Capital Theory in Orthogonalised General Co-ordinates

Abstract

As a student I found Wicksell more inspiring, more illuminating, more sympathetic to my own way of seeing things than any other economist. This symposium provided a happy occasion for a pilgrimage back to the works of that great man, to see how much of my earlier enthusiasm had survived forty years of being a practising teacher of economics. This effort has a certain poignancy for me because my other hero was Schumpeter, who, equally firmly, admired Walras above all others. Though we often argued the various aspects, neither of us was ostensibly swayed. I maintained Wicksell handled real issues with great insight and that Walras was empty of results; he argued that Walras showed the more profound method and the true path of progress. But it was an unequal contest, my arrogant ignorance against the skill and wisdom of that formidable intellect. Looking back I see that I was in fact rather subverted, in the sense that I have since spent more time on Walrasian that on Wicksellian issues. Therefore I would like to try a new look at Wicksell, from a perspective tinged with a minimal Walrasian colouring. Capital is the central and difficult concept in Wicksell’s work, and it is currently being once more seriously disputed. It is, of course, too large a subject for a brief essay, and I shall therefore proceed by rather compressed, unsubstantiated statements, with the request that it be judged as a whole, not by its parts.