‎(LINGUET, S.N.H.)‎
‎Théorie des loix civiles, ou principes fondamentaux de la société. Tome Premier [- Tome Second.]‎

‎A Londres, 1767. 2 volumes. (4), 496 pp.; (4), 528 pp. 8vo. Contemporary marbled calf, spine richly gilt with raised bands, labels with gilt lettering, sprinkled edges, marbled endpapers, some minor defects to joints but a very nice copy. Conlon 67:1044; Einaudi 3420; Goldsmiths 10377; Higgs 4251; INED 2930; Kress 6459. Usually described as the first edition, this probably is the second edition, preceded, in the same year, by an edition set from different type, having a different pagination and collation, and with errata. It still remains a scarce and important book by this predecessor of Marx. The Théorie des Loix civiles is Linguet's Magnum Opus in which he refocused earlier reflections on history, retrospective cultural anthropology, law, political economy, and public administration, and integrated them into a theory of the origins of society, the organization of its institutions and cultural superstructures, and the dynamics and directions of its development. It is a refutation of Montesquieu and the Physiocrats, and one of the major achievements of early socialist thinking. Linguet's book was highly praised by Marx, particularly because of the thesis Linguet developed in the second book, 'On the Origin of Laws.' Linguet wrecked Montesquieu's illusory 'Esprit des Lois' with a single word: the 'esprit des lois is property.' 'Moreover, occupying himself almost entirely with the fate of living people, workers and peasants, and analyzing the mechanism of their condition, Linguet stands much nearer to the modern industrial socialists than to the first French socialist school, and he is one of the few writers before 1789 of whom could be said with good reason that he is more a predecessor of Karl Marx than an ancestor of Fourier or Cabet!' (Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siècle, pp. 288-305).In Linguet's perception that economic facts are more important in the life of the individual than political background Linguet was far in advance of any other thinker of his age. When in his Théorie des Loix civiles, perhaps his most important work, he declared that men could not be really free if "they must go upon their knees to a rich man to gain from him permission to increase his wealth," he was crudely foreshadowing the doctrine of surplus value. His fame died before him, but his ideas had an important influence on Karl Marx (see Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol 9, pp. 488-489). ‎

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