Economists on Progress, Improvement and Social Reform: To What End, and How?

Sandra Peart, October 31, 2022

Economists from Adam Smith to William Stanley Jevons were preoccupied with the question of how best to achieve improvement and progress, but they differed significantly as to how best to achieve social reform. While some economists, such as John Stuart Mill, held that the devastating results of the Irish famine were caused by institutional failures—namely unreasonable land arrangements—others took issue with his analysis. The lecture documents a shift late in the nineteenth century from a “bottom up” idea of progress to a “top down” approach to social reform. In the latter case, exemplified in the works of Jevons, the economist and policymaker were to attack the “citadel of poverty” from all sides, essentially remaking the tastes and character of the laboring classes. The lecture explores how these approaches were undergirded by varied ideas of human capability, with a strong form of analytical egalitarianism underpinning the writing of Smith and Mill.

Sandra J. Peart is dean and E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor in Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies. She obtained her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto. Her recent books include The Essential John Stuart Mill (2021) and, with David Levy, Towards an Economics of Natural Equals: A Documentary History of the Early Virginia School (2020).