Sismondi e gli storici (Sismondi and historians)

The paper examines the evolution of the historiography on J.-C.-L. Simonde de Sismondi since the 1970s. It reveals the existence of diÄerent ’historiographic styles’ : 1. the analogical or comparative style, consisting in comparisons between Sismondi’s ideas and those of other great economists (a style which is typical of ’non-historian historians’) ; 2. the style of ’enrolling fighters’, who utilise Sismondi’s ideas to fight contemporary scientific and ideological battles ; 3. that of ’dwarfs on the shoulders of giants’, who revitalise some Sismondan conceptions to provide a background of knowledge that may help understanding unforeseen economic events, hardly caught by orthodox theory ; 4. that of ’reconcilers’, who employ Sismondi’s ideas to suggest a mediation between contrasting social interests or opposed schools of thought, in search of a general theory ; 5 the absolutist style, a minority one in Sismondi’s case, which undervalues his contribution to the evolution of economics. A place apart is occupied by Marxist historiography, which sees in Sismondi a crucial precursor of Marx. On the whole, instrumental uses of Sismondian ideas are largely prevailing. Paradoxically, this very element is central in explaining Sismondi’s relative fortune in historiography