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Milton FRIEDMAN (Adam SMITH & Léon WALRAS & Alfred MARSHALL & Maurice ALLAIS & Paul SAMUELSON)

Manuscrit autographe signé, préface pour la version française de Price theory

s.d. (septembre 1983), 21,5x28cm, une page sur un feuillet.

There is a long-standing myth that if two economists discuss any topic, they will have at least three opinions about it.

Autograph manuscript signed, one a page written in black ink on a sheet of yellow lined paper and titled by the author: “Draft 8 – Preface for French edition 8 – Price Theory”; numerous erasures and corrections. At the top left of the sheet, in ballpoint pen, autograph signed: “For Bernadette Platte, Milton Friedman”.
Extremely rare autograph manuscript signed by the 1976 Nobel Prize winner, one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, whose entire archives are now kept at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University. The few Friedman manuscripts still in private hands are particularly desirable and sought-after. Important theoretical text of the first two paragraphs of the preface to Price and Economic Theory, first French translation of Price Theory, published in 1983 by Economica editions. Completed on September 7, 1983 at Stanford University, this original version in English is completely new. Price Theory, Friedman's major work (Chicago, Aldine Press, 1962) whose definitive version was published in 1976, the year Friedman won the Nobel, is a fundamental essay directly inspired by his lectures at Chicago University. For his first publication in France, seven years later, Friedman therefore undertook to compose a completely new preface intended for this public less naturally won over to monetarist ideas than the Americans.
Our manuscript, the final version of a text that required eight rewrites as evidenced by the exergue, still bears multiple modifications underlining the attention paid by Friedman to the reception of his work by the French readership. Spearhead of Ronald Reagan's economic policy, Friedman's theory of prices comes from a long tradition of French and Anglo-Saxon thinkers whom the economist takes care to quote in this manuscript: “From the French physiocrats and Adam Smith to Léon Walras and Alfred Marshall to Maurice Allais and Paul Samuelson, a body of theory has been elaborated and refined that essentially all economists accept and use in their analysis of the problems for which it is relevant”. As a connoisseur of the French spirit, Friedman thus insists on the connection between the economic liberalism of his famous “school of Chicago” and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, dear to the intelligentsia of the old continent. It is moreover in homage to this French critical spirit that he opens his preface with an ironic anecdote on the relativity of economic theories: “There is a long-standing myth that if two economists discuss any topic, they will have at least three opinions about it”. We note, however, that he replaces the real author of this trait, who is none other than Churchill, with an anonymous “long-standing myth”. The repetitions and redactions on our manuscript show Friedman's temptation to analyze the origin of this myth: “This myth rests like most myths” is crossed out and replaced by an irrevocable “Whatever small element of validity this myth may have with respect to some topics, it has none whatsoever with respect to the core of economics... price theory.”
The second paragraph of our manuscript is a promotion of his monetarist theories which, at the beginning of the 1980s, had just borne fruit: their application by the American Federal Reserve led to a sharp decline in inflation and a historic rise of the dollar. At the height of his influence, Friedman then saw his works, including Price Theory, republished, taught around the world and translated into several languages. He emphasizes here the central importance of his theory for understanding the world market: “For price theory seeks to understand how the actions of hundreds of millions of people spread around the surface of the globe interact through a market to determine the price of one good or service relates to another, the wages of one hour of labor relates to another, the cost of one unit of capital relates to another.” The continuation of the French preface, of more classical composition, is absent from our manuscript, which nevertheless includes a blank verso. This very elaborate introduction could thus turn out to be a late addition to the text initially planned, marking Friedman's effort to conquer the French capital, which had just, in 1981 elected its first socialist government since 1936.
Very important and extremely rare economic manuscript, unpublished in its original language, of the theorist who greatly influenced the financial policy of the United States and shaped the economy of the modern world.

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