Abstract
This paper examines and evaluates the notion of “justice” in the “social economics” of Léon Walras. His theme of “equality of conditions and inequality of positions” is related to socio-economic arrangements that correspond to a competitive market economy which needs to solve the problems of “order” and “justice”, under the criteria of liberty and equality. In the final section, we show that Walras’ notion of social justice has little in common with the views of F. A. Hayek, but a proximity to the theory of John Rawls.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout the text, for the Éléments we use the English translation by William Jaffé as “Elements of Pure Economics”, (1926). For the Études d’ Économie Sociale we use the new edition as volume IX of the “Auguste et Léon Walras: Oevres Économiques Complètes” (1990). Walras’ Études d’ Économie Politique Appliquée was published in the same series as Volume X.
- 2.
Walras’ “general theory of society” is generally ignored by historians of economic thought, because his theory is beyond the scope of what is acceptable as “economic theory”. This is due to the fact that the “old” division between pure and applied and social economies has been abandoned. With one notable exception: the influential (and translated in many languages, including English) Histoire des Doctrines Économiques by Charles Gide and Charles Rist (1913, 671–674).
- 3.
The expression “égalité des conditions” was first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America (English translation, edition of 2004). Its meaning has been narrowly rendered as “equality of status” (Brogan 2006, 275, also 351–352), or, more accurately, as “égalité devant des chances de la vie” (Leroy 1962, vol. 2, 528), i.e. equality of opportunity. Tocqueville thought that the “equality of conditions” was the principal characteristic of a democracy, and in this sense we adopt Leroy’s version in order to assume a common, to both Tocqueville and Walras, concern for the democratic ideal. See also Boson (1963).
- 4.
On these issues, see the survey articles by Anthony de Jasay 1998: “Justice” and by Helmut Kleimt: “Distributive Justice”, both in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law (1998). Although “justice” is also, and for some primarily a legal notion, economists and philosophers, from John Stuart Mill to Léon Walras to John Rawls, adopt a broader meaning of that notion, serving as a fertilizer to the field of “law and economics”.
- 5.
Merely as indicative of that literature, we mention the volume of reading by Edmund S. Phelps (editor): Economic Justice (1973), the book by Serge-Christophe Kolm: Modern Theories of Justice (1996), and the survey article of James Konow: “Which is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories”, in the Journal of Economic Literature (2003).
- 6.
The view of F. A. Hayek is reviewed, and supported, in the survey article by Julia Stapleton: “Social Justice”, in the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law (1998). It must be noticed, however, that the tendency to dismiss the notion of “social justice” as a mere theoretical device to promote re-distributive or socialistic doctrines, and the ensuing debate, was since the 1970s sparked by the work of John Rawls, and principally his influential book Theory of Justice (1971). If Walras’ version of “social justice” were known, at least in the English speaking world, the arguments in that debate would probably have been different.
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Korliras, P.G. (2015). Leon Walras on Social Justice. In: Bitros, G., Kyriazis, N. (eds) Essays in Contemporary Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10043-2_7
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