John Bates Clark (January 26, 1847 – March 21, 1938) was an American neoclassical economist. He was one of the pioneers of the marginalist revolution and opponent to the Institutionalist school of economics, and spent most of his career as professor at Columbia University. Biography Clark was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from Amherst College, in Massachusetts, at the age of 25. From 1872 to 1875, he attended the University of Zurich and the University of Heidelberg where he studied under Karl Knies (a leader of the German Historical School). He taught as a professor of economics at Carleton College from 1875 to 1881 before moving east to teach at Smith College. He subsequently taught at Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University, and Columbia University. Early in his career Clark's writings reflected his German Socialist background and showed him as a critic of capitalism. During his time as a professor at Columbia University however, his views gradually shifted to support of capitalism and he later became known as a leading advocate of the capitalist system. Theoretical work After his return, from 1877 onward, Clark published several articles most of them edited later in The Philosophy of Wealth (1886). There he formulated an original version of marginal utility theory, principle already published by Jevons (1871), Menger (1871), and Walras (1878). Until 1886 Clark was a Christian socialist reflecting the view of his German teachers that competition is no universal remedy – especially not for fixing wages. Clark writes: It is a dangerous mistake to extol competition, as such too highly, and regard all attacks upon it as revolutionary. … We do not eat men … but we do it by such indirect and refined methods that it does not generally occur to us that we are cannibals. He hoped that communism could be combatted by suppression and reform: Among the adherents of Communism there is a large element that is simply murderous, and this deserves only the murderer's fate. ... It is possible that an indefinitely large proportion of declared communists in this country may be of worthless or criminal character. According to Clark only if "...the union of capital necessitates the union of labour" just wages will come about and may be fixed by arbitration. This view on fair wages changed in 1886: "Clark himself, it will be remembered has song down the doom of competition in