It excludes the activities of socially undesirable and abnormal persons like thieves, misers, etc. Thus, economics is concerned with the economic aspects of social life. It “is a study of men as they live and move and think in the ordinary business of life.” Or, as Marshall put it: It “deals with his efforts to satisfy his wants, in so far as the efforts and wants are capable of being measured in terms of wealth or its general representative, i.e. It is related to his wealth-getting and wealth-using activities. First, economics is concerned with man’s ordinary business of life. Thus it is on the one side a study of wealth and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.”Ĭertain logical inferences can be drawn from Marshall’s definition. Wealth was regarded as the source of human welfare, not an end in itself but a means to an end.Īccording to Marshall “Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life it examines that part of individual and social action which is most closely connected with the attainment and with the use of the material requisites of well-being. Marshall laid emphasis on man and his welfare. It was, however, the neo-classical school led by Alfred Marshall which gave economics a respectable place among social sciences. The Neo-Classical View: Marshall’s Definition : Moreover, as pointed out by Macfie the “fatal word ‘material’ is probably more responsible for the ignorant slanders on the ‘dismal science’ than any other description.” By stressing on the word ‘material wealth,’ the classical economists narrowed the scope of economics by excluding all economic activities which are related to the production of non-material goods and services, such as of doctors, teachers, etc. Wealth was considered to be end in itself. The main drawback in wealth definition of economics had been its undue emphasis on wealth-producing activities. Edge-worth regarded it as “dealing with the lower elements of human nature.” Bailey called it “a mean, degrading, sordid inquiry.” To Carlyle it was a “pig-science.” Ruskin lamented in the Preface to his Unto the Last that economists were in ”an entirely damned state of soul.” Even economists like Jevons and Edge-worth were despaired of this wealth-oriented conception of economics. This led economics to be branded as the science of Mammonism, of bread and butter, a dismal science, the science of getting rich. Following Smith and Say, the Earl of Lauderdale (1804) and McCulloch (1827) regarded economics as related to material wealth, wealth being “the object of man’s desires.” In an age when religious sentiments ran high, this conception of economics was interpreted as concerning only the acquisition of riches or money. This conception of economics as a science of wealth laid exclusive stress on material wealth. The classical view was misleading and had serious defects. Price declared in 1878 that “all are agreed that it is concerned with wealth.” Its Criticisms: Cairnes, “Political Economy is a science…it deals with the phenomena of wealth.” While B. Mill, “Writers on Political Economy profess to teach the nature of wealth and the laws which govern its production, distribution and exchange.” To J.E. Walker in America, “Economics is that body of knowledge which relates to wealth.” According to J.S. Say in France defined economics as “the study of the laws which govern wealth ” to Nassau Senior at Oxford, “the subject treated by political economists…is not happiness, but wealth ” whereas to F.A. Adam Smith defined it as the “nature and causes of wealth of nations,” whereby it “proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.” Among his followers, J.B. The classical economists beginning with Adam Smith defined economics as the science of wealth. Wealth and welfare definitions are divided into the classical view of Adam Smith and his contemporaries and the neo-classical view of Marshall and his contemporaries. Type A definitions are related to wealth and material welfare and Type В to the scarcity of means. Fraser has classified the definitions of economics into Type A and Type B. A study of definitions of economics throws light on the nature of economics which we discuss. It includes the subject matter of economics, whether economics is a science or an art and whether it is a positive or a normative science.
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