WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARSHALL'S THEORY OF VALUE?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1978.tb01181.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1978 |
| Author | Brian J. Loasby |
| Date | 01 February 1978 |
Scottish
Journal
of
Political Economy,
Vol.
25,
No.
1,
February 1978
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARSHALL’S
THEORY
OF
VALUE?
BRIAN
J.
LOASBY*
University
of
Stirling
“DO
not be put
off
from reading Marshall about halfway through the year.
He wrote about an economic system which has passed away; but he was a
greater man than his successors, and the truths enunciated by great men
have a habit of lasting a long time.”
Such was part of Charles Carter’s advice to first-year economics students at
Cambridge some
25
years ago. But if one reflects on the development
of
economics since the publication of the final edition of the
Principles
in
1920,
it is noteworthy how swiftly many of the “truths” which Marshall emphasised
vanished from economic theory. It is not the purpose
of
this paper to attempt
an overall appraisal of Marshall’s analysis, but simply to draw attention to,
and comment upon, some of these neglected aspects of it.
I
VALUE
AND
GROWTH
The very first thing to recognise about Marshall’s analysis is that he made
no clear distinction between the theory of value and the theory of growth.
“The main concern of economics is thus with human beings who are impelled,
for good or evil, to change and progress”, he writes in the Preface to the
Eighth Edition
(p.
xv), and again, “the present volume
.
. . is concerned
throughout with the forces that cause movement” (p. xiv). Thus especially
careful attention is paid to the “element of time, which is the centre of the
chief difficulty of almost every economic problem” (Preface to the First
Edition, p. vii). Marshall’s endeavours to incorporate time as an essential
component of his analysis is responsible for much of the careful imprecision
so
characteristic of the
Principles
(Shackle,
1972,
Preface); and it is no
accident that the modem striving for rigour has produced models which
are strictly timeless. Even the recent extensions of equilibrium theory to
include markets distinguished by date are devices for evading, rather than
dealing with, the difficulties which Marshall had in mind.
*
I
wish to acknowledge helpful comments on earlier versions of this article by my
colleagues R.
J.
Barrell,
R.
J.
Ruffell,
C.
J.
Sutton and
D.
T.
Ulph, and also by
D.
P.
OBrien and the
Journal’s
referee. The general tenor
of
the article owes a great deal
to
Shackle (1967 and 1972), especially Chapter 28 in the latter.
Received in final form: 27 October 1977.
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