History of Economic Analysis part 107. At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter-one of the major figures in economics during the first half of the 20th century-was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of humankind's theoretical efforts to understand economic phenomena from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. | History of economic analysis 1022 ity to its possessor depend upon the quantity of that commodity Further work partly induced by hostile criticism transformed this psychological or subjective or modern theory of value before long. In order to convey the essentials of a story that cannot be told satisfactorily in the space at our command we shall confine ourselves to a minimum of names and reduce to a sequence of logical steps what actually was a sequence of controversies which were sometimes as acrimonious as they were pointless. 3. THE CONNECTION WITH UTILITARIANISM The first task that confronted the sponsors of the new theory of value was to defend it against all the misunderstandings some of them quite puerile to which it had given Ever fuller restatements resulted nourished by applications to particular cases which were not valueless though they were sneered at as futile casuistry that did something to clear the ground for further advance. For instance the Austrians who faced German opponents of strongly anti-utilitarian tastes pretty quickly realized the necessity of clearing their skirts of hedonism. The historical alliance of utility theory with utilitarian philosophy was obvious. We cannot blame men who were no theorists for suspecting that there was also a logical one. Moreover some of the most prominent exponents of marginal utility were in fact convinced utilitarians Gossen was and Jevons and Edgeworth. They and others too had used language that was apt to create the impression that marginal utility theory depended upon utilitarian or hedonist premisses Bentham certainly thought so and could be attacked successfully by attacking these. Jevons was the chief culprit he even went so far as to call economic theory a calculus of pleasure and pain Verri had done so before and elicited from Marshall the rebuke that he was mixing up economics with hedonics. It was one of the many merits of Marshall s treatment of utility that he deplored and .
