•First English translation of Luigi Pasinetti’s ‘The Tableau Économique and the Modern Economy’.•Elaborates the historical contexts for the Tableau Économique and draws attention to its place within eighteenth-century debates about taxation.•Explains in non-technical terms the importance of François Quesnay’s Tableau to Luigi Pasinetti’s work in general and in particular his attacks on the Marginalists. In 2002, Professor Luigi L. Pasinetti gave a keynote address at the Raffaele Mattioli Foundation and Library in honour of their acquisition of a rare third edition of François Quesnay’s Tableau Économique. This lecture subsequently appeared as a chapter in Italian in the conference volume edited by Giancarlo De Vivo in 2009. In honour of Luigi Pasinetti’s 90th birthday, Professor Coffman has offered the first English translation of Pasinetti’s essay on Quesnay, which she also introduces by reflecting on its rhetorical strategy, argumentative structure, and Pasinetti’s use of Quesnay to critique mainstream neoclassical economics. She ends her introduction by drawing attention to the place of the Tableau within contemporary debates about taxation and the optimal scale and capacities of the state.