The abandonment of classical theory

Abstract

This chapter deals with the works of Johann Heinrich von Thünen, Karl Marx and William Stanley Jevons. To bring together in one chapter three authors as different as von Thünen, Marx and Jevons might be unusual from the perspective of the history of economic thought. For, Marx is a strictly classical economist, von Thünen marks the transition from classical to neoclassical thinking, and Jevons is usually held to be one of the founding fathers of marginal theory. Also, their respective works are very different as far as method, focus and scope are concerned. However, from the perspective employed throughout this study — a perspective that focuses on ambivalent joint production and its interrelation with the natural environment — all three of them seem to reach very similar conclusions. In contrast to Mill, these three authors when dealing with the role of demand stress one particular aspect of joint production, namely that joint production may be ambivalent; that is, joint outputs may not only be wanted goods, but may be unwanted and even harmful. Interestingly, all three revert to examples of environmental pollution when illustrating their claim.