Fred M. Taylor

Who was Fred M. Taylor?

Fred Manville Taylor was a U.S. economist and educator best known for his contribution to the theory of market socialism. He taught mostly history at Albion College from 1879 to 1892. He taught in the department of economics at University of Michigan from 1892 to 1929 after receiving his Ph.D. in political philosophy there in 1888. His Principles of Economics went through 9 editions. Of a libertarian ideology, he was noted as a clear and rigorous expositor of economic theory in the partial-equilibrium lineage of Alfred Marshall.

In his American Economic Association presidential address, Taylor laid out the conditions under which a socialist economy could in theory achieve an efficient allocation of resources. The conditions parallel those of a private-enterprise economy. They include the state providing money income to its citizens, citizens using their income as they choose to buy output produced by state enterprises, and the state setting prices equal to marginal cost so as to compensate factors of production, including labor, with prices set by trial-and-error to clear markets.