The ‘marginalist revolution’: an overview

The term ‘marginalist revolution’ is commonly utilised to indicate a sudden change of direction in economic science, with the abandonment of the classical – and, more precisely, Ricardian – approach, and the shift to a new approach based on a subjective theory of value and the analytical notion of marginal utility. The outbreak of the ‘revolution’ is commonly located in the years between 1871 and 1874, when the main writings were published of the leaders of the Austrian marginalist school, Carl Menger (1840–1921), of the British school, William Stanley Jevons (1835–82), and of the French (Lausanne) school, Léon Walras (1834–1910). In fact, 1871 saw the appearance of both the Principles of pure economics by Menger and The theory of political economy by Jevons, while Walras brought out his Elements of pure economics in 1874.

Let us, however, once again reiterate that the ‘marginalist revolution’ had had important precursors, as we will see again below. Moreover, the differences between the Austrian imputation approach, the French general economic equilibrium and Marshallian partial equilibriums were quite important, as far as both method and the basic view of the functioning of the economy were concerned.