Disputing the Correct Interpretation of Say’s Law: A Comment on Roy Grieve’s and Steven Kates’s Arguments

James C. W. Ahiakpor

History of Economics Review, 2020, vol. 77, issue 1, 37-51

Abstract: Steven Kates recently has been interpreting Say’s law of markets as equivalent to John Stuart Mill’s declaration in his fourth fundamental theorem respecting capital that ‘Demand for commodities is not demand for labour’. Kates’s interpretation distorts both Say’s own statement of the law of markets and the meaning of Mill’s fourth theorem. Roy Grieve correctly disputes Kates’s denial of Mill’s having employed the wages fund to illustrate the meaning of his controversial declaration. Citing some criticisms of the wages-fund doctrine, Grieve believes he has shown the error of Say’s Law. Both Grieve and Kates are mistaken in their principal arguments.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10370196.2020.1784649 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rherxx:v:77:y:2020:i:1:p:37-51

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rher20

DOI: 10.1080/10370196.2020.1784649

Access Statistics for this article

History of Economics Review is currently edited by John Harry Bloch and John Hawkins

More articles in History of Economics Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().