Classical Political Economy: A Survey of Recent Literature PDF
Preview Classical Political Economy: A Survey of Recent Literature
Classical Political Economy Classical Political Economy A Survey of Recent Literature edited by William O. Thweatt ~. " Springer Science+Business Media, LLC library 01 Congress Calaloging-in-Publicalion Oala Classical polilical economy Bibliography: p Includes index 1. Classical school of econom ies. 2. Marxian economics. L Thweatl, William O HB94.C42 1987 330.15'3 87-3394 ISBN 978-90-481-5815-7 ISBN 978-94-015-7782-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7782-3 © 1988 by Springer Science+Business Media New York Second Printing 1995. Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston in 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1988 AII righls reserved No pari 01 Ihis publication may be reproduced, slored in a relrieval syslem, ar Iransmilled in any larm ar by any means, mechanical, pholocopying, recording, or olherwise, wilhoullhe priar wrilten permis sion of Ihe publishers, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Contents Contributing Authors vii Introduction William O. Thweatt 2 Developments in the Literature on Adam Smith: An Evaluative Survey 13 Edwin G. West Commentary by Donald Winch 45 3 Recent Literature on Malthus 53 Salim Rashid CommentarybyJ.M. Pullen 85 4 David Ricardo: A Review of Some interpretative Issues 103 Terry Peach Commentary by Mark Blaug 132 5 John Stuart Mill Interpretation Since Schumpeter 137 Neil de Marchi Commentary by Samuel Hollander 163 6 Classical Reassessments 179 Denis P. O'Brien Commentary by R. D. Collison Black 221 v vi CONTENTS 7 Some Developments in Marxian Theory Since Schumpeter 227 Antonio Callari Commentary by John E. Elliott 259 Author Index 267 Subject Index 273 Contributing Authors R. D. Collison Black is Emeritus Professor of Economics in the Queen's Univer sity of Belfast. His publications include Economic Thought and the Irish Question (1960), an edition of The Economic Writings of Mountifort Longfield (1971), and an edition in seven volumes of the Papers and Correspondence of William Stanley Jevons prepared for the Royal Economic Society (1971-81), as well as numerous articles in leading journals. Mark Blaug is Professor Emeritus of the Economics of Education at the University of London and Consultant Professor of Economics at the University of Bucking ham. He is the author of Ricardian Economics (1958), Economic Theory in Retrospect, 4th edition (1985), The Methodology of Economics (1980), Great Economists Since Keynes (1984), Great Economists Before Keynes (1986), Economic History and the History of Economics (1986), and numerous articles in leading journals. Antonio Callari is Associate Professor of Economics at Franklin and Marshall College. His publications have appeared in History of Political Economy, Review of Radical Political Economics, Research Annuals in Political Economy, and the Eastern Economic Journal. Neil de Marchi is Professor of Economics at Duke University and Extraordinary Professor of History and Methodology of Economics within the Department of Macro-Economics at the University of Amsterdam. His articles have appeared in History of Political Economy of which he is Associate Editor, Journal of Law and Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, American Economic Review, Philosophy of Science, and he has contributed several chapters in books on politics and the history of economics. John E. Elliott is Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California. He has published Marx and Engels on Economics. Politics and Society (1981), Comparative Economic Systems (1985), and his articles have appeared in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, History of Political Economy, vii viii CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Journal of Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Issues, and the Review of Social Economy. Samuel Hollander is Professor Economics at the University of Toronto. He has published numerous articles in leading journals as well as The Economics of Adam Smith (1973), The Economics of David Ricardo (1979), The Economics of John Stuart Mill (1985), Classical Economics (1987), and he is currently at work on The Economics of Thomas Robert Malthus. Denis P. O'Brien is Professor of Economics at Durham University. In addition to articles in many economic journals, he is the author of J. R. McCulloch: A Study in Classical Economics (1970), The Correspondence of Lord Overstone (1971), The Classical Economists (1975), Pioneers of Modern Economics, co-editor with J.R. Presley (1981), and Authorship Puzzles in the History of Economics, with A.C. Darnell (1982). Terry Peach is Lecturer in Economics at the University of Manchester. He has published in the Economic Journal and has a major work on David Ricardo forthcoming from the Cambridge University Press. John M. Pullen is Professor of Economics at the University of New England. He is the editor of a Variorum Edition of T. R. Malthus, Principles of Political Economy, two volumes to be published by the Cambridge University Press for the Royal Economic Society in 1987. His articles have appeared in leading economic journals, and he has submitted the entry on Malthus for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Salim Rashid is Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois-Champaign. He has published articles in History of Political Economy, The Eighteenth Century, Hume Studies, Southern Economic Journal, and Journal of the History of Ideas. William O. Thweatt is Professor Economics at Vanderbilt University. His articles have appeared in History of Political Economy, Social Research, Journal of Inter national Economics, Indian Economic Review, Journal of Economic Issues, Quarterly Review of Economics and Business, Scottish Journal of Economics, and The Mill Newsletter. Edwin G. West is Professor of Economics at Carleton University. