SAMUEL BAILEY AND THE QUESTION OF HIS “INFLUENCE”: A SKEPTICAL VIEW Samuel Hollander Discussion Paper No. 08-05 June 2008 Monaster Center for Economic Research Ben-Gurion University of the Negev P.O. Box 653 Beer Sheva, Israel Fax: 972-8-6472941 Tel: 972-8-6472286 1 Samuel Bailey and the question of his “influence”: a skeptical view English, Irish and Subversives Among the Dismal Scientists Eds. N. Allington & N. Thompson (Elsevier Press) Samuel Hollander
[email protected] 2 I INTRODUCTION: SELIGMAN’S READING OF BAILEY AND ITS RECEPTION Professor Edwin Seligman hoped by his study of “neglected” British economists “to call attention to some of the British writers who undertook to discuss economic theory during the two decades following the appearance of Ricardo’s Principles . It will perhaps surprise many to find in this literature so much that foreshadows the most recent contributions to economic doctrine” (1903: 336). Samuel Bailey’s Critical Dissertation on Value (1825) – written anonymously in reply to the formulation of Ricardian theory in De Quincey’s Templars’ Dialogue (1824) shows the author, Seligman maintained, to be one of the “more acute critic[s] of Ricardo” (352), a “keen and fertile thinker,” having in mind “[t]he opposition to the labour theory of value, the emphasis put on time as an element in value, the broadening of the rent concept, the criticism of the statement that rent does not enter into price, and the importance assigned to productivity in affecting value – all these constitute doctrines of importance in the recent phases of the science” (355; also 534).