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1 comments about The Vision of Léon Walras: Markets Interacting in an Equilibrium System.

1. Is economics a science like physics and astronomy? Yes and no, answered Leon Walras. The nuances of this outlook are presented splendidly in "The Vision of Leon Walras," written by Prof. Donald Walker and narrated by Louis Rukeyser.
   Walras (1834-1910) was inspired to mathematize economics, thereby becoming the father of modern input/output analysis, by his father, Auguste. Yet Leon Walras had a second "father" named Auguste - the sociologist Auguste Comte. Dr. Walker only mentions Comte's influence on Vilfredo Pareto (who succeeded to Walras's chair at the University of Lausanne) yet the similarities between Comte's Positivism and Walras's general-equilibrium analysis are impossible to miss for any historian of French thought.
   Describing the interrelationships of markets and market participants were Walras's greatest achievements. Positivism is largely about identifying and examining relationships between things (not their ultimate causes, as preoccupies metaphysicians and theologians).
   Walras equated economic equilibrium with order and proportion under conditions of free competition and exchange. This, along with his sentiment that general-equilibrium analysis predicts the direction of change, shows clearly that Walras was swimming in the canal dug by Comte's "anticipatory conservatism" (a phrase used by Prof. Gertrud Lenzer in her introduction to "Auguste Comte and Positivism, The Essential Writings"). Walras's position on monetary policy could have been ripped right from Comte's "System of Positive Philosophy" - "It is impossible to have a reorganization of policy without a prior scientific preparation."
   Some negative effects flow from Walras's economics (like Comte's math friendly sociology) not because of what he literally said or wrote but, as fate would have it, from the direction in which the doctrines point. His theory of perfect competition has lead to tunnel vision by government regulators of today who only see price competition. More generally, general-equilibrium economics furthers the phenomena of the quantification of all things, which leads to the social rape known as international outsourcing, as well as public idolatry of "science."
   Yet these constitute mere dampness on the ground under the many monuments of Walras. Elegant edifices include his theory of the entrepreneur, which links together markets, and his exposition of marginal utility, linking him with contemporaries William Stanley Jevons of Great Britain and Carl Menger of Austria as the fathers of marginal-utility theory. Running like a gleaming ribbon through all of Walras's work is the dynamic process of change known as "tatonnement," a concept of "groping" that Walras adopted from the writings of French physicists.
   Answering psychological arguments about the complexity of human-directed economic activity, Walras held that there are "uniformities of behavior" that can be expressed mathematically. Mathematics can provide a more rigorous analysis than can be obtained through ordinary language, he argued. Walras was/is in the vanguard of a movement that views math and its logic as creating a universal language free of value judgments and cultural biases. His tiers of analysis proceed from this notion.
   Walras divided economic analysis into three parts:
   1) Pure theory, or what is true.
   2) Economic policy, or what is useful.
   3) "Normative" economics, or what is just.
   Walras was true to his method as were his early disciples - Pareto and Sweden's Knut Wicksell. Later generations haven't proved as exact, frequently confounding the three approaches.
   Owing much to a running feud with the crony-ish world of 19th century laissez-faire French economics, Swiss-exiled Walras described himself as a "scientific socialist." The business and political worlds could do with many more such "socialists." Here's Walras on public finance: "A government budget deficit is contrary to both justice and sensible policy...The state and the individual would soon be equally ruined and miserable."
   Equally important to our times is Walras's treatment of economic growth. At the time of this review the U.S. economy is in a state of "retrogression" accurately described by Walras as characterized by falling incomes and a shrinking capital stock. The underlying reason has to do with a lack of savings in tandem with overconsumption by capitalists (these "capitalists" are you and me in our relationship to credit cards). Free-trade outsourcing overseas and mass immigration into the U.S. likely are accelerating this race to the bottom. Can America pull out of the nose dive? Eventually, yes, Walras might have answered.
   "I have a robust faith in the force of truth," the great economist wrote to a friend. "I am only a little melancholy in thinking of the difficulty and slowness of its march."

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