Machinery Question

Ferdinando Meacci ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The “machinery question” was developed by the economist David Ricardo (1772–1823) in the chapter “On Machinery” added to the third edition of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821). This question related, in his words, to the “influence of machinery on the interests of the different classes of society” and particularly to the “opinion entertained by the labouring class, that the employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests”. Ricardo’s argument was presented as a recantation of his “previous opinion” on this question and marks the beginning of a debate that is still going on. The purpose of this entry is to simplify this debate by highlighting some weaknesses and strengths of Ricardo’s argument and in subsequent interpretations.

Keywords: Ricardo; machinery; capital; technological unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 B31 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2.4(2008): pp. 536-538

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11696/1/MPRA_paper_11696.pdf original version (application/pdf)

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:pra:mprapa:11696

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().