[Article] Dupont de Nemours and the origin of the maxim ‘laissez faire, laissez passer’

Research Article_s Economics

Abstract.

Farnaz Farnia (CIRANO (Canada)) , Nathalie de Marcellis-Warin https://www.cirano.qc.ca/fr/communaute/bottin/view/1477 (Polytechnique Montreal & CIRANO (Canada))https://www.cirano.qc.ca/fr/communaute/bottin/view/1477 , Thierry Warin https://www.warin.ca (HEC Montréal and CIRANO (Canada))https://www.hec.ca/en/profs/thierry.warin.html
03-27-2019

Abstract

Dupont de Nemours begins his ‘Lettre à la Chambre de Commerce de Normandie’ (1788) with an excerpt from the catholic bible. This quote refers to the Lazarus’s miraculous re-birth: “Otez-lui les liens, & laissez-le aller.”1 The quote is Jesus’ statement upon bringing Lazarus back to life. This reference begins our inquiry into the origin of the laissez-faire maxim. In this paper, we highlight some mistranslations, some historical shortcomings and present our perspective on the origin of the maxim.

Keywords: laissez-faire; capitalism; economic thought; political economy.


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Citation

For attribution, please cite this work as

Farnia, et al., "Thierry Warin, PhD: [Article] Dupont de Nemours and the origin of the maxim 'laissez faire, laissez passer'", International Journal of Economics and Business Research (IJEBR), 2019

BibTeX citation

@article{farnia2019[article],
  author = {Farnia, Farnaz and Marcellis-Warin, Nathalie de and Warin, Thierry},
  title = {Thierry Warin, PhD: [Article] Dupont de Nemours and the origin of the maxim 'laissez faire, laissez passer'},
  journal = {International Journal of Economics and Business Research (IJEBR)},
  year = {2019},
  note = {https://warin.ca/posts/article-dupont-de-nemours/},
  doi = {10.1504/IJEBR.2019.099974}
}