ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Economic justice and the market / Dutch 19th century economists on poverty / And a "friend of the rich and ten poor"
Author:
Evert Schoorl and Henk Plasmeijer In the 19th century in the Netherlands philosophising on economic justice was not a priority for economists. The pioneers of the institutionalization of the economic profession in the Low Countries may have had some debates about the matter with their colleagues at the law faculty. The economists were all educated as lawyers. However, even in the juridical literature it is difficult to find any trace of theorizing about social justice. No ideas about a 'social contract' or whatever can be found. The debates about distributional justice were mainly inspired by a religiously determined view about 'social harmony' Wit a few exceptions, Dutch economists were convinced that the market would serve to provide a living of every working man and his family. Charity must be limited to the small number of the deserving poor. Strict rules should exclude the undeserving and all immigrants. In the background of the debates on social justice is a gradual rise to supremacy of the Malthusian population principles. It was soon recognised, that the political consequences of the 'Principles' were in conflict with the traditional views on charity. The community spirit of Dutch Protestantism mainly inspired these views. This paper is about the 19th century Dutch debates about social justice. We focus upon Jeronimo de Bosch Kemper. He was a free-market economist. This position did not keep him from sharing a great concern with the fate of the poor. He believed he was "the friend of the rich and the poor." We examine De Bosch Kemper's position and compare it with that of Gysbrecht-Karel van Hogendorp at the beginning anf of Nicholas Pierson at the end of the century.
Registred web users only can download this paper - Go back
Please note that files available for download have not been checked for viruses. These files have been submitted by authors of the conference to this web site. Conference organisers can't accept any responsibility for damages caused to users by downloading such files.