Fritz Machlup, “Structure and Structural Change: Weaselwords and Jargon” (1958)

Machlup’s essay is a methodological critique of the economic vocabulary of “structure,” “structural,” and “structural change.” He does not argue that the terms are always useless; rather, he asks when they identify a real analytical relation and when they merely lend depth to unclear thinking. His starting point is semantic discipline: ambiguity is tolerable only when context prevents confusion.

The existence of homonyms in scientific as well as in everyday language raises no problem when the separate meanings of the same word are sufficiently different to make confusion impossible in the context in which the word is used.

The difficulty with “structure,” for Machlup, is that its meanings are not safely separated. The word migrates among empirical description, theoretical conditions, historical style, institutional setting, and policy excuse. In some authors, especially in discussions of “structural change,” it becomes so elastic that it no longer marks a definite object. Machlup’s suspicion is that the prestige of the term often substitutes for specification.

Structure, I am afraid, is often a weaselword used to avoid commitment to a definite and clear thought.

Much of the essay is a taxonomy of usage. Machlup first identifies relatively legitimate meanings. Economists may speak intelligibly of the structure of production when they mean the distribution of inputs and outputs among industries, stages, or periods. They may discuss price structure when they mean relative prices rather than the general price level, or rate structure when they mean differences among rates rather than an average. In econometric and theoretical contexts, “structure” may name a set of parameters, coefficients, or background conditions held constant while variables change. Even here, however, Machlup’s preference is for less mystifying language: if one means given conditions, one should say so.

"Time structure" of production is the phrase conveniently used to distinguish the vertical or time distribution from the cross-sectional or horizontal distribution of inputs and outputs in an economy.

The essay then turns to vaguer and more troublesome uses. “Structure of the economy” may refer to institutions, technology, attitudes, habits, legal arrangements, social relations, or simply the complex concreteness of historical life as opposed to abstract theory. Machlup does not deny the importance of such matters. His objection is that calling them “structural” often avoids naming which of them matters, how it operates, and what evidence supports the claim. The distinction between slowly changing and rapidly changing variables can also be useful, but it becomes confused when “structural” shifts from a descriptive category to a political preference about what should or should not be changed.

The sharpest part of the essay concerns crypto-apologetic language. Machlup argues that “structural” often enters policy debates as a way to make controversial interventions appear necessitated by deep economic facts. A “structural imbalance” may be invoked to defend controls, cartels, commodity agreements, exchange restrictions, import barriers, or allocation schemes without demonstrating why ordinary adjustment mechanisms are inadequate. The term does not prove that a disequilibrium is special; it merely suggests profundity.

Hence, to diagnose any concrete situation as a "structural disequilibrium" that ought not to be allowed to work itself out, but should be treated by exchange controls, is to substitute terminology for analysis.

Machlup’s critique is therefore not anti-historical, anti-institutional, or hostile to abstraction. It is a demand that abstraction earn its place by specifying referents and causal roles. “Structure” can be a useful shorthand where its meaning is fixed and its analytical work is clear. Where it merely gestures toward complexity, permanence, or depth, it becomes jargon. Where it smuggles a policy conclusion into an apparent diagnosis, it becomes apologetic rhetoric.

The postscript makes the essay unusually self-aware. Machlup recognizes that his impatience is strongest where “structural” language supports policies he opposes, such as restrictions and controls. But he treats this as a reason for vigilance rather than withdrawal. His final standard is symmetrical: unclear claims should be rejected whether or not they serve agreeable conclusions. The essay’s enduring value lies in that methodological rule. Technical language is justified only when it clarifies; otherwise, the scholar should choose plainer words.