ABSTRACT
Schumpeter is at the root of the ongoing historiographic practice of classifying Menger along with Jevons and Walras as the three protagonists of the so-called marginalist revolution. All three authors are presented as the independent discoverers of very much the same marginal utility principle.1 To Schumpeter, the marginalist revolution boils down to the simultaneous and independent rediscovery of this principle. However, he acknowledges that it is not the idea of marginal utility per se which is revolutionary. Indeed, this idea had already been formulated by Gossen earlier on, and, when expressed in basic terms, seems to flow from mere introspection, revealing little more than a triviality. In fact, the label ‘revolutionary’ is bestowed on these three economists not so much for their exposition of the idea that the evaluation of goods depends on the intensity of individual needs, but rather for the radical change in the orientation of economic theory this principle entails. It is a ‘marginalist revolution’ in the specific sense that it proposed totally new foundations of economic thought to replace those of the classical tradition. In this sense, Menger’s contribution is undoubtedly as path-breaking as those of Walras and Jevons.2
What is essential to Schumpeter is the acknowledgement of the marginal utility principle as the foundation of all economic analysis and of human needs as the primary driving force of economic mechanisms.
