ワルラスと国家

平等・競争・企業者

抄録

Léon Walras founded his Political Economy on the idea of “equality” of the French Revolution. He concluded the economic inequality principally resulted from the landownership, and the solution he gave to this problem was the nationalization of land.
Concerning the equality between the capitalist and working classes, Walras belived the free competition would realize that in a double sense. First, it would cause the assimilation of the two classes, which means “the equality in fact”. And secondly, the free competition would play the role of the imparitial and transcendental judge in the determination of the rate of wage and interest, which would bring “the equality in right” of the two classes.
But Walras's concept of free competition was not only an “ideal type ” based on an obsevation of the real economic order but also a norm which was to be realized universally.
His “économie politique appliquée” was given the role of organizing the free competition in a society on the basis of the conclusion of his “économie politique pure”, but regarding the labour market, he could not show concretely how to organize the free competition.
Moreover, Walras's entrepreneur, which the state should take on in the real world, was expected to realize the idea of equality by observing the just output so that no “bénéfice” could be gained.