Concluding Remarks
This chapter places Marshall’s views on welfare (or rather wellbeing) in a broader perspective of his economic thought, or in his ‘high theme of economic progress’. Marshall’s economic thinking has been aimed to bring about ‘economic, as well as the moral, wellbeing’, and to make coexist and develop both the material growth and the moral progress.
Progress and ‘organic growth’ are ‘the high theme’ and more central and ‘philosophic’ for him rather than statical welfare analysis. Marshall stressed that the term ‘economic progress’ was narrow, for material wealth was ‘but a means to the sustenance of man’ and ‘to the development of his activities, physical, mental, and moral’. This was why Marshall did not think of happiness only in terms of utility. His aim was that ‘the opportunities of a noble life may be accessible to all’. In the context of progress and poverty elimination, Marshall referred to ‘sum total happiness’; but he also wrote about ‘true happiness’ in life and work, or the healthy exercise and development of faculties and activities. This notion of ‘true happiness’ stemmed from his early work on psychology of ‘the higher development of human faculties’, which is based on ethics of virtue (character, capability), not on utility.The progress of man’s nature (or character) was ‘the ultimate aim of economic studies’. Character formation (activities) lay at the centre of Marshall’s contribution to the subject. The rise of ‘standards of life’ (distinct from ‘standards of comfort’), meant efficiency in production, as well as the power of rightly using wealth; economic chivalry (moral standards) both in work (activities) and using wealth (wants). Marshall indicated ‘the power of rightly using income and opportunities’ was ‘wealth of the highest order’, could be described as ‘virtuous utilization of resources’, and was a crucial part of what he meant by ‘organic growth’.