Abstract
Marginalism and Marxism may seem at first sight a very stale subject for debate, of interest only to antiquarians and the celebrators of centenaries. What possible good can it do, it may be asked, to discuss the relation between two theoretical systems which were first put forward a whole century ago, neither of which anybody today accepts without considerable qualification? We do not bother to discuss the bimetallism-versus-monometallism issue today: why then ‘Marginalism and Marxism? There are two justificatory points, I think, which can usefully be made before we start our task.
This essay owes its origin to a paper given at a conference held at Bellagio in August 1971. It was subsequently published, in amended form, in History of Political Economy, 4, 1972, pp. 499–511. No further amendments of substance have been made in the present version.
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References
From the Marxist point of view, the word ‘marginalism’ is really something of a misnomer, since it relates more to the method of the doctrines concerned than to their content. ‘Subjectivism’ would perhaps be a better word. Cf. Oscar Lange, Political Economy, Vol. I (translated by A. H. Walker, Pergamon Press, New York, 1963), p. 235 n.
J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis ( Allen and Unwin, London, 1954 ), p. 552.
W. S. Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy ( 4th edition, Macmillan, London, 1931 ), p. 15.
Carl Menger, Principles of Economics (translated by J. Dingwall and B. F. Hoselitz, Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois, 1950 ), p. 58.
Léon Walras, Elements of Pure Economics (translated by W. Jaffé, Allen and Unwin, London, 1954), p. 145. I think it is going a little too far to describe this proposition, as Professor Jaffé does, as ‘simply a… pious restatement of his father’s doctrine’ and ‘no more than an obiter dictum’ (ibid., pp. 512–13). It is true, of course, as Professor Jaffé in effect states, that in the context of Walras’s general equilibrium theory as such the psychological relation between men and finished goods is only one of the elements of the market process as a whole; and that it is in a sense meaningless to ask, when confronted with a formal statement of the interconnections between rareté, cost of production, and value, which is the cause and which are the effects. But if we are going to lay any stress at all on Walras’s doctrine of ‘maximum satisfaction’ — which Walras himself would surely have wanted us to do — it seems improper to regard his notion that rareté is the cause of value’ as a mere excrescence uppn the main body of his doctrine. value’ as a mere excrescence upon the main body of his doctrine.
Ibid., p. 44. This statement appeared in the preface to the 4th edn. of the Elements (1900).
Cf. Jevons, op. cit., p. xxxi: ‘His [Cournot’s] investigation has little relation to the contents of this work, because Cournot does not recede to any theory of utility, but commences with the phenomenal laws of supply and demand’ (my italics).
Cf. Schumpeter, op. cit., p. 551.
Ibid., p. 888.
Cf., e.g., Menger’s comments in chap. 3, sec. E, of his Principles of Economics, pp. 165–74. See also Jevons’s ‘primer’ of Political Economy (London, 1878), pp. 5–6 and 10–11.
Walras, op. cit., p. 256.
Engels’s comment occurs in his preface to Vol. III of Marx’s Capital.
Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy ( Watts, London, 1962 ), p. 52.
Cf. Leo Rogin, The Meaning and Validity of Economic Theory (Harper, New York, 1965), pp. 431 and 443–4.
Jevons, op. cit., p. 267. The relevant part of his statement is quoted on p. 173 below.
Ibid., p. vii.
Ibid., pp. 253–4.
Carl Menger, Problems of Economics and Sociology (translated by F. J. Nock, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1963 ), p. 119.
And also — as Professor Coats did at the Bellagio conference — about the contrast which must have struck Jevons very forcibly between the great empty spaces of Australia and the narrow boundaries of Britain
Cf. Wesley C. Mitchell, Lecture Notes (Kelley, New York, 1949 ), Vol. 2, p. 59.
Cf. Lange, op. cit., pp. 148–72 and 250–2. See in particular p. 251: ‘The essence of the subjectivist trend… consists in the fact that it treats household activity as behaviour according to the economic principle.’
Ibid., p. 253.
Jevons, op. cit., p. 37.
Cf. ibid., pp. 59 and 95.
Lange, op. cit., p. 235.
Menger, Problems of Economics and Sociology, pp. 216–18.
Jevons, op. cit., p. 267.
Not Menger, perhaps: see his very interesting and prescient remarks on the economics of socialism in Problems of Economics and Sociology, p. 212.
Cf. below, pp. 177–9.
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© 1977 Ronald L. Meek
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Meek, R.L. (1977). Marginalism and Marxism. In: Smith, Marx, & After. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7303-0_9
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