Conceptions of the Natural and the Social in Walras's Economic Thought

Neoclassical economics is sometimes said to overlook the institutional character of markets, treating them as ‘natural.’ I address whether this criticism applies to Léon Walras. Walras's position is complex. Walras insists that market institutions are ‘artificial’ and that a purely naturalistic view of them reduces persons to mere things. However, he simultaneously characterizes market laws as natural. Specifically, he argues that exchange value is natural because it is determined by the natural property of scarcity. This argument is wanting: scarcity as defined by Walras is not exclusively natural, and, by Walras's own logic, only accounts for exchange value given the non-natural institution of the market. I suggest that Walras's attempts to give exchange value a natural foundation can be understood as a form of commodity fetishism. I further suggest two complementary explanations for this fetishism. First, Walras infers exchange value's naturalness from its autonomy with respect to individual agents in a competitive market. Second, he assumes that the use of the natural sciences as a formal model implies that the market has some natural cause. I additionally discuss his Baconian view of economics as an example of naturalistic reasoning.