Calculation and Morality: The Costs of Slavery and the Value of Emancipation in the French Antilles

Translated to Russian by O. Volchek; under scientific ed. S. Fokin. – Moscow: Gaidar Institute Press; St. Petersburg: the Center for Economic Culture, 2024. – 376 p. – (Series "New Economic Thinking").

ISBN 978-5-93255-649-8

Adam Smith was one of the first to calculate the economic inexpediency of slavery, pointing out at the same time that the morality of a slave in no way disposes him to work with full dedication. How can we explain that, in the absence of economic profitability, slavery was supported for so long by enlightened Europe? Smith believed that the answer lies not so much in economics as in culture, or more precisely, in the will to dominate that characterizes European man. It is this tension between economics and ethics that is the focus of the French economists Caroline Houdin-Bastide and Philippe Steiner, who co-authored the book Calculation and Morality (2015) and are recognized experts on both the economics of slave labor and related political-economic debates, characteristic of the intellectual life of France until the complete abolition of slavery in 1848.