A Soaring Eagle: Alfred Marshall. 1842-1924.

Stanfield, James Ronald

Peter Groenewegen's biography of Marshall arrives with substantial advance praise and promise to fulfill a surprising lacuna in the history of economic thought. Groenewegen delivers in fine style with a literally encyclopedic volume. About one-sixth of the book reviews Marshall's childhood and education. Marshall undertook economics in the service of a social conscience that led him to want to master the principles of the subject matter to which so many appealed in their pessimism about the plight of the less fortunate. This search for the path of social improvement seems rather common in the Victorian age and is related at least in part to a crisis brought about by the perceived erosion of religious belief by the scientific principles of the day [pp. 113-18]. Marshall's insistence upon the historical and inductive grounding of economics reflects this emphasis on the social utility of economic analysis [p. 759].

Marshall's apprenticeship in economics in the critical years of 1867-1875 is given focused attention [ch. 6] because of its pivotal importance to the Marshall we know in economics. J.S. Mill's work is not surprisingly of great importance in Marshall's apprenticeship, but the works of Smith, Cournot, von Thunen, and other German economists were also important. Interestingly, and true to his Victorian soul, throughout his career, Marshall used summer travels to remedy quite specific deficiencies he perceived in his intellectual development [ch. 7].

Marshall's long marriage to Mary Paley Marshall was by outward appearances quite successful, if very unusual for the times. Mary Paley pursued her own career in academic economics, and yet there is a lingering suspicion that her lot was not altogether a happy one in the marriage [p. 225], especially given Marshall's mixed views on the issue of women's education and his conviction that women were intellectually inferior to men [pp. 247-49, 258 and ch. 14]. However that, it is safe to conclude that the marriage was not one of an interactive intellectual partnership; Mary Paley seems to have been very deferential to her husband on intellectual topics [p. 257].

The details on Marshall's work are somewhat scattered, not surprising since the book is not an intellectual portrait but a story of a life. Moreover, the copious detail of the book is such that only the highly specialized scholar is likely to have occasion to read it through. For others, the book is likely to be put to encyclopedic use. Happily, the book's seventy-odd page index is detailed and with a bit of creativity by the reader can be turned to effective use in this regard.

For example, the reader wanting to find Marshall's views on the probable futurity of the working classes is readily directed to the scattered pages that permit comparison of his views to those of J.S. Mill. Marshall agreed with, indeed expanded upon, Mill's optimism in this regard, and championed the advance of technology and increasing returns as well as the qualitative improvement in the psycho-cultural context of working-class life as the means toward the material and moral improvement of the masses [pp. 141, 174-75, 201, 455-56]. Marshall concurred with Mill's reticence (initially, at least, before the influence of Harriet Taylor) to advocate socialization of the means of production and seems to have accepted Mill's distinction between the principles governing economic efficiency and those governing distribution [pp. 457-59, 596]. This of course is central to the modern liberal strategy of retaining the efficiency properties of competition and private property but utilizing the state to ameliorate the inequality of the distribution of income and life chances.

It is more difficult to track down the discussion of Marshall, Say's law, Keynes, and all that. Groenewegen is apparently of the opinion that, although Marshall never said so in so many words, he was less than convinced of the significance of Say's law in the analysis of the economy. Marshall's realistic methodology and his doubts about the efficacy of the market clearing process and his emphasis on the monetary nature of the economic process are cited to support Groenewegen's view [pp. 757-58].

Groenewegen's book is extraordinary in its attention to detail and remarkably thorough in its research. It reads very well for the most part, notwithstanding the occasional difficulty in tracking down the referent of a pronoun, and is certainly amenable to a reading through by those with the interest in so doing. Again, though, I suspect that only those specialized in the history of neoclassical economic thought, the Cambridge School, or Marshall are likely to approach the book in that way. But for the rest, it should serve well as an encyclopedic tool on the context of economic thinking at a critical juncture in its development and a reminder of the importance of the human beings and their times in the development of the organon of economics. Some may wish that Marshall's economic analysis were reviewed more systematically, but as noted, this is a dedicated work of biography in the first place and of doctrinal history thereafter. There is no doubt that the book is a welcome addition to the professional literature.

James Ronald Stanfield Colorado State University