Chronic. While German and Italian economists were very interested in the role of their predecessors during the “dark years”, their French colleagues remained modestly aloof from the subject. Facts and economic policies under Marshal Pétain’s regime have been studied, but not the economists themselves: their writings, their research, their careers…
Hence the interest of the work of two young researchers, Nicolas Brisset and Raphaël Fèvre (Research group in law, economics, management, Gredeg, University of Côte-d’Azur), published in 2021 in History of Political Economy (notoh 53-4, Duke University Press), the Review of the history of economic thought (notoh 11, Garnier Classics) and Politix (notoh 133, De Boeck Supérieur) and presented on April 7 to the circle of economic epistemology of the University of Paris-I.
In the story of French economists, beyond the “founding fathers” of the 19and century, their discipline only really took off academically and intellectually from the 1950s, under the aegis of the prestigious names of Gérard Debreu and Maurice Allais (respectively Nobel Prize winners in 1983 and 1988), Edmond Malinvaud (Collège de France, Insee ) and François Perroux (chair Analysis of economic and social facts at the Collège de France from 1955 to 1974). The two researchers observe, however, that the “intellectual program” of institutionalizing economics as the dominant human science and as a source of expertise for the conduct of public policies, already had its beginnings under Vichy.
A single “science of man”
Before the war, economists debated the means of freeing themselves from law faculties, of which their teaching was only a branch. This involves the creation of institutes and think tanks, often funded by the private sector (Rockefeller Foundation). Also, when Vichy created, in November 1941, the Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, directed by Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1912 and eugenics theorist, many economists saw there the opportunity to play a role in this project to merge psychology, sociology, biology, demography, economics, etc. into a single “science of man”.
Within it, the Economic Theory Exchange Center (CETE) organizes seminars, translates foreign authors – mainly Anglo-Saxon, including Keynes, Hayek, Hicks, Kaldor –, and publishes the very first economics textbooks for students. Young economists (Maurice Allais, Pierre Uri, Robert Marjolin), established professors (Jean Marchal, Henri Guitton), even already famous (François Divisia, Gaëtan Pirou, Charles Rist) take part. These names will for the most part be associated, after the war, with the implementation of the planning policies led by Jean Monnet. The director of the CETE is Henri Denis, who after the war became a communist activist celebrated as the introducer of Marxism at the Sorbonne…
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