Marshall’s ‘Economic Biology’

Abstract

In the previous chapter it was shown that Alfred Marshall had assembled, in a publishable form, a partial equilibrium-based theory of value and distribution well over a decade prior to the appearance of his Principles. While the absence of a major publication can be attributed in part to a number of circumstances that diminished the time Marshall had available to writing, the most critical factor that impeded the publication of Marshall’s work was his perception that the ‘isolated apparatus’ being assembled was not capable, in its existing form, of interrogating the facts in a manner that would provide useful insights into the issues that attracted him to the study of political economy. Static equilibrium analysis, taken from the ‘mathematical-physical sciences’, was seen to be isolated from reality because of its inability to incorporate history and therefore the changing inner character and outward institutions of ‘man’. In his inaugural lecture, Marshall (1885b) clearly subscribed to the view that biological speculations, founded on the perception of ‘organic growth’, provided the vehicle through which life could be breathed into his theoretical apparatus.¹ In such a setting, history replaces the unchanging world depicted by static equilibrium, and the potential for change and progress can be contemplated.