Laveleye, Emile de (1822–1892)

Abstract

Born at Bruges, died at Liège, Laveleye was a remarkable thinker, and his writings were brilliant in style. Unfortunately for his fame, being not only an economist but also a philologist, an historian, a student of law, a politician, and a moralist, he was scarcely able to fathom the depths of all the subjects he undertook. Absolutely sincere in mind, he allowed himself some inconsistencies of expression which he fully admitted. At one time he frankly acknowledged himself a ‘socialist of the chair’; but towards the end of his life the disquieting spectacle of the progress of socialism appeared to draw him nearer to those whom earlier he had stigmatized as ‘orthodox economists’.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, 1st edition, 1987. Edited by John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman