Friedrich August von Hayek, Addendum: John Bates Clark (1847–1938)

Hayek’s brief memorial review, originally published in Economica in 1939 and reprinted here in a 2013 version with editorial annotations, assesses John Bates Clark: A Memorial, privately printed by Columbia University Press in 1938. Its purpose is both commemorative and corrective: Hayek recalls Clark’s generosity as a teacher while resisting a diminished picture of his intellectual significance. The review moves from an appraisal of the memorial to a previously unpublished biographical document—a letter to Robert Zuckerkandl—and concludes by distinguishing theoretical controversy from personal relations between Clark and Austrian economists.

Clark’s death had left younger British economists with an almost legendary figure, sometimes understood chiefly as a modern Bastiat who believed in the natural harmony of economic forces. Hayek calls this a misinterpretation but declines to develop a full rebuttal. Instead, he establishes the theoretical achievement against which that caricature should be measured:

And of his great achievement in the realm of economic theory, the development and definite establishment of marginal productivity analysis, which places him among the founders of modern economic theory, it will be for the future historian of economic thought to speak.

This reservation defines the review’s scope. Hayek asserts Clark’s foundational place without undertaking a history or defence of marginal productivity theory. His immediate concern is the memorial’s portrait of Clark as a wise and lovable teacher. Speaking as someone who knew him during his final year of active teaching, Hayek emphasizes the help Clark gave younger scholars at the beginning of their scientific careers. The memorial’s value lies in making this personal stature accessible to readers who never encountered him.

Hayek then supplements commemoration with documentary evidence. He reproduces a letter in his possession, dated January 14, 1890, written after Clark had begun reading Zuckerkandl’s book on price theory. Clark enclosed his 1881 article, “The Philosophy of Value,” and explained the circumstances of its composition:

At the time of the publication, in 1881, I was a young teacher in one of our western colleges; and I actually thought that I was the original discoverer of the principles expressed in the article. The analysis was written quite a long time before it was published.

The letter records Clark’s earlier belief in his independent discovery, rather than establishing a comprehensive priority claim. Its importance becomes clearer in the postscript, where Clark acknowledges predecessors whose work he had subsequently come to appreciate:

P.S.—Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to render full honour to the eminent thinkers, mainly Austrians, who were earlier in this field than myself, and who have carried their analysis to greater lengths.

Together, these passages give concrete support to Hayek’s portrait of intellectual generosity: Clark could describe his own route to an idea while recognizing both earlier discovery and more extensive analysis by others.

The concluding paragraph extends this relationship beyond the letter. Despite the lively controversy over capital theory, Hayek reports that Clark’s personal relations with the Austrians became cordial when established shortly before the war. Some second- and third-generation Austrian economists owed nearly as much to Clark’s teaching as to their immediate teachers. The review thus preserves evidence of intellectual exchange across doctrinal disagreements. Its enduring relevance lies in this conjunction of theoretical stature, candid acknowledgment of predecessors, and formative mentorship—not in a technical resolution of the controversies separating Clark from the Austrian school.