Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T20:52:45.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Man in the Garden of Eden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Craufurd D. Goodwin
Craufurd D. Goodwin
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Duke University, Box 90097, Durham, NC, 27708–0097.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It has always been a puzzle why nineteenth century political economists were quite so gloomy. Why did they picture economic actors as motivated so single-mindedly by self-interest? Why did they see ahead the negative effects of diminishing returns, especially falling profit rates and rising rent shares, while all around them the evidence was pointing in the other direction? Why did they go on about the stationary state at a time when technical change was everywhere the norm? This gloom was hardly foreshadowed by the eighteenth century founders of political economy—Hume, Smith, and the Physiocrats (although for a contrary view see Robert Heilbroner 1973). It seems to have begun with Malthus and Ricardo, but it remained strong in the marginalist economists as well. Alfred Marshall and his followers rested their case for the necessity of careful marginal allocation of resources, and the intolerability of the costs imposed by trade unions and other rent seekers, on the ground that there were just not enough goods and services to go around. The notion of scarcity legitimized gloom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 405 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © The History of Economics Society 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Brennan, H. Geoffrey and Waterman, A.M.C.. 1994. Economics and Religion: Are they Distinct? Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Clive. 1928. Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.Google Scholar
Desmond, Adrian. 1997. Huxley. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.Google Scholar
Dostaler, Gilles and Maris, Bernard. 2000. “Dr. Freud and Mr. Keynes on Money and Capitalism.” In Smithin, John, ed., What is Money? London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Forster, Edward Morgan. 1907. The Longest Journey. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1922.Google Scholar
Forster, Edward Morgan. 1910. Howards End. New York: Bantam, 1985.Google Scholar
Forster, Edward Morgan. 1928. The Collected Tales of E. M. Forster. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1928. The Future of an Illusion. New York: Liveright, 1955.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1930. Civilization and its Discontents. London: Hogarth Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Fry, Roger. Papers. Modern Archives Centre, King's College, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1902. “Art and Religion.” Living Age, 06 14, pp. 650–58.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1924. The Artist and Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1928. “The Garden of Eden.” Nation and Athenaeum, 06 16, p. 422.Google Scholar
Garnett, David. 1964. Two by Two. New York: Athenaeum.Google Scholar
Gladstone, William Ewart. 1838. The State in its Relations with the Church. London: John Murray, 1839.Google Scholar
Gladstone, William Ewart. 1896. The Creation Story. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Craufurd. 1998. Art and the Market: Roger Fry on Commerce in Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heilbroner, Robert. 1973. “The Paradox of Progress: Decline and Decay in the Wealth of Nations.” Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (04–06): 243–62.Google Scholar
Holroyd, Michael. 1968. Lytton Strachey: The Years of Achievement (1910–1932). London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
n.d., Holy Bible (The Authorized King James Version). Cleveland: World.Google Scholar
Huxley, Thomas H. 1896. Science and Christian Tradition. New York: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1936. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan, 1947.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1971. A Treatise on Money, Volumes V and VI of the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1972a. Essays in Biography, Volume X of the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1972b. Essays in Persuasion, Volume IX of the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes). London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Meisel, Perry and Kendrick, Walter. 1985. Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey 1924–1925. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Shone, Richard. 1993. Bloomsbury Portraits. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam. 1776. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols., edited by Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S.. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976.Google Scholar
Spalding, Frances. 1997. Duncan Grant. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Sutton, Denys, ed. 1972. Letters of Roger Fry, 2 vols. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Strachey, Lytton. 1918. n.d. Eminent Victorians. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.Google Scholar
Tate, Gallery. 1987. Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1984–86.Google Scholar
Woolf, Leonard. 1935. Quack, Quack! New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Woolf, Leonard. 1953. Principia Politica. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. 1933. Flush: A Biography. London: Hogarth Press, 1968.Google Scholar