Philip Wicksteed

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Philip Henry Wicksteed (October 25, 1844 – March 18, 1927) was an English Unitarian theologian, classicist, literary critic, and economist. He was one of the first disciples of economist William Stanley Jevons, expounding on his ideas of the marginal utility theory. He was also supporter of socialist ideas and has been associated with Fabian Society. His work on Dante Alighieri established him as one of the foremost medievalists of his time.

Life

Philip Henry Wicksteed was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, the son of a Unitarian minister. He was educated at Ruthin Grammar School, and from 1861 to 1867 at University College, London and Manchester New College, where he received his master's degree, with a gold medal in classics. After graduation, he followed his father and became a Unitarian minister in 1867, the career path he followed for 30 years.

In 1868 Wicksteed married Emily Rebecca, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Henry Solly (1813 - 1903), minister and a social reformer. The couple first lived in Taunton, but in 1870 moved to Dukinfield, near Manchester. They stayed there for four years before moving to the Little Portland Street Chapel in London, where Wicksteed served as a minister. They remained there until 1897.

Wicksteed started to write on a wide range of topics, from theology to ethics and literature. He had a deep interest in Dante Alighieri, and has published several works on him in his career. His reading of Henry George's 1879 Progress and Poverty led him into his economic studies.

In 1887, Wicksteed became a lecturer on economics for the University Extension Lectures in London, a sort of adult-education program established in 1870s for the unfortunate ones who, for some reason, were not able to enroll into the main university programs. He lectured on Dante, political economy, William Wordsworth and Greek tragedy.

Wicksteed was associated with the Fabian Society, the upper-middle-class intellectual group founded in London in 1884 that supported and propagated the socialist ideas. Wicksteed sympathized with the goal of Fabians, but was critical of the group’s support of Marx’s economical ideas. He even tutored George Bernard Shaw in the basic Ricardian economics, what Shaw used in his later criticism of Marxian economics.

In 1894 Wicksteed published his famous An Essay on the Co-ordination of the Laws of Distribution, which further established him as a renowned economist.

Wicksteed served as lecturer for the University Extension Lectures until his retirement in 1918. He died on March 18, 1927, in Childrey, Berkshire, England.

Work

In his early career Wicksteed was primarily involved in theological and philosophical discourse, writing mostly on the problems in ethics. He was also deeply interested in Dante Alighieri on whom he wrote numerous publications, which established him as one of the foremost medievalists of his time. It was Wicksteed's concern for the ethics of modern society, with its social inequalities and growing materialist culture, that seems to have led him to turn toward economic studies. Wicksteed also read Henry George's 1879 Progress and Poverty which deeply affected his ideas.

Wicksteed entered the field of economics rather late - in the middle of the fourth decade of his life. That led Joseph Schumpeter to comment that Wicksteed “stood somewhat outside of the economics profession” (Schumpeter, 1954). Wicksteed nevertheless soon started to publish numerous economical works of his own. He expounded on the theory of William Stanley Jevons, English economist who developed the marginal utility theory of value in 1860s.

It was Wicksteed’s common ground with Carl Menger and Ludwig von Mises that connects him with the Austrian School of economic thought. Wicksteed’s interpretation of modern economics was drastically different from the one by Alfred Marshall, which dominated British economical though at the time.

In 1894, Wicksteed published his famous An Essay on the Co-ordination of the Laws of Distribution, in which he tried to prove mathematically that according to marginal productivity theory, distributive system which rewarded factory owners would eventually exhaust the total product produced. Wicksteed also emphasized the opportunity cost and reservation demand in defining value, refusing to consider supply as an otherwise independent cause of value. It was his 1910 book, The Common Sense of Political Economy that most transparently presented Wicksteed's economic ideas. That work is also often considered his best work, the one that strongly connects him with the Austrian School of economics.

Wicksteed’s view on the role of cost in the theory of economic value brings him the furthest from the Marshallian economics. He wrote in 1905:

"The school of economists of which Professor Marshall is the illustrious head," Wicksteed wrote in 1905, "may be regarded from the point of view of the thorough-going Jevonian as a school of apologists. It accepts . . . the Jevonian principals, but declares that, so far from being revolutionary, they merely supplement, clarify, and elucidate the theories they profess to destroy. To scholars of this school the admission into the science of the renovated study of consumption leaves the study of production comparatively unaffected. As a determining factor of normal prices, cost of production is coordinate with the schedule of demands” (Wicksteed, 1905).

Wicksteed rebelled against classical view of production activity which saw production separated from the marginal utility considerations governing consumption activity. He claimed that there is no such thing as an independent "supply curve". The supply curve is a part of what Wicksteed called the "total demand curve".

Wicksteed also supported Austrian view of economics, as a science of overall human action, in contrast to classical economists who focused mostly on the economical processes driven by human selfish motives. Wicksteed insisted that such view was oversimplified, and that humans act based on purposefulness and rationality. In contrast to Austrians who were critical of socialism, Wicksteed was deeply sympathetic to it.

Legacy

Wicksteed’s work has not received much attention from the academic community neither during his lifetime nor after his death. Although some economists recognize his ingenuity, most historians simply regard him as a disciple of William Stanley Jevons. Wicksteed has however left certain impact on the followers of Austrian School. Ludwig von Mises frequently referred to Wicksteed’s work.

Publications

  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1879. Dante: Six sermons. London: C. Kegan Paul
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1885. Our Prayers and our Politics. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Le Bas & Lowrey
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1888. The Alphabet of Economic Science. London: Macmillan
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1894. An Essay of the Co-ordination of the Laws of Distribution. London: Macmillan
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1897. Getting and Spending: Papers on the meaning and uses of money.
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1905. Jevons's Economic Work. Economic Journal, 15 (59), p.432-6
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 1920. The Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy: Illustrated from the works of S. Thomas Aquinas. London: Williams and Norgate
  • Wicksteed, Philip H. 2002 (original published in 1913). Dante and Aquinas. Honolulu, HI: University Press of the Pacific. ISBN: 1410201414
  • Wicksteed, Philip H., and Ian Steedman (ed.). 1999. Collected works of Philip Henry Wicksteed. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. ISBN 1855066211
  • Wicksteed, Philip H., and J.E. Carpenter 2005 (original published in 1903). Studies in Theology. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 1421265591
  • Wicksteed, Philip H., and Lionel Robbins (ed.) 2003 (original published in 1910). The Common Sense of Political Economy. London: Routledge

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Comim, Flavio. 2004. The Common Sense of Political Economy of Philip Wicksteed. History of Political Economy. 36(3), 475-495.
  • Herford C. H. 1931. Philip Henry Wicksteed: His Life and Work. London: J.M. Dent
  • Kirzner, Israel M. Philip Wicksteed - The "Austrian" Economist. Ludwig von Mises Institute, <http://www.mises.org>. Retrieved on August 13, 2007, <http://www.mises.org/about/3245>
  • Schumpeter, Joseph. 1954. History of Economic Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Steedman, Ian. 1987. Wicksteed, Philip Henry. In John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman (eds.), The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (4 volumes). Macmillan.

External links

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