A Centenarian on a Bicentenarian: Leon Walras's Elements on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

Abstract

A centenarian on a bicentenarian: Leon Walras's Elements on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Walras's Elements mentions the Wealth of Nations only twice: to criticize Smith's alleged definition of economic science and to denounce as a sophism Smith's labour theory of value. Walras's failure to appreciate Smith is all the more surprising because Smith had, in fact, adumbrated a theory of general equilibrium similar to Walras's though far less rigorous and comprehensive; because Smith's analysis, like that of Walras, was inspired by Cartesian methodology; because both authors looked to Newtonian celestial mechanics as a model for their vision of social science; and because both had been imbued in their youth with the same natural law philosophy of Grotius and Pufendorf. Walras's blindness to all he had in common with Adam Smith is traceable, in part at least, to his oft-expressed anglophobia.