).