Nassau William Senior ( English Senior, Nassau William , 1790 - 1864 ) - English economist [1] [2] . In the Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron, the name is spelled in a different order: William Nassau.
| Nassau William Senior | |
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| Nassau william senior | |
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| Date of Birth | September 26, 1790 |
| Place of Birth | Compton , Berkshire , England |
| Date of death | June 4, 1864 (73 years old) |
| Place of death | Kensington , England |
| A country | |
| Occupation | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | and |
Content
Biography
He was educated at Eton and Oxford University ( Magdalen College ). At the university, he was one of the private students of Richard Watley , the future archbishop of Dublin , with whom he was bound by the bonds of lifelong friendship. Among other prominent personalities with whom the Senior subsequently became friends, one should mention the Marquis Alexis Tocqueville - a prominent French thinker, later Minister of Foreign Affairs of France - the Senior met with him for the first time in 1833. In 1811, the Senior received a bachelor's degree, in 1819 - the right to practice law.
In 1821 he married, a son (1822–1891) and a daughter (1825–1907) were born in the marriage.
In the twenties, he combined the practice of law with teaching and writing articles on economics; in the thirties, political activity was added to this. After the Department of Political Economy was opened in Oxford in 1825, the Senior becomes its first head (1825–1830); and re-elected for a period of 1847–1852. Between this, he held senior positions in various government commissions on labor in industry. In 1830, Lord Melbourne invited the Senior to participate in a commission to improve the legislation on strikes. In 1832, the Senior was included in the commission on the legislation on the poor, and in 1837 - in the commission on weavers. Senior publishes a report on the results of the last in 1841, including ideas developed by him a few years before, during the years of work in the commission on strikes. In 1836, when Chancellor Lord Cottenham was appointed bailiff. Blaug calls the Senior [3]
the first theoretician-economist who for many years provided advisory services to politicians - namely, members of the Whig Party of that time - both officially and privately.
In 1864, the Senior was appointed to the commission for the study of the state of public education in England. In the last years of his life, while traveling in foreign countries, the Senior carefully studies the local political and social life. Subsequently published several volumes of his diary entries contain a lot of interesting information; however, the author apparently overestimated the importance of these social observations. Over the years, Senior has published regular notes in the Edinburgh Quarterly , London Review and North British Review , speaking on their pages both on political and economic topics, as well as on literary and critical reviews.
Senior in Political Economy
Heading the department at Oxford, the Senior tried to develop certain provisions of the prevailing school of classical English political economy, in particular: the doctrine of the wage bill, land rent , value, etc.
In Essays on Political Economy (1836), the Senior formulated the " theory of abstinence, " according to which value is determined not by labor, but by production costs , which are determined by labor and capital. At the same time, in the category of labor, the Senior focuses not on production activities, but on the “sacrifice” made by workers and capitalists, who are losing peace and relaxation for the sake of obtaining life benefits. Capital, according to the Senior, arises as a result of the fact that the capitalist refrains from the unproductive spending of his funds at the current moment in the name of making profit in the future. Thus, wages and profits are a reward for these sacrifices of workers and capitalists. Value, according to the Senior, is determined, along with the relationship between supply and demand , not only the costs of production actually incurred by the capitalist, but also those costs that would be required to produce the goods at the time of their sale. Both of these assessments (on the part of the seller and on the part of the buyer) determine the upper and lower limits of market price fluctuations.
The analysis of what Senior called “abstinence” had long been established in English economics, as was the role of savings. The same terms mean A. Smith "thrift" or "moderation." Almost all economists who wrote after 1776 dealt with this concept; objectively, the Senior only brought to the awareness of people the existing theoretical concept [4] . However, this theory caused perhaps the most caustic ridicule of Marx regarding the "apologetic nature of bourgeois economic science" [3] [5] .
Senior's contribution was highly appreciated by J. Schumpeter [4] :
In our picture, he will enter the triumvirate with Malthus and Ricardo : he was one of three English whose works are the main cross-bridges between A. Smith and J.S. Mill .
Among the reasons why the Senior is underestimated by economists, Schumpeter calls his strange talent “to get into anything” - to utter absurdities, in particular called “ Senior 's theory of the last hour ”. In essays written based on the results of work in various government commissions, the Senior tried to theoretically justify the impossibility of shortening the working day (despite the fact that its duration was 11.5 hours at that time). He argued that net profit is supposedly created only during the last hour of work, and thus reducing the working day will negatively affect the economy, because for entrepreneurs, the incentives for economic activity supposedly disappear. The absurdity of the theory of the last hour was finally recognized by the Senior himself, who was forced to abandon it later, however, it played its reactionary role in the struggle of the working class of England to reduce the working day to 10 hours in the 1830s. After the factory laws adopted in 1847, which limited the labor of women and minors to 10 hours, did not impede industrial growth, Senior became a supporter of the extension of factory laws to those industries that were not yet regulated by them [6] .
Some published works
- Three Lectures on the Cost of obtaining Money and on some Effects of Private and Government Paper Money (1830)
- Three Lectures on Wages and on the Effects of Absenteeism, Machinery and War, with a Preface on the Causes and Remedies of the Present Disturbances (1830, 2nd ed. 1831)
- An Outline of the Science of Political Economy ("Essays on Political Economy", 1836)
- Letters on the Factory Act, as it affects the Cotton Manufacture (1837)
- Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1852).
Notes
- ↑ L.G. Superfin . Senior , Nassau William. Great Soviet Encyclopedia , 3rd ed.
- ↑ Economic thought of the 20-30s of the XIX century. in England
- ↑ 1 2 Blaug M. 100 great economists before Keynes
- ↑ 1 2 Schumpeter J. History of economic analysis. T. 2 - St. Petersburg: School of Economics, 2004.
- ↑ Marx K. , “Capital”, vol. 1, chap. 22. - Marx K. , Engels F. Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 23.
- ↑ Essays on the Recent History of Political Economy and Socialism. // Tugan-Baranovsky M.I. Economic Essays. - M.: ROSSPEN , 1998.S. 162.
Bibliography
- Blaug M. Senior, William Nassau // 100 Great Economists before Keynes = Great Economists before Keynes: An introduction to the lives & works of one hundred great economists of the past. - SPb. : Economics, 2008 .-- S. 266-268. - 352 p. - (Library of the Economic School, vol. 42). - 1,500 copies. - ISBN 978-5-903816-01-9 .
- Vasilevsky E. G. N. U. Senior // World History of Economic Thought : In 6 volumes / Ch. ed. V.N. Cherkovets. - M .: Thought , 1988 .-- T. II. From Smith and Ricardo to Marx and Engels. - 574 p. - 20 000 copies - ISBN 5-244-00038-1 .
- Senior, William Nassau // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Senior Nassau William / Superfin L.G. // Safflower - Soan. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1976. - ( Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vols.] / Ch. Ed. A. M. Prokhorov ; 1969-1978, vol. 23).
- From the life of prominent scientists in the field of economic science