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Uoyds Bank Review, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Law and Economics, and Oxford Economic Papers. Donald Winch is Professor of Economics at The University of Sussex. His recent books are Adam Smith's Politics (1978) and That Noble Science of Politics, with Stefan Collini and John Burrow (1983). He also edited the Economic Writings of James Mill (1966). A short study of Malthus is to be published in 1987. Classical Political Economy 1 INTRODUCTION William O. Thweatt This book is the second in three surveys of the literature in the history of economic thought in the Kluwer Recent Economic Thought series. The first book, covering the pre-classical literature, has already been published; a third, on the neo-c1assical period, is planned for 1988. This middle book surveys the writings on classical political economy for the past 30 years, or roughly since the publication of Joseph Schumpeter's 1954 monumental History of Economic Analysis. Shortly after World War II, the American Economic Association spon sored a Survey of Contemporary Economics [1949]. That work covered 13 subdisciples of economics, and in 1952 a companion piece appeared in which surveys of 10 additional subdisciples were presented. As Bernard Haley, editor of the second volume, stated, even "though in the two volumes twenty-three fields have been treated ... there remain some aspects of the subject ... that have not been reviewed" [Haley, 1952, p. v]. And here he listed location theory and social security, but not the history of the subject, although as a subdiscipline, the history of economics has a long pedigree, indeed much longer than some of the 23 fields surveyed. I In the two decades following 1949, interest in the history of economics declined, at least as measured by the number of schools requiring courses 1 2 I. INTRODUCnON in the field, as well as the percentage of articles published in the leading economic journals. Since then, however, we seem to be witnessing a re vival of interest. At the undergraduate level the percentage of American universities offering courses in the history of economics increased from 61% in 1950 to 65% in 1980 [Siegfried and Wilkinson, 1982]. Further evidence of this revival of interest is the appearance, since 1969, of several journals specializing in the field, including the History of Political Eco nomy, the British History of Economic Thought Newsletter, and the Bulletin of the History of Economics Society. This Society, international in membership, was formally organized in 1974 and presently has over 700 members. Recent years have also seen the publication of the complete works of many of the major figures in the history of economic thought, including Adam Smith, Thomas Robert Malthus, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall, and John Maynard Keynes. All of this activity has resulted in a virtual outpouring of literature concerned with the history and methodology of economics, and much of it has been focused on the writings of the classical economists.2 Indeed, not only historians of economic thought but economists in gen eral have continued to write books and articles on the classical economists notwithstanding that more than a century has passed since they themselves wrote. That this is the case is amazing when we consider, as Walter Eltis recently stated, that "within six years of publication, half the citations that there will ever be to a modern economics article will already have appeared. After that, with a few notable exceptions, references rapidly cease." He goes on to say that this puts the classical literature "into perspective, for after one or two hundred years their economics is still very much alive, and a good deal of it still as controversial as when it first appeared" [1984, p. 310]. It would appear, therefore, that the time is ripe, if not long overdue, for a survey of the recent literature in the history of economics. This book attempts to fulfill this need for the classical period. The first question we must address is: What do we mean by classical political economy, and who were the classical economists? In the only substantive reference to Karl Marx in his General Theory, John Maynard Keynes on the opening page stated: "'The classical economists' was a name invented by Marx to cover Ricardo and James Mill and their pre decessors, that is to say the founders of the theory which culminated in the Ricardian economics" [1936, p. 3]. ~hile Keynes, no doubt, is correct, it is interesting that he does not give a reference. However, in chapter 1 of volume 1 of Das Kapital, Marx makes a distinction between classical
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