The Desirability of Economic Development

Abstract

I have now touched, if only in a very superficial way, upon the main historical answers to what I have called the why — as distinct from the how — questions concerning economic development; questions relating to population, accumulation, education and knowledge, organisation and money; and at this point, therefore, the exposition could perhaps stop. Before quitting the subject, however, it may be interesting to survey — even more superficially than in the preceding lectures — various historically important attitudes on the desirability of economic development. Granted that development is possible, is it worthwhile ? Or to put the question in a more reasonable manner — which has seldom been the case in the more conspicuous historic discussions — how has development to be valued at the margin in comparison with other ends ? This plainly takes us far outside the bounds of analytical economics as it is usually, and in my judgment, properly, conceived. But, as I once said in an early essay which has given rise to much misunderstanding ‘our methodological axioms involve no prohibition of outside interests.’¹ We may therefore proceed without bad conscience to investigate tentatively the history of the answers to one of the main questions of political economy in the wide, non-strictly scientific sense of that term.