Provincializing economics: Jevons, Marshall and the colonial imaginaries of free trade

Abstract

Contemporary economics speaks about trade in the familiar abstractions of comparative advantage, tracing the modern formulation of the case for free trade made in terms of welfare maximization to late-Victorian economists like W. Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. Though Jevons and Marshall did formalize theories that treat countries as if they are abstract individuals, a closer reading suggests that their thinking on trade was informed by colonial imaginaries of civilization and race. The economics invented by Jevons and Marshall manages claims about human sameness and difference in a particularly colonial fashion. They both slide readily and uncertainly between the idea that parts of humanity are permanently lesser races and explaining lesser humans as simply developmentally backward. The latter might achieve full physiological and moral humanity over time through the improvements (and attendant but necessary suffering) administered by Empire via market competition. They sometimes point to a common set of desires and calculating capacities, but never so decisively as contemporary economics. Jevons takes these commonalities as the basis of a quantitative science of economics, but doubts their empirical universality. Marshall sees these traits as distinctively modern and achieved only via the rise of modern institutions. By contrast, contemporary economics insists on the universality of these traits, claiming for economics a distinctive “analytical egalitarianism.” But difference is only defined away by fiat in contemporary textbooks and where difference arises, as in the problem of uneven development, the colonial impulse of economics remains. The connection to Jevons’ and Marshall’s own colonial management of difference becomes sharply visible. To return to Jevons and Marshall allows us to provincialize economics.

Keywords:

• Marshall
• Jevons
• international trade
• empire
• race
• neoclassical economics

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Matthew Watson, Eric Helleiner, Mat Patterson, Richard Drayton, Aggie Hirst, Duncan Bell, Duncan Kelly, Alex Callinicos, Randall Germain, and three anonymous reviewers for their very insightful comments on various iterations of this paper. Very helpful discussions followed presentations at the University of Manchester, Warwick University, Sheffield University, Cambridge University, and King’s College.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Along with Léon Walras and Carl Menger.

2 See Dunkley (2004, pp. 36–37). The most assigned introductory text in the U.S., Mankiw’s Principles of Economics (2012, p. 49–60), treats international trade precisely on the model of any exchange relationship, where a division of labor emerges as the result of the decisions of autonomous units, whether individuals or states. Here, exchange is the only social relationship.

3 Cohen (2008, pp. 4, 18) describes the work in liberal IPE as rooted in the “partial equilibrium” analysis developed by Alfred Marshall.

4 In a similar vein, Frank Trentmann (1998, pp. 218 and 219, 233 and 234, 2008, pp. 11–13) condemns liberal IPE’s reliance on “economistic arguments” that explain in the language of “interests” why citizens as rational actors will favor free trade and why bargaining among rational states will create free trade regimes.

5 It is no stretch to think of the two countries that have played this functional role precisely in terms of empire and structural domination. The “world market of the free traders” emerges out of British military victories that allow it to subsume earlier mercantile economies into a system with its industrial production at the center; “forcible conquest” more than the seductions of mutual gains secured by Britain’s institutional commitments explain the free trade regime of the 19^th century (Skidelsky, 1976, pp. 150–157). Formal empire may be all but finished, but “imperialism remains embedded in the structures and ideology of the current global order (Bell, 2016, p. 107, 196-203).

6 In a letter to Walras on 12 May, 1874, Jevons (1886, 303) states the basis of his “theory” in exactly these terms.

7 Jevons’ and Marshall’s role in establishing a science and distinct discipline of economics is well recognized though the details are much debated (see Maloney, 1985; Mirowski, 1990; Steedman, 1997; Mosselmans, 2007). A recent recounting of the creation myth of IPE turns on the idea that economists, with Marshall named in particular, effectively segregated economics from politics (Cohen, 2008, p. 18).

8 Helpful biographies of Jevons include Mosselmans (2007), Schabas (1990), Maas (2005), and Black (1981), who is responsible for compiling Jevons’ papers and correspondence.

9 In the same (1869) address, he points to the negative effects of tariffs and suggests that unemployment and poverty have their solution not in protectionism, but in internal social reform (Jevons, 1883, p. 112, 114 and 115). See also Jevons (1876, p. 617).

10 Jevons’ contribution in The Coal Question involves providing a “properly economic analysis of fossil fuels, emancipated both from geology and engineering.” Here, the issue is not “physical depletion” or technical possibilities but “economic scarcity” measured by price (Missemer, 2018, p. 2-3).

11 See, for example, the spirited defense of heredity as an explanation for inequality in Mankiw (2013) and the general character of liberal justifications of inequality (Inayatullah & Blaney, 2015 and 2016).

12 I recommend biographies by Reisman (1990), Cook (2009) and Hart (2012).

13 Principles went thru 8 editions between 1890 and 1920, replacing Mill’s Principles of Political Economy as the standard text for teaching economics in England until displaced by the work of his protégé Keynes

14 As in his early The Pure Theory of International Trade (1879).

15 Marshall (2003, p. 233 and 234) adds additional simplifying assumptions – the ease of transport, easily convertible but national currencies, and the narrow range of goods handled by each merchant – so as to make transactions frictionless.

16 Earlier, Marshall (1890, pp. 615–618) chastises economists who fail to distinguish the different industrial positions of countries in assessing trade policies. His own acceptance of the infant industry argument is much noted (see Reisman, 1987, p. 241; Jha, 1973, p. 31). His stance accords closely with Dunkley’s account of “orthodox” exceptions to free trade (Dunkley, 1997, pp. 111–114).

17 Jevons (1905a, p. 48) condemned slavery and forced labor. He grew up in a family with strong anti-slavery views though obviously co-existing with racialized social evolutionary notions.

18 In 1903, along with other prominent economists, Marshall signed a letter to The Times opposing tariff-reform proposals designed to raise revenue and favor English trade with its colonies. Soon after, Marshall was asked by a private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to draft a memorandum on the fiscal implications of the proposals to impose customs duties. Marshall’s memo is considered by some as one of the greatest examples of economic policy analysis (Wood, 1980, p. 482fn 4).

19 Marshall and Jevons rightly come in for criticism as proponents of theories of “racial heterogeneity” (Peart & Levy, 2007, pp. 123, 130–136).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David L. Blaney

David L. Blaney, is the Mitau Professor of Political Science, Macalester College (USA). With Naeem Inayatullah, he authored International Relations and the Problem of Difference (2004), Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism (2010), and Within, Against, and Beyond Liberalism: A Critique of Liberal IPE and Global Capitalism (forthcoming). Their next book is on the idea of exploitation.