Economic essays

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Clark's reformulation of the capital concept / Frank A. Fetter

Collection:: Economics Books

CLARK'S REFORMULATION OF THE CAPITAL CONCEPT 147 ation principle”* and indicates what he thinks are its absurdities.” Professor Seager, a colleague of Clark’s at Columbia, acknowl- edges in the preface of his text his indebtedness to writers so far apart as Bohm-Bawerk, J. B. Clark and Alfred Marshall, and his treatment of this particular question betrays some of the dis- cordant results. He seems to accept both the old view and in part that of Clark. He defines capital as “the product of past industry used as aids to further production.”® Yet he cites, apparently with approval, the business man’s use of capital as “the complex of capital goods, used in connection with each branch of production, measured in terms of money,” * a valuation investment concept. But he does not, as did Clark, include land among “capital goods”; these are purely artificial things, “products of past industry,” ® thus plainly differing with the business usage cited. Seager was insistent on keeping sharply distinct the two classes of concrete goods (land and capital goods) which represent “man’s part in production and nature’s part.” ° Soon, however, Seager is found talking about buying land, quite in the sense in which the business man speaks of the purchase of other goods, as an “investment” involving the “capitalization of rents.” ” 6. Marshall’s Eclectic Capital Concept In the first edition of his Principles (1890), Alfred Marshall was well aware of the issue before us, and gave it a good deal of attention. He showed acquaintance with J. B. Clark’s work of two years earlier,’ with Bohm-Bawerk, Newcomb,” and the several German economists above named, who contrasted capital * Idem., pp. 121-123. * In part his objections result from his not seeing the full import of the principle; however, his objection to Professor Irving Fisher's view of capitalizing human beings is in my judgment well taken. The reference to 4 text at this point in the 3rd edition (1921) is misleading. (Vol. 2, p. 126 *® Introduction to Economics (1904), p. 108. § Lent p. 126, and, in revised form, Principles of Economics (1913), p. 14. ® Principles, p. 148. ® Idem., p. 149. " Idem., p. 239. ® E.g., note p. 615; and specific reference to Capital and its Earnings in note, p. 492. ® Idem., p. 137.

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: Economic essays

Monograph

Chapter

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

Chapter

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation