Economists From France

"Will Trump go so far as to repeal NAFTA? If he did so he would render a great service to the peoples of Mexico and Canada by freeing them from their status as impotent vassals and encouraging them to engage in new directions based on the autonomy of their popular-sovereign projects. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the vast majority of Republican and Democratic representatives in the House and the Senate, all of whom have demonstrated an unconditional support of the interests of the American oligarchies, will allow Trump to go that far."

"I... want to see the construction of a multipolar world, an that obviously means the defeat of Washington’s hegemonist project for military control of the planet. In my eyes it is an overweening project, criminal by its very nature, which is drawing the world into wars without end and stifling all hope of social and democratic advance, not only in the countries of the South but also, to a seemingly lesser degree, in those of the North."

"The hegemonist strategy of the United States, which operates within the framework of the new collective imperialism, seeks nothing less than to establish Washington’s military control over the entire planet. This is the means to ensure privileged access to all of the world’s natural resources, and to compel subaltern allies, Russia, China and the whole third world to swallow their status as vassals. Military control of the planet is the means to impose, as a last resort, the draining of ‘tribute’ through political violence – as a substitute for the ‘spontaneous’ flow of capital that offsets the American deficit, the Achilles heel of US hegemony."

"The creation of a front against hegemonism is the number one priority today, as the creation of an anti-Nazi alliance was the number one priority yesterday. No European project can make any progress unless the strategy of the United States is put to flight."

"Around the world we find institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose policies could mean starvation for three billion peasant farmers, according to Samir Amin, director of the Third World Forum in Senegal. Unable to grow foodstuffs that can compete with products imported from advanced countries, how can these people survive?"

"The debate concerns only some of the problems of society in the United States (anti-feminism and racism in particular). It does not call into question the economic foundations of the system that are the root cause of the degradations of social conditions in important segments of society. The sacredness of private property, including that of monopolies, remains intact; the fact that Trump is himself a billionaire was an asset and not an obstacle to his election."

"The system in place in the countries of the historic imperialist triad (the United States, Western Europe, Japan) is based on the exercise of the absolute power of the national financial oligarchies concerned. They alone manage the whole of the national productive systems, having succeeded in reducing almost all small and medium-sized enterprises in agriculture, industry, and services to the status of subcontractors for the exclusive benefit of financial capital."

"These oligarchies alone manage the political systems inherited from bourgeois electoral and representative democracy, having succeeded in domesticating the right and left electoral political parties, at the price of eroding the legitimacy of the democratic practice concerned. These oligarchies alone control the propaganda apparatuses, having succeeded in reducing the directors of news organizations including public broadcasters to the status of media clergy in their exclusive service. None of these aspects of the dictatorship of the oligarchy is challenged by the social and political movements at work in the triad, especially not in the United States."

"We are told [that the West is threatened by] the terrorist threat of Islamic jihadism. Again, opinion is perfectly manipulated on the subject. Jihadism is merely the inevitable product of the triad's continued support of reactionary political Islam inspired and financed by Gulf Wahhabism. The exercise of this so-called Islamic power is the best guarantee of the total destruction of the ability of societies in the region to resist the dictates of liberal globalization. At the same time, it offers the best pretext for giving the appearance of legitimacy to the NATO's interventions."

"I found myself obliged, through perhaps unique circumstances, to devote myself to my mathematical research, almost without help, advice or even books... Endlessly occupied by a thousand different matters and constrained my state duties, it is the work of an engineer that I herewith present and not the fruit of the meditations of a savant."

"It is to the director of workshops and factories that it is suitable to make, by means of geometry and applied mechanics, a special study of all the ways to economize the efforts of workers... For a man to be a director of others, manual work has only a secondary importance; it is his intellectual ability (force intellectuelle) that must put him in the top position, and it is in instruction such as that of the Conservatory of the Arts and Professions, that he must develop it."

"The successes obtained in the government of the arts, are similar to the successes obtained in the government of men. We may succeed for a time, by fraud, by surprise, by violence: we can succeed permanently only by means directly opposite. It is not alone the courage, the intelligence, the activity of the manufacturer and the merchant which maintain the superiority of the productions and the commerce of their country; it is far more their wisdom, their economy, above all their probity."

"If ever, in the British Islands, the useful citizen should lose these virtues, we may be sure, that for England as well as for any other country, notwithstanding the protection of the most formidable navy, notwithstanding the foresight and activity of diplomacy the most extended, and of political science the most profound, the vessels of a degenerate commerce, repulsed from every shore would speedily disappear from those seas whose surface they now cover with the treasures of the universe, bartered for the treasures of the industry of the three kingdoms."

