Abstract
Throughout his life, Clark gave explicit attention to the question of ethics in economics — a concern which he also found rooted in the elder Clark’s work. In the mid-1950s, in his notes for the revision of a sketch of John Bates Clark written by Alvin Johnson for the Dictionary of American Biography, John Maurice Clark observed: “I could always count on him [John Bates Clark] to find a place for anything I might do in the field of ‘dynamics.’ After writing my ‘Alternative to Serfdom’ [1948], I reread his ‘Philosophy of Wealth’ [1886], and was delighted to note the basic similarity, allowing for some 70 years of historical change.”1 By stressing what he considered the inescapable links between ethics and economics, Clark placed himself outside much of the conventional thinking in modern orthodox economics. To better understand Clark’s contribution, a brief essay into the accepted view will be helpful.
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Notes and References
J.M. Clark Papers. The Philosophy of Wealth contains the principal writings by the elder Clark on ethics. In the same note, the younger Clark wrote: “His [John Bates Clark’s] ethical attitudes were related in part to those of the German Historical School and in part to the intellectual currents, of a Christian Socialist flavor. …” Johnson’s sketch appeared in 1958. Cf. Chapterl, above. Ten years earlier, Clark had noted in a letter: “I was much interested, after writing my W.W. Cook lectures [Alternative to Serfdom] last year, to go back to the “Philosophy of Wealth” and find how many similarities there were; and that I was nearer to the general character of that book than to my father’s later work.” Clark to Joseph Dorfman, 8 November 1947. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
John Neville Keynes, The Scope and Method of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1917 [1st ed., 1890], reprint, Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, 1965), chapter 2, especially 34–35, 60–63.
Mary Paley Marshall, What I Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947), 19.
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 9th (variorum) ed. (London: Macmillan, 1961), 2: 685–687.
Cf. E.J. Mishan, “A Survey of Welfare Economics, 1939–1959,” in Surveys of Economic Theory: Money Interest, and Welfare, Vol. I (London: Macmillan, 1965), 4–222. Also, Readings in Welfare Economics, Selected by Kenneth J. Arrow and Tibor Scitovsky (Home-wood, I11.: Irwin for The American Economic Association, 1969).
“Comment” on Kenneth E. Boulding’s “Welfare Economics,” in A Survey of Contemporary Economics, vol 2, edited by Bernard F. Haley (Homewood, I11.: Irwin for The American Economic Association, 1952), 37 (first emphasis added).
An Essay on The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1952 [1st ed., 1932]), 148–149.
Alternative to Serfdom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948; 2d ed., Vintage Books, 1960); Guideposts in Time of Change: Some Essentials for a Sound American Economy (New York: Harper, 1949); Economic Institutions and Human Welfare (New York: Knopf, 1957). Economic Institutions consists of revised versions of articles and lectures dating from 1940 to 1955.
“Economic Means — To What Ends? A Problem in the Teaching of Economics,” in Economic Institutions, 14–15.
“The Uses of Diversity: Competitive Bearings of Diversities in Cost and Demand Functions,” The American Economic Review, Supplement, 48 (May 1958): 476. See Chapter 3, above.
“Economic Means — To What Ends? A Problem in the Teaching of Economics,” in Economic Institutions and Human Welfare, 15–16.
Alternative to Serfdom, 10–11. Cooley’s Comprehensive treatment is in Social Process, especially Chapters 26 and 27.
Clark to Lionel [Lord] Robbins, 14 March 1951. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers. Robbins had earlier taken the position that: “In point of fact I believe that the ‘gulf’ which divides us is almost entirely terminological.” Robbins to Clark, 31 January 1951, in J.M. Clark Papers. To this, Clark responded: “I think we could still have a good argument on the scope of Economics as a science and the relation between this and value judgments, or between questions of what is and what ought to be.” Clark to Robbins, 14 March 1951.
Guideposts in Time of Change, 52. This is suggestive of the treatment of machines in his 1922 essay “The Empire of Machines”: what goals do these devices serve? Cf. Chapter 2, above.
Guideposts in Time of Change, 52–53.
“Economic Means — To What Ends? A Problem in the Teaching of Economics,” in Economic Institutions, 24–25. The emphasis is in the original.
Clark to Lionel Robbins, 14 March 1951. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers. (The emphasis is Clark’s.)
Alternative to Serfdom, 9. References are to the more widely available first edition.
In later years, Clark compared the notion of “economic man” to the fable of “Buridan’s ass.” Jean Buridan, a fourteenth century scholastic philosopher and disciple of William of Occam, wrote a fable depicting an ass who, when placed midway between two similar bundles of hay, was unable to choose and starved to death. See Clark’s pencilled notes in his copies of George A. Stigler, The Theory of Competitive Price (New York: Macmillan, 1942), and
C. Reinhold Noyes, Economic Man, in Relation to His Natural Environment, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948). These volumes are part of the J.M. Clark Papers.
See Chapter 2, above.
“Economic Means — To What Ends? A Problem in the Teaching of Economics,” in Economic Institutions, 26.
Clark to William S. Maxwell, 2 April 1960. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
Alternative to Serfdom, 11–19, 22.
Ibid., 23.
Guideposts in Time of Change, 67.
Ibid., 67–68. In a letter to Lord Robbins, Clark wrote of this passage that he was “calling the attention of economists to the fact that these [ideas] were inconsistent with most of the accepted theoretical positions on utility and kindred matters.… Some day perhaps .. . I may try to do that job more formally, in which case people will say ‘How interesting! But it is not theory,’ and go back to the theoretical orthodoxy; that is, they will unless I succeed in making the point that this is in itself a sounder kind of theory.” Clark to Lionel (Lord) Robbins, 21 February 1951. Copy in J.M. Clark Papers.
Alternative to Serfdom, 25.
“Control of Trade Practices by Competitive and Other Forces,” in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 12, no. 2 (January 1927): 100.
See Chapter 2, above, especially.
Economic Institutions, 71. For an example of Clark’s deep sense of urgency concerning these ethical questions, see Appendix A.
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© 1997 Laurence Shute
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Shute, L. (1997). Economics and the Bridge to Ethics. In: John Maurice Clark. Contemporary Economists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25579-5_6
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