Abstract

Contemporary economics speaks about trade in the familiar abstractions of comparative advantage, tracing the modern formulation of the case for free trade made in terms of welfare maximization to late-Victorian economists like W. Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall. Though Jevons and Marshall did formalize theories that treat countries as if they are abstract individuals, a closer reading suggests that their thinking on trade was informed by colonial imaginaries of civilization and race. The economics invented by Jevons and Marshall manages claims about human sameness and difference in a particularly colonial fashion. They both slide readily and uncertainly between the idea that parts of humanity are permanently lesser races and explaining lesser humans as simply developmentally backward. The latter might achieve full physiological and moral humanity over time through the improvements (and attendant but necessary suffering) administered by Empire via market competition. They sometimes point to a common set of desires and calculating capacities, but never so decisively as contemporary economics. Jevons takes these commonalities as the basis of a quantitative science of economics, but doubts their empirical universality. Marshall sees these traits as distinctively modern and achieved only via the rise of modern institutions. By contrast, contemporary economics insists on the universality of these traits, claiming for economics a distinctive “analytical egalitarianism.” But difference is only defined away by fiat in contemporary textbooks and where difference arises, as in the problem of uneven development, the colonial impulse of economics remains. The connection to Jevons’ and Marshall’s own colonial management of difference becomes sharply visible. To return to Jevons and Marshall allows us to provincialize economics.

摘要

当代经济学在比较优势的熟悉抽象中谈论贸易，将根据福利最大化提出的自由贸易案例的现代表述追溯到维多利亚时代晚期的经济学家，如 W. Stanley Jevons 和 Alfred Marshall。尽管杰文斯和马歇尔确实将国家视为抽象个体的理论正式化，但仔细阅读表明，他们对贸易的思考是受文明和种族的殖民想象影响的。杰文斯和马歇尔发明的经济学以一种特别的殖民方式管理关于人类相同和差异的主张。他们既容易又不确定地在人类的一部分永远是低等种族的想法和将低等人类解释为简单地发展落后的想法之间摇摆不定。通过市场竞争。它们有时指向一组共同的欲望和计算能力，但从来没有像当代经济学那样果断。杰文斯将这些共性作为经济学定量科学的基础，但怀疑它们的经验普遍性。马歇尔认为这些特征具有鲜明的现代性，并且只能通过现代机构的兴起。相比之下，当代经济学坚持这些特征的普遍性，声称经济学具有独特的“分析平均主义”。但在当代教科书中，差异只是被法令所定义，在出现差异的地方，如发展不平衡问题，经济学的殖民冲动仍然存在。杰文斯和马歇尔自己对差异的殖民管理的联系变得清晰可见。回到杰文斯和马歇尔，我们可以将经济学地方化。