Œconomia (Jun 2024)
Analyser l’économie en physicien : introduction à la pensée économique de Marion King Hubbert
Abstract
Marion King Hubbert (1903-1989) is a geophysicist mostly known for his work on the availability of oil resources (known as “peak oil” theory). But Hubbert was also a political theorist and activist of the Technocracy Movement, a political movement mainly active in the United States in the 1930s. This movement is characterized by a physical approach to economic phenomena and by its advocacy in favor of a planning of the entire economy under the control of engineers. Hubbert produced the most systematized account of technocratic thought in a book entitled Technocracy Study Course, which was used in the scientific and political training of Technocracy activists in an organization co-founded by him. This article examines how this book questions the boundary between economics and natural sciences by making a distinction between, on one hand, economic facts which constitute a transformation of energy and resources and are thus ruled by the laws of physics; and on the other hand, monetary phenomena, which are ruled by human conventions. We give a commentary of Hubbert’s attempt to build a critique of market economy based on a non-metaphorical use of physics, and explain what brings him to defend an energy-based planning of the economy. We claim that these elements make Hubbert’s work relevant to the history of bio-physical approaches in economics.
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