Maximização da utilidade como resposta à crítica marxista
Quanto das ideias dominantes em certo momento não foram reações ao marxismo?
Wesley Mitchell, que não pode ser considerado um marxista, fez um apontamento interessante: a “maximização da utilidade” na trilha dos austríacos ligados a Jevons foi uma reação à crítica de Marx ao funcionamento da economia capitalista.
“Now you see there is a very broad, sweeping statement of the fact that we are going to get maximum satisfactions out of economic life if everybody is free. He can make his own decisions as to how much of one good he will give for another, as to just how long he will labor, because you can be perfectly sure no one is going, to give more of one commodity to secure a supply of a second commodity unless the final degree of utility of the goods he is going to get will be at least equal to the final degree of utility of the goods he is parting with. No one produces anything unless he is sure the pleasure he gains by his consumption will fully compensate for the sacrifice involved in the toil. The Jevonian scheme of analysis might be employed theoretically as a defense of that organization of society for which Adam Smith pleaded, for showing that laissez faire is, from the point of view of economic welfare, the most advantageous method of organizing human efforts. Well, as a matter of fact, this type of analysis has been employed specifically toward that end. I think no one can read the Austrian writers, whose general scheme of development was very similar to Jevons', without feeling that they are interested in developing the concept of the maximum of utility largely because they thought it answered Karl Marx's socialistic critique of modern economic organization. It did seem, at least at first blush, to show that, after all, so long as we repress interference with competition we are getting what is theoretically the best possible organization of society when we leave everyone perfectly free to make his own decisions. On the other hand, of course, there have been people who have utilized this type of analysis to very different effect. One of the interesting and rather ironical developments of the next generation after Jevons was that this line of economic theorizing which the Austrians used in answer to Marx was adopted by the British Fabians as their basic economic doctrine and a new scheme of socialism, very different in character from Karl Marx's was erected on its foundation. But that is another thing we will discuss later on”.
Mitchell, Wesley C. (1949) Types of Economic Theory: From Mercantilism to Institutionalism. Joseph Dorfman (ed.), Nova York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1949, v. 2, p. 40-41.
Note: “The Lectures were taken down stenographically by a student at Columbia University, 1934-1935. Professor Mitchell has no responsibility whatever for the accuracy of the transcript”.