The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
The limitations of the marginal-utility economics are sharp and
characteristic. It is from first to last a doctrine of value, and in
point of form and method it is a theory of valuation. The whole system,
therefore, lies within the theoretical field of distribution, and it has
but a secondary bearing on any other economic phenomena than those of
distribution--the term being taken in its accepted sense of pecuniary
distribution, or distribution in point of ownership. Now and again an
attempt is made to extend the use of the principle of marginal utility
beyond this range, so as to apply it to questions of production, but
hitherto without sensible effect, and necessarily so. The most ingenious
and the most promising of such attempts have been those of Mr. Clark,
whose work marks the extreme range of endeavor and the extreme degree of
success in so seeking to turn a postulate of distribution to account for
a theory of production. But the outcome has been a doctrine of the
production of values, and value, in Mr. Clark's as in other utility
systems, is a matter of valuation; which throws the whole excursion back
into the field of distribution. Similarly, as regards attempts to make
use of this principle in an analysis of the phenomena of consumption,
the best results arrived at are some formulation of the pecuniary
distribution of consumption goods.
Within this limited range marginal-utility theory is of a wholly
statical character. It offers no theory of a movement of any kind, being
occupied with the adjustment of values to a given situation. Of this,
again, no more convincing illustration need be had than is afforded by
the work of Mr. Clark, which is not excelled in point of earnestness,
perseverance, or insight. For all their use of the term "dynamic,"
neither Mr. Clark nor any of his associates in this line of research
have yet contributed anything at all appreciable to a theory of genesis,
growth, sequence, change, process, or the like, in economic life. They
have had something to say as to the bearing which given economic
changes, accepted as premises, may have on valuation, and so on
distribution; but as to the causes of change or the unfolding sequence
of the phenomena of economic life they have had nothing to say hitherto;
nor can they, since their theory is not drawn in causal terms but in
terms of teleology.
In all this the marginal-utility school is substantially at one with the
classical economics of the nineteenth century, the difference between
the two being that the former is confined within narrower limits and
sticks more consistently to its teleological premises. Both are
teleological, and neither can consistently admit arguments from cause to
effect in the formulation of their main articles of theory. Neither can
deal theoretically with phenomena of change, but at the most only with
rational adjustment to change which may be supposed to have supervened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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