"Amongst the important results of the recent attempts to extend Science to the labouring classes, maybe ranked the elementary treatises published by Baron Dupin. Possessing an extraordinary fund of scientific information, as well as of practical knowledge collected during a period of twenty years, in the workshops and manufacturing establishments of the most enlightened nations of Europe, combined with a singular degree of clearness, elegance, and ingenuity, in mathematical and physical expositions, this distinguished individual might have continued to delight and instruct inquirers of the highest description, by works classical and profound, but without having witnessed the occurrences alluded to, he might never have directed his attention and his efforts to this most interesting object, the improvement of humble and neglected intellect."

"In the 19th century, the French geometer Charles Pierre Dupin discovered a nonspherical surface with circular lines of curvature. He called it a cyclide in his book, Applications de Geometrie published in 1822. Recently, cyclides have been revived for use as surface patches in computer aided geometric design (CAGD). Other applications of eyelides in CAGD are possible (e.g., variable radius blending) and require a deep understanding of the geometry of the cyclide."

"This is what it behoves us to know: as Frenchmen, for the advantage of France; as friends of all humanity, by that just and generous sentiment which makes us feel interest in the dignity, the peace, the independence, the happiness of all nations, on whatever spot of the globe nature may have placed their country."

"Charles Dupin's Discourse on the Condition of the Workers (1873) introduced such concepts as time study and balanced ."

"For 12 years I have had the honor of teaching geometry and mechanics applied to the arts, in favor of the industrial class... on the most important questions to the well-being, education, and morality of the workers, to the progress of national industry, to the development of all means of prosperity that work can produce for the splendor and happiness of our country."

"The total extent to which steam power is applied in Great Britain was estimated by Baron Dupin, 1825, to be equivalent to the power of 320,000 horses in constant action; and since that period it has prodigiously increased, independently of our rapidly extending railways. To this immense command of power our country owes much of its commercial prosperity, besides a vast addition to the comforts and conveniences of life."

"In the following work, I have endeavoured to exhibit the full extent of the Military and Naval Forces which the government of Great Britain can bring into the field, or launch upon the ocean. I have likewise described the connection of these forces with the government of the country, and also the discipline usually exercised in order to produce a hardihood in battle, invulnerable to fear and unassailable by cowardice. My observations on these subjects were derived from a residence of five years in England; during which time I was constantly employed in visiting and viewing every object and institution worthy of notice relative to the British Army and Navy."

"Of the early management pioneers, history has provided us with the best records for four men: Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure, and Charles Dupin... Ure knew the French engineer and management writer Charles Dupin, and when Dupin visited Great Britain in 1816–1818, Ure escorted him around the Glasgow factories. Dupin commented that many of the managers of these factories were Ure’s own students."

"The first appears to have been made by Baron Charles Dupin in 1826 to illustrate an address to the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris. The map shows the number of persons per male child in school for each department and is the first moral ."

"Lucas and Sargent’s main argument was that Keynesian economics had ignored the full implications of the effect of expectations on behavior. The way to proceed, they argued, was to assume that people formed expectations as rationally as they could, based on the information they had. Thinking of people as having rational expectations had three major implications, all highly damaging to Keynesian macroeconomics. ... The first implication was that existing macroeconomic models could not be used to help design policy. … The second implication was that when rational expectations were introduced in Keynesian models, these models actually delivered very un-Keynesian conclusions. … The third implication was that if people and firms had rational expectations, it was wrong to think of policy as the control of a complicated but passive system. Rather, the right way was to think of policy as a game between policy makers and the economy. … To summarize: When rational expectations were introduced, Keynesian models could not be used to determine policy; Keynesian models could not explain long-lasting deviations of output from the natural level of output; the theory of policy had to be redesigned, using the tools of game theory."

"Using the popular macroeconomic models of the time, Lucas and Sargent showed how replacing traditional assumptions about expectations formation by the assumption of rational expectations could fundamentally alter the results.... Most macroeconomists today use rational expectations as a working assumption in their models and analyses of policy. This is not because they believe that people always have rational expectations. Surely there are times when people, firms, or financial market participants lose sight of reality and become too optimistic or too pessimistic... But these are more the exception than the rule, and it is not clear that economists can say much about those times anyway. When thinking about the likely effects of a particular economic policy, the best assumption to make seems to be that financial markets, people, and firms will do the best they can to work out the implications of that policy. Designing a policy on the assumption that people will make systematic mistakes in responding to it is unwise."

