Crisis in Economic Thought

The Long Depression spanned the 1870s into the 1890s, characterised by a prolonged squeeze on capitalist profits, deflation, protectionism and class conflict. How were the harms of this period distributed between classes? What does this early crisis of capitalism tell us about the relationship between crisis and capitalism more generally? How can it help us understand the contributions and limitations of marginalism and neoclassical economics?

Matthew Watson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the Long Depression, how it was experienced differently by elites and non-elites, its debatable status as a crisis, and its place in the thought of marginalists and early political economists.

Recommended reading:
1) Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (2000)
2) Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 (1987)

Works referenced in this episode:
1) Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890)
2) François Quesnay, Tableau Economique (1758)
3) W. Stanley Jevons, Commercial Crises and Sun-Spots (1878)
4) Albert Musson, The Great Depression in Britain, 1873–1896: a Reappraisal (1959)
5) Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas (1969)