Comment on the French Liberal School

There exists today in Anglo-American economics a veritable “conspiracy of silence” regarding the works and achievements of the French Liberal School of Economics. This is at once a sad commentary on the state of disinterested historical scholarship in the economics profession and a resounding confirmation of Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific progress and its applicability to the social sciences. Needless to say, one does not undermine the “conspiracy” merely by displaying familiarity with Say’s Law of Markets in the course of extolling the achievements of John Maynard Keynes; nor even by giving a tolerable rendition of Bastiat’s “Petition of the Candlemakers” to a class of undergraduates, accompanied, of course, by the caveat that it does not apply to the “infant industry” case. Let us, then, breach the “conspiracy” forthwith and wholeheartedly by setting the School in historical perspective and noting its most prominent members.

Volume 2, Number 1 (1978)