"I refuse to start from the assumption that the role of monetary policy is to control and stabilize inflation. The only acceptable way to start is, I believe, to think of the goal of monetary policy, together with fiscal policy,as the maximization of welfare."

"Crises feed uncertainty. And uncertainty affects behaviour, which feeds the crisis."

"François Quesnay was the leading figure of the Physiocrats, generally considered to be the first school of economic thinking. The name “Physiocrat” derives from the Greek words phýsis, meaning “nature,” and kràtos, meaning “power.” The Physiocrats believed that an economy’s power derived from its agricultural sector. They wanted the government of Louis XV, who ruled France from 1715 to 1774, to deregulate and reduce taxes on French agriculture so that poor France could emulate wealthier Britain, which had a relatively laissez-faire policy. Indeed, it was Quesnay who coined the term “laissez-faire, laissez-passer.”"

"To secure the greatest amount of pleasure with the least possible outlay should be the aim of all economic effort... when everyone does this the natural order, instead of being endangered, will be all the better assured."

"Mr. Smith was well known to M. Quesnai, the profound and original author of the Economical Table; a man (according to Mr. Smith's account of him) "of the greatest modesty and simplicity;" and whose system of political economy he has pronounced, "with all its imperfections," to be "the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published on the principles of that very important science." If he had not been prevented by Quesnai's death, Mr. Smith had once an intention (as he told me himself) to have inscribed to him his Wealth of Nations."

"Sans la certitude de la propriété, le territoire resterait inculte."

"You recognize but one rule of commerce; that is (to avail myself of your own terms) to allow free passage and freedom of action to all buyers and sellers whoever they may be."

"Calculations are to the economic science what bones are to the human body. Without them it will always be a vague and confused science, at the mercy of error and prejudice."

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing."

"It is simply, and solely, the abundance of money within a state [which] makes the difference in its grandeur and power."

"Que faut-il faire pour vous aider? Laissez-nous faire!"

"As a rigid logician, [Colbert] cannot object to the reduction of his principles to a logical absurdity, which may be stated thus. The growth of French industry and commerce requires that a high standard of quality in the products be maintained. This standard can only be secured by Government regulation: this regulation can only be forced on an unwilling people by search for and exposure of defective goods: this search injures the trade which it is desired to promote, and disheartens the merchants and others whose zealous cooperation is of the last importance for the success of French industry and commerce. Of course the fallacy lies in the first statement, the assumption that an absolute standard of excellence exists, and that the producer is a better judge of it than the consumer."

"In the act of exchange, as in the transmission of power by machinery, there is friction to be overcome, losses which must be borne, and limits which cannot be exceeded."

"The employment of mathematical symbols is perfectly natural when the relations between magnitudes are under discussion; and even if they are not rigorously necessary, it would hardly be reasonable to reject them, because they are not equally familiar to all readers and because they have sometimes been wrongly used, if they are able to facilitate the exposition of problems, to render it more concise, to open the way to more extended developments, and to avoid the digressions of vague argumentation."

"Anyone who understands algebraic notation, reads at a glance in an equation results reached arithmetically only with great labour and pains."

"So far we have studies how, for each commodity by itself, the law of demand in connection with the conditions of production of that commodity, determines the price of it and regulates the incomes of its producers. We considered as given and invariable the prices of other commodities and the incomes of other producers; but, in reality the economic system is a whole of which the parts are connected and react on each other. An increase in the incomes of the producers of commodity A will affect the demand for commodities Band C, etc., and the incomes of their producers, and, by its reaction will involve a change in the demand for A. It seems, therefore, as if, for a complete and rigorous solution of the problems relative to some parts of the economic system, it were indispensable to take the entire system into consideration. But this would surpass the powers of mathematical analysis and of our practical methods of calculation, even if the values of all the constants could be assigned to them numerically."

"The landmark figure in general equilibrium theory was French economist Léon Walras (1834–1910), whose complex simultaneous equations essentially created this branch of economics in the nineteenth century. Back in the eighteenth century, however, another Frenchman, François Quesnay (1694–1774), was groping toward some notion of general equilibrium with a complex table intersected by lines connecting various economic activities with one another. Karl Marx, in the second volume of Capital, likewise set forth various equations showing how particular parts of a market economy affected numerous other parts of that economy. In other words, Walras had predecessors, as most great discoverers do, but he was still the landmark figure in this field."

"In my opinion, Walras' theory of exchange and production is not the end and aim of his study but an overture to his general equilibrium theory of capital formation and circulation. Therefore, what we have to do first of all is to elaborate in economic, rather than mathematical terms his theory of growth and money, which in Walras' work was not complete. In reconsidering Walras from such a point of view, he appears as an economist who was comparable with Marx and who anticipated Keynes."

