Abstract
Alfred Marshall believed that the economy matters and that economic growth matters most of all. Economic growth means human betterment — since, and allowing for the element of chaff which inevitably accompanies even the finest of wheat, growth on balance yields a rich harvest of improvements in consumption, conduct and character. Human betterment means good politics — since, and allowing for the fact that the bureaucrat by definition lacks the alertness, flair and initiative of the entrepreneur, a more enlightened and more responsible environment upgrades the ship of State and renders it capable of sailing into waters previously inaccessible to it. Good politics means human betterment — by correcting an undesirable if market-determined distribution of income and by providing a safety-net of care for those in states of dependency. Good politics means economic growth — by plugging potential leaks in the circular flow (the case of the tabular standard of value as a means of obviating the destabilising crisis) and by supplying better fuel for an upgraded vessel (the case of the provision of public goods such as education which we as a nation need and we as individuals do not adequately purchase). Human betterment means economic growth — by generating the tastes and preferences, traits and aptitudes, necessary to render steady advance self-sustaining. Economic growth means human betterment and good politics. Alfred Marshall believed that the economy matters and that economic growth matters most of all — and that economics was therefore an eminently suitable subject of study for a moralist and a missionary who was anxious to do good: ‘The dominant aim of economics in the present generation’, he insisted, ‘is to contribute to a solution of social problems.’1
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Notes and References
L. Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932), p. 16.
N. Senior, An Outline of the Science of Political Economy (1836) (London: George Allen amp; Unwin, Ltd., 1938), p. 6.
J. R. McCulloch, Principles of Political Economy (London: Longman and Co., 1825), p. 1.
J. B. Say, Traité d’Economie Politique (Paris: Deterville, 1803), p. i.
L. E. Fouraker, ‘The Cambridge Didactic Style (A. Marshall and J. M. Keynes)’, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 66, 1958. In Wood t, p. 276.
J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 838.
K. E. Boulding, Evolutionary Economics (London: Sage Publications, 1981), p. 17.
J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Money (1930) (London: Macmillan, 1960), Vol. n, p. 406.
A. C. Pigou, Economic Science in Relation to Practice (An Inaugural Lecture given at Cambridge, 30 October 1908) (London: Macmillan, 1908), pp. 12–13.
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© 1987 David Reisman
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Reisman, D. (1987). Progress, Politics and Economics. In: Alfred Marshall. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09313-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09313-7_7
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