Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 April 2022
This paper deals with the initial reception of the Marshall Plan by Georges Bataille and François Perroux in light of the discussion they held in the journal Critique, during the second half of 1948. I argue that Bataille and Perroux took the Marshall Plan as an enigma that current economic and political theories were not able to explain fully. In response, both authors contributed a unique and sophisticated economic analysis to transcend what they perceived as the limited scope of economics. By focusing on this interdisciplinary dialogue, this paper is intended as a contribution to a history of economic thought, taking in the economic inquiry of non-economists and the ways in which they relate to professional economists.
I received valuable feedback and suggestions on previous versions of this paper during the twenty-third ESHET Annual Conference (Lille, May 2019) and the Charles Gide Workshop (Montreal, June 2019). Many thanks also to Nicolas Brisset, Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, Bianca Fontana, Stefanos Geroulanos, Duncan Kelly, Harro Maas, and Linsey McGoey for their rich and helpful comments. I am especially grateful to Michele Bee for insightful remarks and for always being so willing to discuss my research. I am also indebted to the two anonymous referees and to Pedro Duarte for their valuable suggestions.