The Professionalisation of Economics and ‘Marshall’s Theory’

Discussion in the previous two chapters supports Samuelson’s (1967) claim that the Marshallian cost controversies were largely concerned with ‘completing the negative task of getting Marshall out of the way’. The cost controversies had demonstrated how extensively the Marshallians had diverged from Marshall’s economics, a process that had clearly begun before the ‘turmoil’ of the 1920s. The theoretical difficulties being debated had arisen largely from the attempts that had been made to imprison Marshall’s insights within an equilibrium framework so as to make them more amenable to pure theory devoid of the qualifications and ‘ambiguities’ that clouded the exposition of Marshall’s Principles. Marshall’s ‘handy tools’ were extracted and used to assemble a framework that carried Marshall’s authority but which dismissed much of the substance of his work. In getting Marshall ‘out of the way’, mainstream economics had completely abandoned the economic biology ‘Mecca’, and instead embraced the mechanical world of static equilibrium analysis. The question as to why the Marshallian disciples had departed so markedly from their prophet in terms of theoretical content and methodology is considered in this chapter.