A number of contributors have either said outright or hinted that the neoclassical revolution that swept away classical economics toward the end of the 19th century was a form of apologetics for an unjust distribution of income.

No doubt many people, including some professional economists, of the era used the marginal productivity theory of distribution and the Austrian theory of value and cost in this way. However, the masters of this new way of thinking were not among this group. To them, these new theories consitituted a means of comprehending complex economic interaction that was superior to the old.

A key to understanding the distinction between those who used the theories as justifications and those who used them as a means of comprehension is the distinction between the "personal distribution" and the "functional distribution." This distinction was elaborated by J.B. Clark at the outset of his book on the distribution of wealth.

The following is a link to quotations on the subject.


http://www.econlib.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?query=%22functional+distribution%22&results=0&book=clkDW

Regarding Joan Robinson's glib remark about the revolution that passed both her and Marshall by, she (and the others mentioned by Tony in this context) simply didn't perceive the directional arrow provided by those who employed the revolutionary opportunity cost concept to try to comprehend economic interaction in the whole. None of the revolutionaries, including Clark, was concerned about the price of eggs, except in the context of a mass of interconnected other prices and quantities.


Pat Gunning