It is little known, but Destutt de Tracy had a decisive influence on the future President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, while he was ambassador to Paris in the 1780s.

Indeed, his Treatise on Political Economy condemned protectionism and the expansion of Napoleon's empire. It was therefore banned from publication in France by Bonaparte. However, it was translated into English and published in the United States by Jefferson himself. He authored this text, the first political economy textbook at the University of Virginia, which he had just founded in Charlottesville. The Treatise was not published in France until 1819!

Destutt de Tracy, a philosopher and economist, was the leader of the so-called "Ideologues" school, which included notable figures such as Cabanis, Condorcet, Constant, Daunou, Say, and Germaine de Staël. They are the heirs of the Physiocrats and the direct disciples of Turgot.

By ideology, Tracy simply meant the science that deals with the study of ideas, their origin, their laws, and their relationship with language; that is, in more contemporary terms, epistemology. The term "ideology" did not carry the pejorative connotation that Marx would later attribute to discredit the economists of "laissez-faire." The journal of the ideologue movement was called La Décade philosophique et littéraire.

It dominated the revolutionary period and was directed by Jean-Baptiste Say. Destutt de Tracy was elected a member of the French Academy in 1808 and of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1832. His daughter married Georges Washington de La Fayette (the son of the first American president) in 1802, which shows the close proximity that still existed between France and young America at that time.

The purpose of his Treatise on Political Economy is to "examine the best way to employ all our physical and intellectual faculties to satisfy our various needs." His idea is that trade is the source of all human good; it is the civilizing, rationalizing, and pacifying force of the world. The great maxim of political economy is formulated by him as follows: "Trade is the whole of society, just as labor is the whole of wealth." Indeed, he sees society as "a continuous series of exchanges in which both contractors always gain." Therefore, the market is the opposite of predation. It enriches some without impoverishing others. As it will be said later, it is not a "zero-sum game," but a positive-sum game.

Our author does not go as far as to define political economy as the science of exchanges. But this same reasoning will be taken up and carried through by Bastiat. Selling is an exchange of objects, renting is an exchange of services, and lending is merely a deferred exchange. Political economy thus becomes, for Bastiat, "the theory of exchange."

According to Destutt de Tracy, property necessarily stems from our nature, from our faculty of desire. If man wanted nothing, he would have neither rights nor duties. To meet his needs and fulfill his duties, man must employ means that he acquires through his labor. And the form of social organization that conforms to this end is private property. That is why the sole object of government is to protect property and to allow peaceful exchange.

For him, the best taxes are the most moderate ones, and he wishes that the state's expenditures be as restricted as possible. He condemns the plundering of society's wealth by the government in the form of public debt, taxes, banking monopolies, and expenditures. Once again, the law should serve only to protect freedom; it should never be used to oppress or exploit.

Finally, he adds this recommendation, which has not lost its relevance:

In conclusion, the Ideologues had a profound intuition, namely that production and exchanges are the real solution to political problems and the true alternative to wars. Wars are always predatory, whether they are internal, as during the Revolution, or external, such as those waged by ancient kings and Napoleon.