Economic essays

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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

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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 149 its valuation expression) as compared with the social concept. The individual concept is now cited in the index as the “standard use” of the term,® and appears with this comment: “This definition of capital from the individual or business point of view is firmly established in ordinary usage; and it will be assumed throughout the present treatise whenever we are discussing prob- lems relating to business in general.” He concludes this chapter with admonitions to economists to “forego the aid of a complete set of technical terms,” and not to assign “a rigid exact use to a word” as this “confuses business men” —astonishing counsel to budding would-be scientists. Marshall's view as to the relation of land to capital is not easy to fix, but on the whole it seems to be that land is among the (concrete) things comprising individual but not social capital. E.g., he says: “This illustrates the fact that land from the point of view of the individual cultivator is simply one form of capital.” * Speaking more generally of manufacturers and traders as well as of farmers he says: “It is to be remembered that land is but a particular form of capital from the point of view of the individual producer.” * Though Marshall here distinctly excluded land from capital from the social point of view; * nevertheless, only three pages later, still speaking of the social point of view, he says: “In purely abstract, and especially in mathematical, reasoning the terms Capital and Wealth are used as synonymous almost perforce, except that ‘land’ proper may for some purposes be omitted from capital.” Are we to understand then, that for most purposes, land is by Marshall included in capital, at least land “proper,” whatever that may mean, which here seems to mean “in the scientific sense,” if it means anything? The reader must take his choice among these contradictions, for his bewilderment will only be enhanced by further search amid the mazes of Marshall's tome. But, though Marshalls formal definitions of capital run in terms of concrete agents, there is no doubt that whenever he comes to discuss individual capital in problems relating to business in general he resorts to a valua- tion concept. The resources of an individual “are in the form of '8th ed., p. 72. But still, in his last word on the subject (p. 790), Marshall justifies his own adoption of “the two-fold definition of capital.” * Idem., p. 170. * Idem., pp. 430-431. Also p. 535 et passim. t Idem., p. 78.

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