Mill’S Affirmation of the Classical Wage Fund Doctrine

Commentaries on Mill's¹ recantation have variously and loosely interpreted his retraction within an institutional context (Kurer, 1993), as a tract on policy reform (Schwartz, 1972, esp. pp. 68–69, 90–101; West and Hafer, 1978, 1981), as a calculated political act (Forget, 1992), as part of a scientific research programme (Vint, 1994, esp. pp. 1–7, 212–248), or as broadly revisionist (Hollander, 1968a, 1984, 1985, pp. 262–263, 409–417; Ekelund, 1976, 1985; Ekelund and Kordmeier, 1981; Negishi, 1985a, 1985b). Although these writers differ on many points of detail, they all agree that Mill explicitly and unconditionally abandoned the wage fund doctrine. What is striking here is that the ‘recantation interpretation’ has gone entirely unchallenged by historians of economics. In this paper we challenge received opinion on this point and argue that Mill in fact affirmed the doctrine in his Fortnightly Review article.