On the Capital Controversies as a Choice of Paradigms

In economics, the conventional (also called neoclassical or marginalist) theory is characterised as a framework based on demand and supply functions to explain prices, exchanged/produced quantities and remuneration rates of productive factors. This theory had to face a huge opposition during the 1950s and 1960s, during the Capital Debates or Cambridge-Cambridge Controversies (CCC). This chapter studies how the CCC arose and evolved, as well as how they apparently came to an end in the 1960s and have now been forgotten. To this end, our research makes use of Thomas S. Kuhn’s characterisation of the history of scientific thought, by presenting the debate as a real choice between paradigms. We shall see how answers to the question of why the CCC did not lead to a Scientific Revolution that would bring about the demise of the neoclassical hegemony in economic theory fall outside the logical rigour of the competing theories and reflect the inherent circularity of the communication between different economic paradigms.