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The Surprising History of the Melanges D'Economie Politique Et Sociale, A Previously Unpublished Work by Leon Walras
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2009
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Three quarters of a century after the death of Léon Walras, the founder of the Lausanne School, the Auguste and Léon Walras Center in Lyons has published for the first time his Mélanges d'économie politique et sociale. This volume includes twenty-nine papers, all prepared by Léon Walras, and maps out his theoretical itinerary. It spans works that he wrote in his youth, which were strongly influenced by his father's ideas, and mature works that he devoted to the three fields of pure economics, applied economics, and normative economics. His efforts were part of a lifelong project: the creation of a “scientific, liberal and humanitarian socialism.” The Mélanges reasserts Walras's desire to achieve a synthesis of these three fields that have been separated by too many of his disciples, who have retained only the one devoted to economic theory. The Mélanges plays an important part in the writings of Léon Walras. Initially conceived as containing remnants that had not appeared in the volumes published during Walras's life, it underwent a progressive development due to the succession of papers that he kept adding to it right up until the time of his death. Walras's revisions of the papers; his directions for the publication of the essays; his incorporation of unpublished papers on the teaching of political economy at the end of the nineteenth century; the character of the Mélanges as being a synthesis of the Elements d'économie politique pure, the Etudes d'économie sociale and the Etudes d'économie politique appliquée; and the insertion into the Mélanges of Léon Walras's last articles all make this work a genuine and important scientific testament.
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References
FOOTNOTES
1 Volume VII of the Oeuvres économiques complètes d'Auguste et Léon Walras, edited by Dockès, P., Goutte, P.H., Hébert, C., Mouchot, C., Potier, J.P. et Servet, J.M., Paris: Economica, 1987, under the auspices of the Auguste and Léon Walras Center.Google Scholar
2 These six groups correspond to volumes V to X of the Oeuvres économiques complètes.
3 This project remained practically unchanged until 1902.
4 A member of the editing committee of the Revue d'économie politique, professor at Caen Law University, then at the University of Bordeaux.
5 Léon, Walras to Duguit, Léon, 12 25th, 1896, in Jaffé, (ed.), Correspondence of Léon Walras and Related Papers, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1965, vol. II, p. 716.Google Scholar
6 This unpublished document is preserved in the Walras archives in Lausanne. (Fonds Walras [hereafter cited as FW] iv a 4).
7 As revealed in Léon Walras's personal diary kept in the Antonelli archives in Montpellier.
8 See the introductory note to the Mélanges d'économie politique et sociale for a history of the successive plans of the book. The reader will find in the introduction of each chapter some information about the circumstances of writing and publishing each paper.
9 “Des Octrois, à propos de la loi belge” (1860).
10 “De la cherté des loyers à Paris” (1860).
11 “La Bourse et le développement du capital” (1860).
12 As was later to be revealed in the essay “Cournot et l'économique mathématique” (1905), reprinted in chapter 9 of the Mélanges. See also the “Notice autobiographique” in volume V of Oeuvres économiques complètes.
13 Volume VI of Oeuvres économiques complètes.
14 “La loi fédérale sur l'émission et le remboursement des billet de banque” (1875).
15 “Opinions énoncées à la Commission d'experts chargée d'examine le project de révision de la loi fédérale du 8 mars 1881 dans les deux séances du ler october 1889.”
16 Léon Walras discovered Hermann-Heinrich Gossen's work in 1878 and subsequently paid tribute to him, for example in the “Prospectus des Eléments d'économie politique pure” (1896), intentionally placed in the same chapter.
17 The exchange of letters with Jevons in 1874, which followed the publication of “Principe d'une théorie mathématique de l'échange,” informs us of the position of the paternity of the relevant aspect of economic theory.
18 This question is examined in Hervé Dumez, L'économiste, la science et le pouvoir: le cas Walras, Paris: P. U. F., 1985, chapters 7 and 8.
19 “Theorie de la propriété,” in Etudes d'économie sociale, Lausanne: F. Rouge; Paris: R. Pichon and R. Durand-Auzias, 2nd edition, 1936, p. 239.Google Scholar
20 Albert Aupetit was to have taught economics in Paris at the College libre des sciences sociales, but after he failed the competitive admission examination in 1903 he went to work at the Banque de France. The series of lectures prepared for him by Léon Walras was not used.
21 Letter, to Aupetit, Albert, 01 21, 1910, in “Lettres de Léon et Aline Walras à Albert Aupetit”, published by G.H. Bousquet, Revue d'histoire économique et sociale, vol. XXIX, 1951, p. 152.Google Scholar
22 Georges Renard, one of Léon Walras's friends, edited the Revue socialiste and La Révolution de 1848. After having taught in Lausanne until 1900, he returned to France where, from 1907 onwards, he held a professorship in the College de France.
