The Surprising History of the Melanges D'Economie Politique Et Sociale, A Previously Unpublished Work by Leon Walras

Claude Hébert and Jean-Pierre Potier

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1987, vol. 9, issue 1, 67-79

Abstract: 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 Walras's revisions of the papers; his directions for the publication of the essays; his incorporation of unpublished papers on the teaching of political economy at the end of the nineteenth century; the character of the Mélanges as being a synthesis of the Elements d'économie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.

Date: 1987
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