Volume I contains a biographical study of John Rae, a brilliant economist and scholar who lived in Canada for a period in the early part of the nineteenth century, an analysis of Rae's contributions to economics, and a collection of his articles and essays on a variety of topics. These miscellaneous writings, many of which originally appeared in contemporary newspapers and magazines, reveal the broad range of his intellectual interests as well as his polemic and literary skill. Volume II is a reprint of Rae's book Statement of New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy which was originally published in Boston in 1834. As a result of the reissue of this book, which has been scarce for some years, modern students of economics will be better able to appreciate Rae's fundamental contribution to the development of economic thought, particularly the theory of capital. Much of Rae's analysis of economic development and behaviour was based on a first-hand knowledge of the Canadian economy in the early nineteenth century, but his theory has a surprisingly modern flavour, and is completely relevant to the problems of primitive or emerging economies today. Rae, personally, has been a neglected and obscure figure and one of the main objects of this work is to throw additional light on his career. There were a number of gloomy and disappointing episodes in his life, but, despite them, his devotion to scholarly pursuits remained unimpaired, and his literary output continued throughout his life. This work should appeal to all those interested in the history of ideas, particularly to those concerned with the economic, political and religious controversies of the first half of the nineteenth century. For his contributions to economic theory John Rae is entitled to a place in the first rank of economists anywhere in the world, and for this reason he deserves the attention of all students of economics and sociology. His work is sprinkled with profound insights into human behaviour and, in addition, he displays a literary style which has seldom been surpassed in the literature of economics.

Volume I contains a biographical study of John Rae, a brilliant economist and scholar who lived in Canada for a period in the early part of the nineteenth century, an analysis of Rae's contributions to economics, and a collection of his articles and essays on a variety of topics. These miscellaneous writings, many of which originally appeared in contemporary newspapers and magazines, reveal the broad range of his intellectual interests as well as his polemic and literary skill. Volume II is a reprint of Rae's book Statement of New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy which was originally published in Boston in 1834. As a result of the reissue of this book, which has been scarce for some years, modern students of economics will be better able to appreciate Rae's fundamental contribution to the development of economic thought, particularly the theory of capital. Much of Rae's analysis of economic development and behaviour was based on a first-hand knowledge of the Canadian economy in the early nineteenth century, but his theory has a surprisingly modern flavour, and is completely relevant to the problems of primitive or emerging economies today. Rae, personally, has been a neglected and obscure figure and one of the main objects of this work is to throw additional light on his career. There were a number of gloomy and disappointing episodes in his life, but, despite them, his devotion to scholarly pursuits remained unimpaired, and his literary output continued throughout his life. This work should appeal to all those interested in the history of ideas, particularly to those concerned with the economic, political and religious controversies of the first half of the nineteenth century. For his contributions to economic theory John Rae is entitled to a place in the first rank of economists anywhere in the world, and for this reason he deserves the attention of all students of economics and sociology. His work is sprinkled with profound insights into human behaviour and, in addition, he displays a literary style which has seldom been surpassed in the literature of economics.

Volume II is a reprint of Rae's Statement of New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, originally published in1834. With the reissue of this book, modern students of economics will be better able to appreciate Rae's fundamental contribution to the development of economic thought, particularly the theory of capital.

John Rae made a wide-ranging contribution to economics, in particular through his work on Capital Theory and Technical Change. Although Rae was held in high esteem by some of the great names of the past who have openly acknowledged his originality and their indebtedness to him, he has not yet received all the attention he deserves. In The Economics of John Rae, respected economists, redress the general neglect of Rae as a classical economist and examine his role as a political economist.

The originators of classical political economy—Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Steuart, and others—created a discourse that explained the logic, the origin, and, in many respects, the essential rightness of capitalism. But, in the great texts of that discourse, these writers downplayed a crucial requirement for capitalism’s creation: For it to succeed, peasants would have to abandon their self-sufficient lifestyle and go to work for wages in a factory. Why would they willingly do this? Clearly, they did not go willingly. As Michael Perelman shows, they were forced into the factories with the active support of the same economists who were making theoretical claims for capitalism as a self-correcting mechanism that thrived without needing government intervention. Directly contradicting the laissez-faire principles they claimed to espouse, these men advocated government policies that deprived the peasantry of the means for self-provision in order to coerce these small farmers into wage labor. To show how Adam Smith and the other classical economists appear to have deliberately obscured the nature of the control of labor and how policies attacking the economic independence of the rural peasantry were essentially conceived to foster primitive accumulation, Perelman examines diaries, letters, and the more practical writings of the classical economists. He argues that these private and practical writings reveal the real intentions and goals of classical political economy—to separate a rural peasantry from their access to land. This rereading of the history of classical political economy sheds important light on the rise of capitalism to its present state of world dominance. Historians of political economy and Marxist thought will find that this book broadens their understanding of how capitalism took hold in the industrial age.