Walker Yankee Scientist
I am trying to write an article on Amasa Walker (1799-1875). I will much
appreciate if anybody can help with anything about his work. Please send
your input to [1][log in to unmask]
Walkers Science of Wealth (1865) seems to be to have been a clear,
consistent, complete and compact exposition of what economics was supposed
to be: the science of exchange as per Whately (1832). Walker wrote in the
1866 edition of Science of Wealth: Exchange is that agency which brings a
man what he wants for what he does not want, which furnishes gratification
for his desires out of objects which are adapted to gratify few or none of
his desires. (Page 77). He thinks that its office is the creation and
apportionment of wealth. (Page 78). He stated: The whole interest of
commerce is now the inalienable ally of peace. It has not been found
sufficient, thus far, to prevent all wars. But it enters into negotiations,
tempers grievances, and delays violence. (Page 84). The implications of
these statements stab at the heart of the dereliction of the mainstream.
My thesis is that this Yankee Scientist remains the last great genuine
scientist of [exchange-based] wealth, and our job is to start from where he
left it. We need to rescue economics from the crippling attack on it that
came shortly after Walkers book was published. Europe fell into the traps of
the trivial matter of allocation of existing wealth under the intoxicating
lure of Game Boy like child-play of optimization. Jevons, Walras and Pareto
destroyed economic science and degraded it into a chapter of biology where
an isolated mouse-like man equates his production with his consumption of n
different things, and never does anything involving exchange. The Walrasian
model has absolutely no exchange: no buying, no selling, no intermediation,
no entrepreneurship, no payment, no money, no institutions and no
evolution. The micro-macro incompatibility and the divorce between trade
and money happened in Europe, especially as Marshall began the indiscipline
of partial equilibrium analysis that disintegrated economics into a shouting
match between incompletely formed incompatible compartments. Walker once
shone brightly at Harvard, but his departure plunged Harvard in utter
darkness while Marshalls disciples erected a temple in Chicago to ruin
economics beyond salvage.
Sadly, the subjectivist (Austrian School) tradition lacked formal modeling
skills to carry on a fruitful study of exchange by the entrepreneurial
pursuits verbally narrated by Menger, Mises and Kirzner, frequently falling
into semantic traps.
I am not accusing Walker of using rigorous formal models, but he surely is
the only author known to me who provided a complete description of indirect
exchange, which should occupy 99% of economic analysis. I am certain that
Smith, Say, Ricardo, Marx, Mill and Jevons did not understand indirect
exchange and hence were very unclear about the nature of exchange and
consequently the role of money in market clearing. The entire misadventure
of macroeconomics of Say, Keynes, Friedman and Lucas could be thrown away
without any loss if we just read Walker attentively. We need economic
science, not micro or macro; we need neither trade without money nor money
without trade. Walker can get us started with clarity, consistency,
completeness and compactness.
Mohammad Gani
References
Walker, Amasa (1866): The science of wealth: A manual of political economy.
Embracing the laws of trade, currency, and finance. Boston: Little, Brown,
and Company.
Whately, Ricahrd (1832): Introductory Lectures on Political Economy.
Available from [2]http://www.econolib.org/whately through the courtesy of
Library of Economics and Liberty
Mohammad Gani (October 2004): Money in Market Clearing found at
http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpma/0410009.html
References
1. mailto:[log in to unmask]
2. http://www.econolib.org/whately
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