47

The article examines the relevance of Rousseau’s criticism of economic thought by comparing it with the neo-walrasian economic theory. We wonder at first about the reading of his work as an external or internal criticism of political economy. We show on the one hand that the external criticism, expressed from the viewpoint of his political philosophy, is not enough to dispute the competitive equilibrium Pareto-efficient as a socially desirable objective; on the other hand, we show that the internal criticism does not take into account the radicality of Rousseau’s criticism of economics. We interpret then this criticism as the consequence of an anthropology, in which the agent is led by the commercial society to be blind to his own interest.