Michael Perelman quoted the following passage from Marshall's *The Economics
of Industry*:
>The Economics of Industry (1879), p. 2: "The
> nation used to be called 'the Body Politic'. So long as this phrase was in
> common use, men thought of the interests of the whole nation when they used
> the
> word 'Political'; and then 'Political Economy' served well enough as a name
> for
> the science. But now 'political interests' generally mean the interests of
> only
> some part or parts of the nation; so it seems best to drop the name 'Political
> Economy', and to speak simply of {italics} ”Economic Science•, or more
> shortly,
> ”Economics•".
As this passage itself indicates, Marshall did not intend by this change to
give "economics" the meaning it currently has. His intent was to retain the
older meaning of "political economy" as a "moral science".
Marshall's relation to "neo-classical economics" understood as "Benthamite
economics" is very complex.
He was a very serious and perceptive student not only of Marx but of Kant
and Hegel. Hegel, for instance, is mentioned as one of the two main
influences (the other is Herbert Spencer) on the "substance of the views
expressed in" the *Principles* (Preface). In his essay on Marshall, Keynes
quotes him as having once said of Kant "'Kant my guide the only man I ever
worshipped" and as having pointed to Hegel's *Philosophy of History* as a
key influence "finally determining the course of his life". (Keynes,
Collected Writings, vol. X, p. 172)
These influences show up in a number of essential ways in Marshall's
economics. For instance, Marshall takes a "dialectical" view of social
interdependence. This underpins his conception of "caeteris paribus" and
his use of the term "normal".
Keynes points to this In his essay (see particularly pp. 185-7 and 196-7)
It was, he claims, the basis of Marshall's distinction "between the objects
and methods of the mathematical sciences and those of the social sciences"
(p. 197) and constituted "the profundity of his [Marshall's] insight into
the true character of his subject in its highest and most useful
developments" (p. 188).
Another illustration of this influence, an illustration connected to this
first one, is Marshall's Marxist treatment of labour in capitalism as
"alienated" labour and his view that those who do it would be able, if the
conditions of their labour were appropriately transformed, to develop into
what Marx (following Hegel) called "universally developed individuals".
These ideas are rooted in a theory of ethics (taken over from Kant and
Hegel) which treats values as objective and knowable and, on this basis,
treats the human "will" as potentially, to use Hegel's language, a "will
proper" and a "universal will" i.e. as a will whose content, unlike the
content of other animal wills, in ultimately fully open to
self-determination by reason. (A "will proper" is a will fully open to
self-determination; a "universal will" is a will whose content derives
entirely from knowledge of the good reached through reason.)
Here are passages in which Marshall treats capitalist labour as alienated
labour:
"man ought to work in order to live, his life, physical, moral, and mental,
should be strengthened and made full by his work. But what if his inner
life be almost crushed by his work? Is there not then suggested a terrible
truth by the term working man, when applied to the unskilled labourer a
man whose occupation tends in a greater or less degree to make him live for
little save for that work that is a burden to bear?" (Marshall, *Memorials
of Alfred Marshall*, p. 108)
"in the world's history there has been no waste product, so much more
important than all others, that it has a right to be called THE Waste
Product. It is the higher abilities of many of the working classes; the
latent, the undeveloped, the choked-up and wasted faculties for higher work,
that for lack of opportunity have come to nothing." (*Memorials*, p. 229)
In another essay, "The Future of the Working Classes" (Memorials pp.
109-118), he sets out the conditions which would be required for all persons
to develop into "gentlemen" (his term for Marx's idea of the "universally
developed individual" - a term suggestive of the fact that, in contrast to
Marx, Marshall's version of the idea was not free of sexism).
The reason Marshall gives for the change of name from "political economy" to
"economics" is consistent with all this and indicates as well his wish to
retain the meaning which Aristotle had given to the rational form of
acquisition. Economics was to be understood as a "moral science" concerned
with the "health" of "the body Politic". Its object was to insure the
provision to all members of the community of the material means of a "good
life" and, as part of this, to investigate how to organize this provision
(organize what Marx calls the "realm of necessity") so as to make the work
required to accomplish it compatible with the ultimate end.
This required, for instance, that work in the realm of necessity not be
alienated labour, that it be work which both developed and required
universal capacities. It also required that it take up a minimal amount of
time so as to maximize the time available for "the realm of freedom" where
activities were ends-in-themselves rather than means, i.e. where they were
"art" in Kant's sense of "production through freedom, i.e. through a will
that places reason at the basis of its actions" (*Critique of Judgment*, p.
145).
Keynes was also insistent that economics was a "moral science" in this sense
having as its concern the health of the body Politic (see, e.g., Collected
Writings, vol. XIV, pp. 297 and 300). This is the meaning of his claim that
in an ideal world organized on the basis of "the most sure and certain
principles of religion and traditional virtue" (IX, p. 330), economists
would be "humble, competent people, on a level with dentists".
"But, chiefly, do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic
problem, or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater
and more permanent significance. It should be a matter for specialists -
like dentistry. If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as
a humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be
splendid!" (IX, p. 332)
As was true of other changes Marshall made to language, the change from
"political economy" to "economics" was, I suspect, a response to Marx.
Specifically it was a response to Marx's treatment of "political economists"
as "representing their [capitalists'] *scientific* screed and form of
existence".
Marshall's substitution of the word "waiting" for the word "abstinence" is
likely another example of such a change. He was responding to the ridicule
Marx heaped on Senior's substitution of the latter word for the word
"capital". Marx had called this "an unparalleled example of the discoveries
of vulgar economics!" Capital, vol. 1, p. 744
Here too the influence of Hegel is present. In the *Phenomenology of Mind*
it is the "waiting" forced on the slave that leads to the positive
development of human consciousness that finds expression in the use of
tools. Keynes would later point to the pathology involved in the capitalist
version of "waiting" - jam tomorrow and never jam today - and reject
Marshall's attempt to use it to explain and justify interest.
Ted Winslow
--
Ted Winslow E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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