Abstract
The academic economists of the second half of the nineteenth century rarely took on Marx directly, and they certainly did not consider him as an equal interlocutor. In order to engage in debate with the awkward colleague from a distance what was needed was a free spirit like Thorstein Veblen,1 or a gifted polemist like Eugen Böhm-Bawerk (who we will meet in the next chapter [pp. 128–133]). However, in view of the enormous stir that the Capital caused, no author could ignore him. Marx was at once a social scientist and a revolutionary: thus there was concern over the hold his doctrines were having on public opinion, rather than over the destabilizing potential of his economic theory. This was all the more so when, 13 years after the First International (1864–1876) had been dissolved, there came a second, during which the Marxist fringe clearly predominated over the other currents.
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Notes
T. Veblen, ‘The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx and His Followers I: The Theories of Karl Marx’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 20.4 (1906), pp. 575–595.
I.H. Rima, Development of Economic Analysis (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 274.
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Cf. M. Daunton (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol. III, 1840— 1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 565, 614ff.
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Defined in the first edition of the Principles as a ‘mild form of robbery’, which penalized the most industrious individuals ‘for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours’ Q.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy [variorum edn, 1st edn 1848], ed. by J.M. Robson, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vols II–III (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 811 and footnote k).
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Further elements can be gleaned from reading P. Groenewegen’s biography, A Soaring Eagle: Alfred Marshall 1842–1924 (Aldershot: Elgar, 1995).
KCA, JMK, EJ 6/4/30–31. This general attitude does not contrast with the religious sentiment that Marshall had rediscovered in the final years of his life, once the subtleties of theology had been put aside (ibid., EJ 6/4/34). The problems posed by evolutionism weighed heavily on the way the author experienced the relationship between faith and reason, which he tended to interpret cosmically as well as, finally, by physical relativity, that had thrown the very concept of time into crisis (ibid., EJ 6/4/31–33). After all, the Victorian epoch had been dominated by doubt, as is remarked by T.R Wright, The Religion of Humanity: The Impact of Comtean Positivism on Victorian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
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K. Feder, ‘Clark: Apostle of Two-Factor Economics’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 62.5 (2003), p. 355;
an attempt to seek some form of continuity between the two different phases can be found in J.F. Henry, ‘John Bates Clark’s Transformation’, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 16.1 (1994), pp. 106–125.
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cf. L.B. Jones, ‘T.H. Huxley’s Critique of Henry George: An Expanded Perspective’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 53.2 (1994), pp. 245–255.
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see also A.W. Flux’s review in the Economic Journal, 4 (1894), June, pp. 305–313. Ten years earlier, Wicksteed had written in the columns of Today a polemical article against Marx: ‘Das Kapital: A Criticism’ [1884], repr. in Karl Marx: Critical Responses, ed. by R. Marchionatti (London: Routledge, 1998), vol. I, pp. 218–231.
L. Blanc, Organisation du travail (Paris: Inalf, 1961 [1839]).
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F.H. Knight, ‘The Ethics of Competition’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 37.4 (1923), p. 598.
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T. Veblen, ‘Professor Clark’s Economics’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 22.2 (1908), pp. 147–195.
See G. Forges Davanzati, Ethical Codes and Income Distribution: A Study of John Bates Clark and Thorstein Veblen (London: Routledge, 2006).
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© 2008 Francesco Boldizzoni
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Boldizzoni, F. (2008). The Atlantic Reaction. In: Means and Ends. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584143_7
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