ALFRED MARSHALL: ‘KANLI-CANLI’ İNSAN ANLAYIŞI
Journal Title: Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi - Year 2018, Vol 5, Issue 3
Abstract
Neoklasik iktisadın kurucuları arasında değerlendirilen Alfred Marshall’ın, neoklasik iktisadın diğer önde gelen isimleri olan Léon Walras ve William Stanley Jevons’tan farklı bir iktisat anlayışına sahip olduğu söylenebilir. Zira ‘neoklasik iktisat’ ifadesini ilk kullanan düşünür olan Thorstein B. Veblen’e (1900) göre bu terim, evrimsel sürecin farkında olan ancak bunu analizlerinde kullanmayan iktisatçıları işaret etmektedir. Bu anlayışın en net olarak görüldüğü isim ise Marshall’dır. Zira Marshall’a göre iktisat değişken, karmaşık ve evrimsel bir yapıya sahiptir ve iktisatçıların örnek alması gereken bilim dalı fizik veya mekanik değil, biyolojidir. Bu doğrultuda, insanın hem toplumsal ve kültürel çevresini, hem de duygularını, sezgilerini, arzularını ve alışkanlıklarını dikkate almayan ‘rasyonel iktisadi insan’ fikri, bu karmaşık dünyayı açıklama konusunda yetersiz kalmaktadır. Bu nedenle Marshall bu kavramın yerine, insanın toplumsal ve tarihsel bağlamıyla bağlantısını ifade eden ‘kanlı-canlı insan’ fikrini önermiştir. Bu çalışmanın amacı da Marshall’ın ontolojik ve epistemolojik anlayışı doğrultusunda bilimi ve ‘iktisat’ı nasıl ele aldığını incelemek ve bu doğrultuda ‘kanlı-canlı insan’ anlayışının temellerini açığa çıkarabilmektir. EXTENDED SUMMARY Alfred Marshall is one the founding fathers of neoclassical economics along with Léon Walras and William Stanley Jevons. But Marshall has some distinctive features among these thinkers. Firstly, he traced classical economists such as John S. Mill, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, and developed his economic analysis in line with classical political economy. Secondly he emphasized the evolutionary process in (natural and social) sciences and hence economics. It’s safe to say that Marshall is an exceptional example of neoclassical economics in this regard. Because Thorstein B. Veblen, who coined the term of ‘neoclassical economics’, treated this term as a continuation of classical political economy on one hand, while he used it to describe an economic approach departed from classical tradition on the other hand. Accordingly Marshall featured “the best work that is being done under the guidance of the classical antecedents” in Veblen’s sense of word. For example Marshall criticized classical economists on the grounds that they’ve accepted human character and activity as a ‘constant quantity’. According to Marshall, both society and economics were dynamic and complex systems rather than static and simple, so he conceived society as an evolutinary process in which there’s an interrelation between individual character and socioeconomic environment. In this regard “economic conditions constantly changing” and hence “the Mecca of the economist lies in economic biology” according to him, while Walras and Jevons attempted to construct economics based on physics and mechanics. Also the human conception of classical economists was deficient to explain this complex process for Marshall. Because the idea of ‘rational economic man’ comprehended human as being deprived of all kinds of emotion and values as kindness, integrity and dignity. It focused only economic aspect of human behavior, ignoring the critical aspects of economic life such as ‘individual faculties’, ‘religious belief’ and ‘labour relations’. But Marshall argued that human was a social being, and economy was embedded in social sphere. Accordingly human being couldn’t be conceived as ‘abstract’ and ‘homogenous’ individual, contrary to Walras and Jevons; he/she should be discussed within historical and social context. Because human is a member of a society, in other words “man is himself largely formed by his surroundings”. Therefore Marshall discussed individual action in connection with social life, as habits, conventions, families, environment, emotions, intuitions and instincts have important roles on human behavior. In this regard, the conception of ‘economic man’ whose main interest is his/her self-interest and doesn’t care about other people was replaced by ‘a man of flesh and blood’ in Marshall’s analysis. The pure economic theory isn’t adequate to analyse ‘a man of flesh and blood’, because “facts by themselves teach nothing”, scientific thought should be combined with experience, common sense and trained instinct. Therefore economists have to consider the determinant role of social, cultural and historical elements on human behavior. So economics has to include all these aspects by being closely related to other sciences as history, sociology, psychology as well as biology and chemistry. The aim of this paper is to show that Marshall conceived economics and human being as evolving and complex phenomena, contrary to both classical economists and the other leading figures of neoclassical economics such as Walras and Jevons. In this direction, firstly Marshall’s ontological and epistemological understanding will be discussed and how this understanding effected his conception of science and economics will be examined. Then his conception of human being in accordance with his conception of science and economics will be analysed.
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Hüsnü BİLİR
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- EP ID EP448505
- DOI 10.30798/makuiibf.426727
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