"There are many anticipators of marginal analysis. Three major names were Augustin Cournot (1801-1877), J. H. von Thünen (1783-1850), and H. H. Gossen (1810-1858). Cournot's originality and ingenuity can hardly be exaggerated. In 200 small pages, he described and defined the downward-sloping , completely analyzed the maximization of profit under conditions of monopoly, advanced an ingenious explanation of pricing, proved that equilibrium price occurred when equaled , and exactly defined the market from which we call perfect competition and he called "unlimited competition." And the book went unread."

"I have now... part of the proofs of your work on the Theorie de la Ricliesse Sociale, which you have been so good as to send me... I cannot delay expressing the pleasure with which I find that we have by independent paths reached conclusions which are nearly if not quite the same. I flatter myself with the hope that... we have both reached the truth, which must be one. ...[A]fter seeing a full statement of your mode of arriving at the equations of exchange, I cannot for a moment entertain the least doubt of the entire independence of your own researches... As to the question of priority of publication, it is... of less importance than that of the truth of the theory... I have always... attached much importance to this mathematical theory of economy, believing it to be the only basis upon which an ultimate reform of the science... can be founded and a solution of many difficult problems effected. I cannot, therefore, help accepting your very kind offer to make known in the Journal des Economistes... that I had already gone over part of the same ground... in a different manner. ...I feel it to be most honourable in you, after seeing merely the brief sketch of my theory as printed in the Statistical Journal for 1866, to acknowledge at once my priority on some points; and I shall be glad to learn your opinion of the much fuller statement of my views contained in the Theory of Political Economy, of which I have lately posted you a copy. ...I shall have much pleasure in doing what I can to make known in England your own excellent statement of the theory of exchange ...I trust that the theory ...will thus become the origin ...between us of many friendly letters."

"Those skilled in mathematical analysis know that its object is not simply to calculate numbers, but that it is also employed to find the relations between magnitudes which cannot be expressed in numbers and between functions whose law is not capable of algebraic expression."

"In 1823 he took a license degree in mathematics at Sorbonne University. He then became the private secretary of a field marshal who required assistance in writing his memoirs. This position must have left Cournot with considerable time for his own pursuits, for in the course of his ten years in the field marshal's employment he took two doctoral degrees, one in mechanics and one in astronomy. In addition, he published a number of articles and even acquired a degree in law."

"Faith makes us live by showing us that life, although it is dependent upon reason, has its well spring and source of power elsewhere, in something supernatural and miraculous. Cournot the mathematician, a man of singularly well-balanced and scientifically equipped mind has said that it is this tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous that gives life, and that when it is lacking, all the speculations of reason lead to nothing but affliction of the spirit. ...And in truth we wish to live."

"The full recognition of the general equilibrium concept can unmistakably be attributed to Walras (1874-1877), although many of the elements of the neoclassical system were worked out independently by W. Stanley Jevons and by Carl Menger. In Walras' analysis, the economic system is made up of households and firms. Each household owns a set of resources, commodities useful in production or consumption, including different kinds of labor. For any given set of prices a household has an income from the sale of its resources, and with this income it can choose among all alternative bundles of consumers’ goods whose cost, at the given prices, does not exceed its income. Thus, Walras saw the demand by households for any consumers’ good as a function of the prices of both consumers’ goods and resources. The firms were — at least in the earlier versions — assumed to be operating under fixed coefficients. Then the demand for consumers’ goods determined the demand for resources; and the combined assumptions of fixed coefficients and zero profits for a competitive system implied relations between the prices of consumers’ goods and of resources. An equilibrium set of prices, then, was a set such that supply and demand were equated on each market; under the assumption of fixed coefficients of production, or more generally of constant returns to scale, this amounted to equating supply and demand on the resource markets, with prices constrained to satisfy the zero-profit conditions for firms. Subsequent work of Walras, J. B. Clark, Wicksteed, and others generalized the assumptions about production to include alternative methods of production, as expressed in a production function. In this context, the prices of resources were determined by marginal productivity considerations."

"It took from a hundred to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years for the astronomy of Kepler to become the astronomy of Newton and Laplace, and for the mechanics of Galileo to become the mechanics of d'Alembert and Lagrange. On the other hand, less than a century has elapsed between the publication of Adam Smith’s work and the contributions of Cournot, Gossen, Jevons, and myself."

"Perhaps as important is the relation between the existence of solutions to a competitive equilibrium and the problems of normative or ."