MIA: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Glossary of People


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Quelch, Harry (1858-1913)

Harry Quelch A founder of British Social Democracy.

See Biography by E. Belfort Bax and Harry Quelch Archive.

 

Quesnay, Francois (1694-1774)

Quesnay - tubby aristocrat with curly wig French doctor and economist, founder of the physiocratic theory, which "transferred the investigation into the origin of surplus value from the sphere of circulation to the sphere of immediate production itself, and by so doing laid the foundations for the analysis of capitalist production." (Marx.)

According to the physiocrats, ground rent was the only form of surplus value and agricultural labour was therefore the only productive labour. But this "apparent glorification of landed property turns into its economic negation and into the confirmation of capitalist production " (Marx), since the physiocrats wanted to throw the whole weight of taxation on to ground rent, demanded that industry should be freed from state tutelage and preached free competition. The physiocratic doctrine inherited the famous Economic Table (Tableau Economique) of Quesnay, in which he represented the process of reproduction of social capital as a whole. This table, "in the first third of the eighteenth century, when political economy was in its infancy ... was incontestably the most brilliant idea of which political economy had hitherto been guilty." (Marx, See Theorien über den Mehrwert, Bd. I.)

 

Quine, Willard (b. 1908, Ohio)

Quine - eccentric looking guy with artist's beret American logician and philosopher who blended American Prgmatism with Anglo-European Logical-positivism for a kind of Constructivism. Although his early career concentrated on logic, his later work focussed on more general philosophical issues within a linguistic framework.

Qunie studied mathematics at Harvard University before studying at Prague under Carnap, and studying at Oxford before returning to Harvard to complete a doctorate in philosophy. See his Empiricism without the Dogmas.