23 Pasquale Boninsegni to Aline Walras, April 14, 1910, in the Walras archives in Lausanne, Section Leduc (FW XII).
24 An index-card was prepared and is still kept in the Walras archives in Lausanne, reading “Portfolio III, in 40: Works prepared by Walras to form, under the title Mélanges d'économie politique et sociale, a volume whose table of contents, added to these printed and hand-written papers indicates the contents.”
25 Walras archives in Lausanne. Section Leduc (FW XII).
26 At that time he was lecturing at the Poitiers Law University.
27 Revue d'historie des doctrines économiques et sociales, 3rd year, no. 2, 1910, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar
28 Paris: Marcel Riviére, 1914.Google Scholar
29 Author of Auguste Walras économiste. Sa vie, son oeuvre, Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1923Google Scholar. Aline Walras, in a note added to the document kept in the Lyons Walras archives, explained that Modeste Leroy “had also intended to write a book about my father, but he gave up the idea because it was too difficult for him” (FW IV B 11).
30 Socialist deputy of Haute-Savoie (Section Francaise de l'Internationale Ouvriére). In 1928, he was re-elected by the Annemasse electoral district.
31 In 1928 Antonelli was chairman of a commission to formulate a bill on compulsory social insurance.
32 He became professor at the Montpellier Faculty of Law. He published L'Economie pure du capitalisme, Paris: Marcel Riviére, 1939.Google Scholar
33 Irving Fisher, president of the Econometrics Society, thought of creating a “memorial fund for the relief of the daughter of Léon Walras” to help Aline Walras until the end of her days (unpublished letter from Irving Fisher to Joseph Schumpeter, June 2, 1934, kept in the Schumpeter Papers. Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Mass.).
34 A lecturer and then a professor at the Caen Faculty of Law.
35 A series edited by Francois Simiand and Gaëtan Pirou, published by Félix Alcan.
36 Gaston Leduc to Aline Walras, December 10, 1935, in the Walras archives, Lausanne, Section Leduc (FW XII 129). The meeting took place during a trip to Brazil. Francois Perroux decided to raise the issue when he wrote to the dean of the Faculty of Law.
37 Gaston Leduc to Aline Walras, January 14, 1936, in the Walras archives, Lausanne, Section Leduce (FW XII 129).
38 Gaston Leduc to Aline Walras, January 27, 1936, in the Walras archives, Lausanne, Section Leduce (FW XII 129).
39 Marget, Arthur W. was the author of “Léon Walras and the Cash Balance Approach to the Problem of the Value of Money,” Journal of Political Economy, XXXIX, 10 1931, pp. 569–600CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Monetary Aspect of the Walrasian System,” Journal of Political Economy, XLIII, 04 1935, pp. 145–186.Google Scholar
40 American Economic Review, XXVI, 03 1936, p. 191Google Scholar; Quarterly Journal of Economics, L. 05 1936 (an unnumbered page reserved for advertisements, and thus impossible to find in the bound volumes of the journal)Google Scholar; and Economic Journal, XLVI, 06 1936, p. 377Google Scholar. The advertisement in the Quarterly Journal of Economics was probably due to Frank William, Taussig (1859–1940). The advertisement in the Economic Journal was due to John Maynard Keynes, as testified by the correspondence kept in the Walras archives, Lausanne, Section Leduc.Google Scholar
41 Econometrica, 5, no. 1, 01 1937, pp. 103–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
42 Gaston Leduc to Aline Walras, January 16, 1937, in the Walras archives, Lausanne, Section Leduc (FW XII 129).
43 Gaston, Leduc, foreword to the Abrégé des Eléments d'économie politique pure, Lausanne: F. Rouge; Paris: R. Pichon and R. Durand-Auzias, 1938, p. 3.Google Scholar
44 Aline, Walras to William, Jaffé, 11 7, 1939, quoted by William, Jaffé in his preface to the Correspondence, vol. I, pp. XIV–XV.Google Scholar
45 Etienne, Antonelli gave or showed William, Jaffé three unpublished papers belonging to the Mélanges, according to Correspondence, vol. I, pp. 493 and 630Google Scholar; vol. II, p. 360. It is highly improbable that he showed Jaffé either the manuscript of the Mélanges or that of Les Associations populaires coopératives. We did not find these two works mentioned in the William Jaffé papers at York University (Canada), our consultation of which was facilitated by Professor Walker, Donald A..Google Scholar