[PEN-L:9718] Re: Re: Gen. Equilibrium

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Gil Skillman wrote:

>Doug, I can't tell from your post what you're taking issue with:  that gen
>eq was revived in the 1930s?  That it was considered "everybody's
>economics"?  What? Gil
>
> >Mark Blaug writes in Economic Theory in Retrospect (5th ed., p. 290):
> >
> >"Utility theory was gradually deprived of all its bite and reduced
> >from cardinal to ordinal utility and from ordinal utility to
> >'revealed preference'; cost theories of value were shown, not to be
> >wrong, but only valid in special cases; and general equilbrium
> >virtually disappeared by 1900, only to be revived in the 1930s by
> >Hicks and Samuelson as 'everybody's economics....'"
> >
> >This isn't the story you get from Keynes or modern post-Keynesians;
> >what's up here?

I'm not taking issue with anything really, I'm asking if this is a
fair representation. Keynes makes it sounds like general equilibrium
theory and "the Benthamite contraption" were far from 36 years dead
when the GT was published, though.

Doug