Henry Dunning Macleod

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Macleod, Henry Dunning

 

Born Mar. 31, 1821, in Edinburgh; died July 16, 1902, in Southall, Middlesex. British economist and lawyer. Joined the bar in 1849. Director of the Royal Bank (until 1858). Helped draw up credit legislation (1868-70).

In the opinion of Karl Marx, Macleod’s viewpoint was that of an inexpressibly narrow-minded bank clerk (see K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 24, p. 256). Political economy, in Macleod’s view, was the study of exchange, and he therefore dealt with economics from the standpoint of exchange theory. He rejected the labor theory of value and reduced the exchange value of commodities to the question of the purchaser’s estimation of their use values. Macleod identified credit with money and money with capital, in an attempt to conceal the true source of capital—surplus value.

WORKS

The Elements of Political Economy. London, 1858.
Of the Definition and Nature of the Science of Political Economy. Cambridge, 1862.
The Elements of Economics, vols. 1-2. London, 1881-86.
In Russian translation:
Osnovaniia politicheskoi ekonomii. St. Petersburg, 1865.

REFERENCES

Marx, K., and F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 23, pp. 71, 165.

V. S. AFANAS’EV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.