Wicksteed and the Subjectivism of Cost

It was in regard to the role of costs in the theory of economic value that Wicksteed saw himself as most clearly departing from the Marshallian orthodoxy of his British contemporaries. He saw that orthodoxy paying lip-service to the marginal utility theory introduced by Jevons, but refusing to recognize the full implications of this theory for the final rejection of the classical cost theory of value.

Wicksteed rebelled against a view of production activity which sees it as a matter of strictly technical relationships, entirely distinct from the marginal-utility considerations governing consumption activity.

It was the confusion arising from this Marshallian view which was responsible for the residual classical idea that market price is in some sense the outcome of a balancing of an (objective) cost of production with (subjective) marginal utility.

--Israel M. Kirzner, "Philip Wicksteed: The British Austrian," in The Great Austrian Economists, ed. Randall G. Holcombe (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), 106.