The “Social Value” Debate: An Early Chapter in the History of American Marginalism

Abstract

This paper provides a reconstruction of the debate on “social value” among early marginalists in the US. This will be done in three steps. The first step analyzes John B. Clark’s approach to social value as presented in his Distribution of Wealth; the second step deals with other influential contemporaries who adopted a similar social value perspective, with a main focus on Edwin R. A. Seligman; the third step discusses those critics who, with due differences in emphasis and style, animated the debate over social value, reviewing (among others) the contributions of Herbert J. Davenport, Joseph Schumpeter, Benjamin Anderson, John Maurice Clark, and George P. Watkins. The final section presents some conclusions.