AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION cernible "revolutions"' that occurred in cant counter-revolution in the develop- the late 1920 s and in the 1930's. One was ment of our subject. In venturing this the imperfect-monopolistic competition judgment, however, I should note that the revolution, which challenged the validity disrepute into which the theories of imper- of the assumption of perfect competition fect and monopolistic competition have built following the marginalist revolution, trial competition, in the period since the and particularly the conclusions about the second world war could be described as elfare effects of competition to which the result of an intellectual counter-revo- that theory led. This revolution has more lution, based on a combination of faith in or less fizzled out, though its fossilized the preexisting theory of competition and remnants continue to plague both students devotion to the empirical revolution; and and their instructors in elementary also that, if one is prepared to disregard courses. Another was the empirical or the political labels that people choose to econometric revolution, with its insistence attach to themselves, the left-wing student initially on the measurement of economic and faculty demand for a politically and relationships and, subsequently and more socially relevant"radical"economics and ambitiously, on the testing of economic protest against emphasis on mathematical hypotheses-though the "testing of hy- and econometric quantification can be potheses "is frequently merely a euphe- classed as counter-revolutionary, inas- mism for obtaining plausible numbers to much as it seeks to revert to the pre-mar provide ceremonial adequacy for a theory ginalist-revolution concern with the eco- The third was the general equilibrium rev- among social classes. olution, based on the introduction by As i have already mentioned, the chief Hicks and Allen of the continental Walra- problem in identifying revolutions and sian-Paretoan approach into the anglo- counter-revolutions and distinguishing Saxon tradition in replacement of the them from slower and more comprehensi then-dominant Marshallian partial-equi- ble and rational processes of change in librium approach. Finally, and most economic thought is to arrive at a judg sweeping in its effects, there was the ment of the relative speed of change and Keynesian Revolution in monetary the- the degree to which the speed is justifi able. From this point of view, some of By contrast with the abundance of rev- what i have just now described as revolu olutions, counter-revolutions are hard to tions were not really revolutionary-no- find in the development of economic tably the Smithian and marginalist revolu thought. About the closest one can come tions, the imperfect-monopolistic compe- to a counter-revolution in the history of tition revolution, and the general equilib economic thought is to interpret the devel- rium and empirical revolutions. The Smith- opment of the Austrian theory of value as ian and marginalist revolutions spread a counter-revolution against the socialist, relatively slowly, through the force of and especially the Marxist, tradition of their scientific superiority and intellectual economic theorizing; and that aspect of appeal and the process of natural wastage the work of the Austrian school was a side of their opponents. The imperfect-mon issue in the marginalist revolution. The opolistic competition revolution was the d result of puzzling by inds porary times is probably the first signifi- a problem that Marshall had stated but