Principles of Economics, Book 5: General Relations of Demand, Supply and Value

Alfred Marshall lived from 1842 to 1924 and was a professor of political economy at Cambridge. His Principles of Economics, first published in 1890, was a landmark of the discipline. He began writing it in 1881 and spent much of the next decade at work on it. His plan gradually extended to a two-volume survey of the whole of economic thought, though in the end the first volume was the only one he completed. The book went through many editions, and the one recorded here is dated 1920.

Book 5, which is heard in this recording, is often considered the heart of the work. It gathers the main ideas of price theory: how demand and supply interact, how markets move toward equilibrium, and how time changes the answer. Marshall’s famous image of supply and demand as the two blades of a pair of scissors comes from this part of his thinking. He also pays attention to the question of what costs really are, and to how individual choices add up to larger patterns.

The recording consists of 15 chapters and lasts about seven hours. The reading is shared by eight LibriVox volunteers. It is not a light listen, but Marshall’s prose is more accessible than that of many modern textbooks, and he avoids unnecessary technicality. For those who wish to understand where much of today’s economic thinking began, this is a good place to start, and a useful way to hear how the subject was explained at the turn of the twentieth century. The chapters build on each other, from the basic idea of a market to the more subtle questions about time and cost. It is a book that rewards a slow listen, and one that helps explain why Marshall’s name is still known to everyone who studies economics today.