ABSTRACT
Although he dismissed it as an essentially inadequate construct for a proper understanding of the market process, equilibrium was a recurrent theme in the work of Ludwig Lachmann. He rejected the idea of equilibrium as an attainable position of rest in which individual plans become mutually compatible; he also rejected the idea of equilibrium as a position towards which the economy tends but may never actually reach. The only notion of equilibrium that Lachmann thought should be retained was the notion of individual equilibrium.1 This is the axiom of the purposeful individual.
