----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
Steve Kates (and others) have provided lots of neat information on  
Say's Law.   
 
He suggested in his post that until 1936 mainstream economists argued  
that supply could not outrun demand (and so 'overproduction' was  
impossible).   
 
My question (I am a historian of political philosophy, not an  
economist!) is, why and how could they argue that overproduction was  
impossible? Or, perhaps to be more explicit about what is in my mind,  
both Hegel in the Philosophy of Right (1821), after citing Smith,  
Ricardo, and Say, and Marx from the Communist Manifesto onwards,  
thought it was clear that supply could and did outrun demand.  (I  
would also think it would be clear to any observer of economic  
recessions and depressions from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to  
the present that supply could outrun demand.)   
 
So, basing my thoughts on Hegel, Marx, and simple (simplistic?)  
observation (using perceptions formed, perhaps, by reading the Grapes  
of Wrath at an impressionable age), I have always been suspicious of  
Say's Law, thinking it a piece of economic science that (to use Marxist  
language) shows how ideological some dimensions of mainstream  
economics is.   
 
Peter G. Stillman 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]