THE PHYSIOCRATS: A STUDY IN ECONOMIC RATIONALIZATION.

This article focuses on physiocrats, a study in economic rationalization. Physiocrats meant free movement of agricultural products within France and free export, becomes confused with free import as understood today. As a matter of fact foreign trade for the Physiocrats was a temporary measure. Their aim was to do away with foreign trade altogether once it had served its purpose of relieving the landowners of their surplus crops at good prices. The peculiar characteristic of the Physiocrats single tax is to be found in the idea of the product net. It was not essentially a single tax on land at all. It was a single tax on surplus agricultural products. Psysiocrats was a device of the commoner landowner, eager for profit, to escape the multiplicity of taxes which fell on land under the ancient regime and to substitute one tax upon the agricultural surplus, thus insuring to the landowner, not only his cost of production, but a profit before taxation could be applied. Their economic doctrines of free trade, the single tax and the sole productivity of agriculture are re-interpreted In the light of the above analysis.