Jean-Baptiste Say and the Political Economy of Republican Utopia in Revolutionary France

This article offers a fresh analysis of Olbie (1798), a frequently overlooked essay by the French author and economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832). It positions Olbie as a central text for comprehending Say's political thought and situates it within the wider historical context, in particular French republicanism during the 1790s. In doing so, the article argues against interpretations that read Olbie as a pioneer in placing economics before morals and politics. Instead, this article stresses the eighteenth-century understandings of ‘political economy’ that integrated economy and morals. Say's story of Olbios, on this reading, is a testament to the binding presence of eighteenth-century and French revolutionary political economy that considered mœurs as the primary factor connecting and controlling the politics and economics of a society conceived as an organic body. Olbie, then, is a republican version of political economy, a society of an exquisite system of non-monetary rewards and punishments to establish and maintain republican mœurs through a hierarchy of merit and virtue. Placed in its historical context, Olbie’s incentive-design approach does not represent the first case of its kind, nor is it purely economic in nature. Instead, it embodies revolutionary republicanism that draws on a utopian form, trying to depict an ideal republic, one intended to provide a more practical framework for addressing the challenges faced by reformers in the 1790s. In conclusion, this article underscores the rich ideological tapestry woven into Say's Olbie, shedding light on its historical position within the broader landscape of political and economic thought during the French Revolution.