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On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Kates, Steve wrote: 
 
> I might also just note that the arguments surrounding the law of  
> markets had nothing to do with the wages fund or any other early  
> classical doctrine. It successfully bridged the divide during the  
> marginal revolution. Jevons himself, in his Theory of Political  
> Economy, was quite clear that overproduction was 'absurd and self- 
> contradictory' and demonstrated exactly that using his own  
> marginalist tools. All this is found in a brief section titled simply  
> 'Over-production' (page 212 of the Penguin edition).   
 
I wouldn't be so sure that the law of markets "had nothing to do" with the 
wages fund. In fact, "bridging the divide" may itself be evidence to the 
contrary. In Michael V. White's discussion of "that godforsaken 
Thornton" and his higgling in the marketplace, he argued that Jevons, 
along with Mill, didn't get Thornton's main point, which was essentially a 
'deconstruction' of the notion of equilibrium. Dismantling the wages-fund 
doctrine was a digression. 
 
Both the wages fund doctrine and Say's Law ultimately rest on a foundation 
of misplaced concreteness -- they just can't handle the exchange of 
intangibles, the supply of which and the demand for which need follow no 
"law". 
 
> That Say's Law did not survive the Keynesian Revolution is  
> because it was not intended to. That is what the Keynesian  
> Revolution was about.   
 
Thomas Sowell and William Hutt were writing obituaries, then? 
 
Tom Walker 
 
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