The Marginalist Revolution: An event, a process or a myth?

Abstract

The Marginalist Revolution, which is traditionally associated with the date 1871 and the names of Leon Walras, William Stanley Jevons, Karl Menger, is interpreted as a complex and lengthy process, that ended around the mid-twentieth century. Its origins can be traced to three relatively independent trends that existed long before the 1870s: in the field of value theory — a tendency to view utility as a basis of value, in the field of methodology — a trend towards the adoption of deductive method, in the field of analytical tools — a trend towards the application of mathematics in economics. The achievements of these authors, which in a sense can be regarded as a “point of intersection” (“overlap”) of the above-mentioned tendencies, were not properly appreciated by contemporaries, were not considered as revolutionary and for quite a long time remained on the periphery of economic research, became a bridge to the future economic science.