The Study Of Locke's Economic Thought

Locke is a famous philosopher,political scientist and materialist economist in seventeenth Century.He served as British chancellor of the exchequer,and the secretary of the chairman of the Trade and Migration Committee.He was regarded as an important figure in the occurring period of classical political economics by Marx.His economic thought affected David Hume and Adam Smith,and still influences the research of economics.However,foreign studies on his economic thought are mostly confined to his property right thoughts.Lionel Robbins,a British economist,pointed out that Locke was undervalued as an economist.In China,In addition to the writings that aim at researching history of economic thought,the research on Locke's overall economic thought is less.So,on the basis of consulting a lot of data,this paper studies Locke's economic thought by means of text interpretation,materialist dialectics,historical reconstruction and rational reconstruction,so as to supplement the research work of Locke's economic thoughts in China.This paper first introduces the background,life and works of Locke.The background of Locke's times is divided into two parts: the rise of modern European capitalism and the intricate British domestic background.Then it introduces the origin of Locke's economic thought and the basis of philosophical methodology.Then,the paper carries the main economic thoughts of Locke on the detailed carding and the analysis with dividing them into the property right thought,the value and the price thought,the money thought,the interest thought,the surplus value thought,the wealth view,the government intervention thought.Finally,the status and limitations of Locke's economic thought are reviewed.Locke's economic thought is in connecting position in the occurring period of the classical political economics,Locke inherited and developed the theory of Petty,his economic thought was inherited critically by Hume,and it has an effect on the later physiocracy and classical economics.But Locke's economic thought shows certain limitation in class,time,methodology and theory.