J. M. クラークの社会経済学のヴィジョン

抄録

In the late 1910s, John Maurice Clark insisted that traditional economics (value economics and price economics) was becoming irrelevant to the problems of “an era of social readjustment, ” advocating the need for another type of economic theory which he called “social economics.” This conception of social economics had a place in the basis of his economic thought, and core ideas of his works in the interwar periods, such as Studies in the Economic of Overhead Cost (1923) or Social Control of Business (1926), were corollaries of the fundamentals of his social economics.
In this paper, we scrutinize the original plan of John Maurice Clark's social economics logically and historically, and clarify its nature and relevant historical contexts, especially its relationship with the institutionalism movements and the implication of Clark's discussions with Anderson, Jr. on the meaning of social value in economic theory.
First, we consider why Clark advocated that social economics must become a centerpiece of economics. This was derived from his relative view of the nature of economic theory, which, he thought, had to reflect dynamic social and economic changes. This is why price economics which was based on static premises and whose materials were selected with reference to a logical “closed system” were irrelevant to problems in an era of reconstruction after the World War I. He claimed that it must become a subordinate part of economics.
Secondly, we examine the framework of Clark's social economics which he described as “non-Euclidean.” Clarifying the premises of traditional economics, he presented relevant premises of social economics, such as a concept of wealth as “inappropriables, ” a need for qualitative standards of economic activity, a universal nature of overhead cost, a problem of mechanization, and so on. He proposed that these aspects of social economics reflected the context of that time, such as an appearance of Big Business Systems, and the experience of the World War I.
Finally, we examine the backgrounds of Clark's advocacy of social economics, placing it in the context of the American economic thought of the time. We clarified its connection with the emergence of institutionalism movements led by Hamilton and other young economists, and with the controversy regarding the concept of social value. On the one hand, Hamilton's critical judgment for traditional economics and claim for institutional economics took the same approach as Clark's social economics. Therefore they had become representatives of institutionalists in the interwar period. On the other hand, by examining Clark's discussions with Anderson Jr., we recognize that they shared same context of the discussion of social value, started from John Bates Clark's Philosophy of Wealth (1885). This seems to be one of the main sources of J. M. Clark's emphasis on the need for a social value standard which implied a valuation not based on actual market prices.