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An Analysis and Comparison of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2018 Forms of Naturalism in Seminal Neoclassical Texts: An Analysis and Comparison of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons Mark Silverman University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Other Economics Commons Recommended Citation Silverman, Mark, "Forms of Naturalism in Seminal Neoclassical Texts: An Analysis and Comparison of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1451. https://doi.org/10.7275/12631819 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1451 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FORMS OF “NATURALISM” IN SEMINAL NEOCLASSICAL TEXTS: AN ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON OF LEON WALRAS, JOHN BATES CLARK, AND WILLIAM STANLEY JEVONS A Dissertation Presented by MARK S SILVERMAN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2018 Economics © Copyright by Mark S. Silverman 2018 All Rights Reserved FORMS OF “NATURALISM” IN SEMINAL NEOCLASSICAL TEXTS: AN ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON OF LEON WALRAS, JOHN BATES CLARK, AND WILLIAM STANLEY JEVONS A Dissertation Presented by MARK S. SILVERMAN Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Gerald Friedman, Chair ____________________________________ Peter Spiegler, Member ____________________________________ Joseph Levine, Member __________________________________ Léonce Ndikumana, Chair Economics Department DEDICATION For Rose ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I want to thank my dissertation chair Gerald Friedman. Among other things, Jerry suggested I scale back my far too ambitious plans. Instead, he suggested, rather than look at the philosophical question of economic naturalism in general, I look at it through the prism of specific texts in the history of thought. Without that recommendation, I am sure this project would never have been completed, and perhaps barely started. More generally, I am very grateful to Jerry for supporting my peculiar and particular interests in the history of economic thought, throughout my entire time at UMass. I also want to thank the other members of my committee, Peter Spiegler and Joseph Levine. I am extremely grateful that the economics department decided to hire Peter during my tenure as a student. Peter’s specific interest in the philosophy of economics was of enormous value to me, particularly at times that I felt alone in this inquiry. It was a real joy conversing with him, not only over the issues raised in this dissertation, but regarding philosophy of economics in general. And Joe’s own philosophical interests were an invaluable corrective to any inclination of mine to be too quick to set aside any and all forms of naturalism; my future work will benefit from his insights. I also want to thank Diane Flaherty, who was on the committee before Peter came aboard. Among other things, Diane challenged me to give as fair as possible a representation of the economic thought at issue here; Diane also was invaluable in my time at UMass in shaping my work in the history of thought. Apart from my committee, I am indebted to many other professors as well, including Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, both of whom reaffirmed for me that there was, indeed, an essential role for philosophy in the critique of economics. Both of them were extremely generous with their time. Steve challenged my thinking specifically over the question of the relationship between a naturalist or essentialist paradigm in economic thought and conceptions of individual responsibility in neoclassical economics. And my conversations with Rick similarly stimulated my intellectual work in the philosophy of economics and history of thought. Many other professors helped me get to this point, including Randall Bausor, and Donald Katzner and David Kotz, all of whom took time out to help me work through differing intellectual pursuits that would eventually lead me to this work. I want also to express my gratitude to the entirety of the UMass economics community in general, including EGSO (the Economics Graduate Student Organization). I feel very lucky to have been part of an academic department with both such a comradery of spirit among the students, as well as a genuine dedication to promoting the social good. There are few other departments in which I would have felt so welcome. Lastly, I want to thank my wife Kristin, who, some indeterminate number of years ago, upon first meeting me, asked me how I planned to change the world. Improbably, my answer had something to do with the philosophy of economics. This evidently was a v satisfactory answer to her. Thank you then, Kristin, for believing in the value of this endeavor. vi ABSTRACT FORMS OF “NATURALISM” IN SEMINAL NEOCLASSICAL TEXTS: AN ANALYSIS AND COMPARISON OF LEON WALRAS, JOHN BATES CLARK, AND WILLIAM STANLEY JEVONS SEPTEMBER 2018 MARK SILVERMAN, B.A., SWARTHMORE COLLEGE J.D., NYU SCHOOL OF LAW Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Gerald Friedman I address here is the role of “naturalism” in certain seminal neoclassical texts. I outline both a positive and normative dimension to the term “naturalism.” Along its positive dimension, I use the term to mean that the social sciences ought to follow the method of the natural sciences. Along its normative dimension, I use it to mean that the natural order of things can provide for justice. I examine the role these concepts play in the works of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons. The question I raise, through this examination, is whether the positive conception of naturalism eclipses possibilities of economic transformation, thereby undermining any coherent normative evaluation of whether a purportedly natural (i.e. unchangeable) set of economic facts or laws is “just.” Walras argues that “economics” should be modelled on the natural sciences, and that value-in-exchange is natural. Simultaneously, Walras claims that economic institutions are “artificial.” He arrives at the former claim, I argue, because he believes that only by seeing economic laws and facts as “natural” can he demonstrate that they necessarily obtain; the latter claim is motivated by a desire to evaluate economic vii institutions normatively. This leads Walras into a contradiction, I argue, insofar as the former claim undermines the latter. Clark, initially, seems to avoid Walras’ contradiction, insofar as he refers to economic laws as social, not natural. However, Clark’s distinction between the social and natural is superficial, insofar as the social is conceptualized purely as a function of the natural. Clark does not imagine that the specifically social character of economic laws might transform the “natural.” Further, for Clark, the natural not only shapes the social (economic) in a positive sense, it also renders economic laws just. But, like Walras, Clark’s normative evaluation is undermined by his insistence on a fundamentally natural predicate for his economic laws. For Jevons, like Walras, economics is properly modelled on the natural sciences, and, in particular, on the science of mechanics. Jevons then chooses to mechanize the economic agent itself, which, I argue, undermines any conception of human transformation of the surrounding “economy.” viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... vii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: FORMS OF NATURALISM ..........................................................1 1.1 The Natural, the Social, and the Necessary .......................................................2 1.2 The Natural as Normative: Justice as Immanent in Nature ...............................7 1.3 Naturalism and “Mechanized” Agency ...........................................................11 1.4 Walras, Clark and Jevons: Representations of Naturalism ..............................12 2. WALRASIAN NATURALISM ....................................................................................17 2.1. Walras: Anti-Naturalist ...................................................................................20 2.2. Walras: Naturalist ...........................................................................................23 2.3. Walras and Exchange-Value ...........................................................................29 2.4. Walrasian Commodity Fetishism ....................................................................33 2.5. Exchange-value, appropriation, and private property .....................................35 2.6. Methodological Monism and Baconian Politics .............................................37 2.7. Walrasian Naturalism and Conceptions of Social Transformation .................41 3. WALRASIAN JUSTICE ...............................................................................................44
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