ABSTRACT
Utility is a metaphysical concept of impregnable circularity; utility is the quality in commodities that makes individuals want to buy them, and the fact that individuals want to buy commodities shows that they have utility. For the neo-classicals the utility of goods consumed by workers was no different from any other. The unconscious preoccupation behind the neo-classical system was chiefly to raise profits to the same level of moral respectability as wages. There were two quite separate branches of the neo-classical system, each with its own analytical model and each with its own brand of anodyne for moral doubts. It was Professor Pigou who reconciled the sides of the neo-classical doctrine by placing it in a setting of stationary equilibrium, when accumulation has come to an end. For the neo-classicals a belief in Free Trade became the very hallmark of an economist; protectionists belonged to the lesser breeds without the law.
