ABSTRACT
In the English-speaking countries the acceptance of marginal utility was a reaction from the theories of the classical school, which had dominated economic thought since the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. At the present time marginal utility analysis, in one or another of its numerous variants, is firmly established in the economic thought of all important countries. The country where utility theory first rose to dominance is Austria, hence the identification of "Austrian school" with marginal utility doctrine. The greatest improvement introduced by the marginal utility viewpoint came in the field of distribution theory as a by-product of the changed view of cost. The utility theory should be seen as the culmination, historically and logically, of the rationalistic and individualistic intellectual movement of which the competitive economic system itself is one aspect and modern science and technology are others.
