Walras à propos du capital et de l'intéret: une analyse dans l'optique de ses contemporaines

In this paper we examine the criticism that Knut Wicksell advanced against Walras’s treatment of capital and interest at the end of the nineteenth century, as well as the reaction of Walras’s followers. As regards the first aspect, it should be noted that the criticism raised at that time refers to the earlier editions of the Éléments, in which circulating capital is excluded from the analysis. We thus endeavour to clarify Wicksell’s remarks on the consequences of that exclusion for both the representation of the social production process and the determination of the interest rate. As to the second aspect, our discussion of the reaction to Wicksell’s criticism shows that the appropriate way of dealing with the capitalistic element of production was an open issue within the small circle of Walras’s followers at the end of the nineteenth century.