#pre-1928

Importance for Marx of Ric.'s theory that wages increase when profits fall. (This does not affect values)

Hist. 169–170

Wieser, The Austrian School, E. J. I, 112

“The most momentuous consequence of the theory of imputation is, I take it, that it is false, with [the] Socialists, to impute to labour alone the entire productive return”.

Cassel, p. 26–7

Production must be regarded as a continuous process.

27 “In real life production is always a continuous process, always complete in its various partial processes, and always beginning over again: ... The process of production as a whole does not share the movement of the material that rises from stage to stage of advancement until it issues from the productive process as a finished article. The process of production has not a beginning and an end in the same sense as the story of the gradual shaping of a concrete piece of material...”

“as Marx pointed out, the mode of distribution cannot be separated from the mode of production”

The fundamental (“final statement”) definition given by Marshall of dim. ret. is a marginal one (p. 153).* Therefore, when Now, on p. 408 (last lines) and 409 (end of text) he says that “an inexperienced person ... would generally be condemned as having so over applied ploughing as to make it yield a rapidly diminishing return” (409) and that “if a farmer makes a bad distribution of his resources between ... he will get a markedly diminishing return from those elements ... which he has driven to excess” (408).

These statements are a consequence of the demonstration that at the maximum returns being “constant”, a small change in proportions will be attended by negligible diminution in returns ‒ while if the misdistribution of resources goes very far it will be attended by a sharp diminution of returns. This would be correct if referred to average returns from land (or from a costly fixed factor, calculated as described

). But as M. ass refers to marginal returns, this is definitely wrong. In fact marg. returns are as rapidly diminishing at the point of the optimum as anywhere else.

Marshall ‒ Industry & Trade

BII cap. I Supply and demand

V. Demand Curve

V Math. Method

V Functions

V Graphical Method

V Diagrams

V Supply curve

Utility

V Curves

Edgeworth ‒ Curves, in Palgrave's Dictionary

“referred to rectangular axes OX and OY in such wise that the curve represents the interdependence of two variable quantities Ox and Oy , the change in one of the variables Oy which attends a change in the other variable Ox .

Two species of curves may be distinguished: (1) where the quantitative relation between the variables is not supposed to be numerical by ascertained, the datum being of an indefinite character, as that Ox continually increases withe the decrease of Oy ; and (2) where the curve is the record of statistical information.