Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T13:27:40.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Walras and Pareto: Their Approach to Applied Economics and Social Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

J. O. Clerc
J. O. Clerc*
Affiliation:
The University of Saskatchewan
Get access

Extract

Recent publications have once more drawn the attention of the scientific world to the School of Lausanne. While economists emphasize chiefly the originality of the conception of economic equilibrium in Walras, sociologists and mathematicians pay homage to Pareto's versatile genius. Contemporary authors are mainly interested in the mathematical method and the conception of pure economics advanced by these two men. But the same authors forget too easily that Walras and Pareto dealt with numerous political and social questions, and that their opinions in these matters are important from the point of view of both applied economics and methodology. The object of this paper is to discuss these opinions. We shall first state the great philosophical antithesis which marks the division between the ideas expressed by Walras and Pareto, and secondly, consider the ideas themselves.

Although the works of Walras and Pareto on the subject of pure economics are complementary, their methods in dealing with practical economics are completely different. According to Walras, the duty of a politician is to apply the principles and data deduced by the pure economist. The pure economist must scientifically deduce laws from the “good old Natural Law.” Walras believes in scientific ideals and in the permanence of political laws; in philosophy, he is a Realist, in the sense given to this word by the quarrel of the Universals. In contrast with this, the conception of Pareto is much more flexible, much more pragmatic. His doctrine is that certain principles, rationally erroneous, can in practical reality be excellent, because people are usually governed by their feelings and not by their intelligence. To the great Italian, scientific laws were only “experimental uniformities.” This is the conception of the nominalist philosophy, which Pareto stresses when he writes: “Io sono il piu nominalista dei nominalisti.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , November 1942 , pp. 584 - 594
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Walras, L., Etudes d'économie sociale (Lausanne and Paris, 1936), p. vii.Google Scholar

2 “I am the most nominalist of the nominalists” (Giornali degli Economisti, 1902, no. 2).Google Scholar

3 Both volumes were published in 1936, at Paris and Lausanne.

4 Etudes d'économie sociale, p. vii.

5 Etudes d'économie politique appliquée, p. 454.

6 Etudes d'économie sociale, p. 11.

7 Ibid., p. 12.

8 Ibid., p. 12.

9 Ibid., p. 12.

10 Ibid., p. 8.

11 Etudes d'économie politique appliquée, p. 453.

12 Science is used here in a fairly loose sense.

13 Etudes d'économie politique appliquée, p. 459.

14 Ibid., p. 268.

15 Ibid., p. 270.

16 I.e., any kind of capital and income enjoyed by the individual, except the “capital foncier.”

17 Ibid., p. 470.

18 Ibid., p. 478.

19 On Pareto's attitude toward the problem of social science, cf. MacPherson, C. B., “Pareto's General Sociology” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. III, 08, 1937).Google Scholar

20 Vide, contra, Gaétan Pirou, Les Théories de l'équilibre économique (Paris, 1938), p. 299.Google Scholar

21 On Pareto's political opinions, cf. Bousquet's, G. H. excellent book, Vilfredo Pareto, sa vie, son æuvre (Paris, 1928), pp. 172 and ff.Google Scholar

22 Riforma Sociale, Sept.-Oct., 1923.

23 On Pareto's attitude toward socialism, see Apchié's, Melle contribution in Pirou's Les Théories de l'équilibre économique, pp. 406 and ff.Google Scholar

24 Pirou, , Les Théories de l'équilibre économique, p. 437.Google Scholar

25 “The great mistake of our time is that of believing that it is possible to govern men Without the help of strength, which on the contrary is the foundation of any social Organization” ( Pareto, , Manuel d'économie politique, p. 134 Google Scholar).

26 “While the democratic evolution was beginning … which seems likely to meet its end in the course of the twentieth century, certain thinkers forecast its doom; however, their previsions are forgotten now that they come to be true” (Pareto, ibid., p. 144).

27 Pareto, ibid., p. 135.

28 Trans. Jane Soames (London, 1934). For instance, the views of Pareto and of Mussolini oft equality seem alike: “The equality of the citizens before the law is a dogma. … If we wish to discuss it scientifically, we see that it is by no means a priori obvious that this equality should be profitable for society; even more, the heterogeneity of society being given, the opposite seems more probable” ( Pareto, , Manuel d'économie politique, p. 136 Google Scholar). And the following passage taken out of Mussolini's, Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, p. 14 Google Scholar: “Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society … and it affirms the immutable, beneficial and fruitful inequality of mankind.” The views of the two authors on history seem also alike. “But History will not stop at the end of the present evolution, and … an evolution in the opposite direction will follow” ( Pareto, , Manuel d'économie politique, p. 144 Google Scholar). Cf. Mussolini, , Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, pp. 19–20 Google Scholar: “Fascism … rejects … the conception that there can be any doctrine of unquestioned efficacy for all times and all people; … and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of the Left, a century of Fascism.”

29 Ugo Spirito, quoted by Pirou, , in Les Théories de l'équilibre économique, p. 444.Google Scholar

30 Felipe Carli, quoted by Pirou, in ibid., p. 448.