Cambridge and Development Economics

Shachi Amdekar and Ajit Singh

Introduction: Classical Political Economy and the Early Influences on Development Economics

In painting a backdrop for the emergence of ideas related to development economics, it is useful to briefly consider pre-classical and classical notions of human progress, though these will not be explored in depth in this chapter. The ‘developmentalist’ tradition, as Ha-Joon Chang (2014) describes, is not a school of thought per se; it was no such unified movement with core ideas, defined founders, or any specific population of following. Rather it was ‘dispersed, with multiple sources of inspiration and with a complicated intellectual lineage’ (ibid.: 113), including physiocratic ideology. Debate and discussion on moral philosophy was at its height during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in an enlightened Western Europe,

The authors are grateful to Dr Shailaja Fennell for her helpful comments and advice.

S. Amdekar (h)

Doctoral student, Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, UK e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

A. Singh

Formerly Emeritus Professor of Economics, Faculty of Economics,

University of Cambridge, UK © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

R.A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_4

and the influence of science and reason over a staunchly Catholic society was paving the way for increasingly self-determined possibilities for superlative, infinite, and perfect human progress. The doctrine of human perfectibility was an ideal since Antiquity and hugely influenced by the Aristotelian-Augustinian heritage (a conflicting, often chaotic set of ideas of infinite human progress and the inevitable Armageddon). Nevertheless, French, English, and German moral philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were inspired by the movement in emphasis from Catholic, obedientiary perfectibility (perfect submission to a deity) towards technical perfectibility (maximum efficiency in specialised tasks) and teleological perfectibility (perfect attainment, thus creating perfect human satisfaction) (Passmore 1969).¹

In 1794, with the publication of his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, Condorcet (like the British theorist, William Godwin, both of whom Malthus famously rebuts in his An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)) made open and unfettered claims for mankind’s absolute perfectibility.^{[1] [2]} However, a more pessimistic (Malthusian or ‘dismal’) tradition of developmentalist ideas came in the form of Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778),^[3] whose early discourses are concerned with inequality and whether this phenomenon arises under ‘natural laws’ (Rousseau 1755 [1992]). David Hume came to share Rousseau’s views on the limits of natural progress and perfectibility. Together they sowed the seeds of what was to become the ‘Order of Progress’, emphasising the necessity of technology, science, and social organisation in manipulating nature to attain something better or optimal if not akin to perfectibility.

Though not a Cambridge man, another important later thinker who greatly influenced the analysis of economic, political, and social phenomena was Karl

Marx. Marx’s work, which combined early ideas on social progress in classical political economy with the evolution of capitalism, has been an important influence on the Cambridge School over the years. This was particularly the case with respect to the Cambridge controversies in capital theory in the 1950s to the 1970s (Cohen and Harcourt 2003). Marx tied together the idea of perfecting human society and inclusive material well-being with class structures endogenously formed within society itself. He describes this phenomenon in the following terms: ‘Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration’ (Marx 1867: 586). Marx also observed in relation to the forces of competition that these ‘act as external coercive laws for the individual capitalist, which compel him to keep his capital to preserve it. But he cannot, except by progressive accumulation’ (ibid.: 555). Hence the basic law of capitalism is described, ‘accumulate accumulate, that is Moses and the Prophets’ (ibid.: 652). Within the Cambridge controversies over capital growth theory, equilibrium theory, and ideology in modelling, the Cambridge School cited Marxian influences. For instance, the meaning of capital—and as a corollary the means of measuring its accumulation—was argued by the English ‘Cantabrigians’ to lie in the analysis of capitalist classes.

It is against this backdrop—this swarm of interlocking ideas on the prospect of mankind’s progress, future perfectibility, and measurement of this perfectibility—that we trace how Cambridge theorists influenced ideas on the nature of development economics. In this light, we might consider development economics from its very foundations in the doctrine of human perfectibility as an instinctively appealing aspect ofwhat was to become political economy. This chapter is, in some respects, a prequel of the conventional post-war narrative on development economics, as it is commonly known today. It cannot claim to include all those Cambridge men and women who contributed to the evolution of development economics. However, it focuses specifically on how this story drew in Cambridge academics and how this influenced the origin and elaboration of some of the defining motivations, methods, and ideas of development economics in early political economy. We follow the Malthusian trail of multidisciplinary thinking from its informal origins and motivations in responding to Christian doctrines of human perfectibility (the idea that human society can be improved and perfected) and post-Enlightenment ideas of optimising (not perfecting) human welfare. We go on to describe the Marshallian ideal of economics as a subject for the betterment of social ills, and how this paved the way for the eventual establishment of the profession of economics at Cambridge. This approach depicts a positive and rich contribution from the Cambridge tradition to the evolution of development economics from traditional ideas concerning the economic, sociocultural, and political study of human progress.^[4]

• [1] For instance, Fontenelle found influence upon the publication of his Digression sur les Anciens et lesModernes (1688) in which he highlighted the controversial possibility of infinite growth, by the accumulation of intergenerational knowledge of mankind, and the ability, therefore, to amass human capital. Inpublishing Theodicee (1710), Leibniz was noted for his idea of universal perfectibility and plenitudewithin a pre-established divine equilibrium of harmony. The work of the likes of Buffon took a decidedlyWestern, and immediately colonial view of human progress, creating a ‘white man’s burden’ in calling theEuropean the pioneer of civilisation and superiority.
• [2] Condorcet refers to human well-being as a function of the problems of seasonal subsistence and thelimited ‘means of satisfying his wants’ (Condorcet 1794 [1955]), although he divides progress into tenepochs of technological history which permit adjustment to the prevailing ideas and preserve equal andperfect growth (Rist 2008: 3). In his work Political Justice (1793), Godwin asserted that a thriving humanpopulation measures perfect conditions, citing intellectual capacities as a distraction from reproductivecapacities when facing population pressures.
• [3] Rousseau spent some years in exile in Staffordshire, under the protection of Scottish philosopher DavidHume (in turn a close companion of Daniel Malthus, father of Thomas Robert).
• [4] Including all abstract ideals of material well-being, progress, economic growth, social justice, personalgrowth, ecological equilibrium, capabilities, dignity and fulfilment, political independence, democracyand political participation, and opportunity (Sen 1999).