ABSTRACT
It is very important, in the light of this paper, to use ‘canonical growth models’ in the history of economic analysis, as tools for the retrospective reconstruction of classical ‘dynamics’. If Blaug, thanks to the Harrod equation, tries to prove Malthus inconsistent as a growth theorist (Blaug 1985:168-76), other scholars have pointed out the analytical coherency of the classical system. Paul Samuelson, for instance, introduced one of the bestknown interpretative ‘canons’ in the history of economic analysis, namely his Classical Canonical Model of Political Economy. Samuelson’s ‘canon’ rests on the assumption that ‘Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, and John Stuart Mill shared in common essentially one dynamic model of equilibrium, growth, and distribution’, at whose centre lies the principle of decreasing returns in the agricultural sector. ‘The same canonical classical model’, Samuelson continues, recurs in Karl Marx ‘when the limitation of land and natural resources is added to his system’ (1978:1415).
