"Economic theory, since the time of the Physiocrats, has endeavored to get rid of the human will and to explain economic phenomena in terms of physical and hedonic forces. The human will had been the main reliance of the Mercantilists and of the economic theory of the Church fathers. But the will was arbitrary, capricious and contrary to natural laws. There were two stages of these physical theories which attempted to get away from the will:-the natural rights arld physical equilibrium stage of foreordained evolution of Quesnay, Adam Smith and Karl Marx, and the natural selection stage of blind evolution that followed Darwin, whose distinguished exponent in economics is Veblen. The theorists of each stage attempted to get rid of the human will and to explain economic phenomena as the working out of natural forces, either foreordained or blind. It was a concept of society as the natural growth of a mechanistic equilibrium."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesPeople from OhioHistorians from the United StatesEconomists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 376
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_R._Commons
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John R. Commons
John Rogers Commons (October 13, 1862 – May 11, 1945) was an American institutional economist, progressive and labor historian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
26 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John R. Commons →
Related Quotes
"Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized—the negro has only been domesticated."
"It is an easy and patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, employer, or investor, placed above the arena…"
"The Chinese and Japanese are perhaps the most industrious of all races, while the Chinese are the most docile. The Ja…"
"In the entire circuit of the globe those races which have developed under a tropical sun are found to be indolent and…"
"The aim of this volume is to work out an evolutionary and behavioristic, or rather volitional, theory of value. It wa…"
"Economic theory deals with two concepts, Value and Economy. Abstract reasoning regarding these concepts rests ultimat…"
"It would not be incorrect to say that all capital is invisible value, in that it is the present value, not of physica…"
"The concept of property itself had come up out of the common law and carried with it the idea of a natural, or common…"
"Legally, the term liberty means absence of duty, or rather the limit of duty."
"The boot and shoe makers, either as shoemakers or “cordwainers,” have been the earliest and the most strenuous of Ame…"