Alfred Marshall on familial economic behaviour:
The role of family in supporting an “ethical” capitalism
Abstract
This paper provides a critical reconstruction of Marshall’s account of the family’s role in
supporting an “ethical” form of capitalism. It will be shown that his account of familial
economic behaviour is not underwritten by a simple Benthamite utilitarianism, but rather
relies on a social philosophy influenced by Hegel’s Philosophy of History ([1822-31] 2001).
This social philosophy is instead oriented towards an ethics of “self-realisation” and selfreliance, in the form of a universally applicable index of human capacity (or “higher
faculties”), which Marshall also refers to as a normative “standard of life”. Part One situates
the paper’s concern in relation to the relevant secondary literature, noting that existing
literature on the younger Marshall’s Hegelian ethics of self-realisation overlooks the
importance of the family for both thinkers (Chasse 1984, Groenewegen 1990 and 1995, Cook
2009), and, conversely, that Marshall scholarship on family-related issues overlooks the
importance of Marshall’s neo-Hegelian ethics for explaining idealised familial behaviour
(Pujol 1984 & 1992; McWilliams-Tullberg 1990, 2006a and 2006b). Part Two then provides
a careful reconstruction of Marshall’s account of familial economic behaviour (idealised and
empirical) in Principles of Economics. Marshall is shown to require that families orient
themselves toward increasing the long-term labour productivity of children, on account of a
purported relationship between labour productivity in capitalism, and the widespread
development of the “higher faculties”. This ideal grounds Marshall’s account of the
circumstances under which a decision to begin a family should be taken, along with ethical
ideals of familial resource production, human capital investment, and bequest or inheritance.
However, in closing, the ethical concern for universal self-realisation in Marshall is shown to
be compromised by a conservative defence (mirroring Hegel’s own views in Elements of the
Philosophy of Right ([1821] 1991)) of three historical and privileged Victorian institutions,
namely, a gendered division of labour, a gendered division of education, and the
intergenerational transfer of capital in the form of inheritance. The social philosophy that
underlies Marshall’s economics is thus shown to exemplify both the promise and the dangers
involved in the attempt to ascribe ethical objectives to economics.
Alfred Marshall on familial economic behaviour:
The role of family in supporting an “ethical”
capitalism1
Introduction: A non-utilitarian account of family life
In his account of certain “neglected aspects” of Alfred Marshall’s economic and social
thought, Whitaker notes “the paradox exposed by the comfortable coexistence in Marshall’s
thought of utilitarian modes of argument verging at times on an almost crass Benthamism –
with a recurring denigration of material ends and of leisure or consumption for their own
sake” (1977, 183). This paradox has led to two contrasting interpretations of Marshall’s
economics, each of which rely on very different textual resources. The first sees Marshall as a
closet utilitarian convinced of a “familiar and fundamental tendency of human nature [that]
may be stated in the law of satiable wants”, which entails the law of diminishing marginal
utility (Marshall [1890] 1920, p93). Combined with an assumption that the purchasing power
of money is constant for individuals, the utilitarian interpretation of Marshall identifies a
constant relationship, in his work, between money and an abstract value underlying
commodity purchase, namely, utility (Staverly and Alvey 1996), such that money measures
something like utils (or satiated wants) in a manner similar to Bentham’s hedonistic calculus
(which attempts to quantify pleasures and pains). However, the second interpretation takes
Marshall’s economics to be built on a very different ethical standard, which Whitaker
describes as an index of human capacity (the “higher faculties”), and which Marshall also
refers to as a normative “standard of life” ([1890] 1920, 689-694 and 704-705; see also
Whitaker 1977, 180-181). As Whitaker explains, this standard includes physical and mental
traits that Marshall believes are required for individuals to fully realise themselves (that is, to
be at once self-reliant and also ethical in their concern for the realisation of others too), traits
that include energy, dexterity, rationality, independence, deliberation associated with
promptness of judgment, foresight and the ability to shape one’s course with reference to
1
Acknowledgements: This research was supported by an Australian Research Council fellowship (Discovery
Early Career Researcher Award DE130100325 “Revisiting the foundations of mainstream economics: A
cooperative account of well-being and moral improvement”). I am very grateful to Professor John E. King for
detailed discussions of the topic, and helpful feedback on earlier drafts.
distant aims, honesty, unselfishness, and the effort to improve one’s own self (Whitaker
1977, 180).
Notwithstanding the existence, then, of certain continuities in Marshall’s work with the
classical utilitarian tradition, this paper instead supports the scholarly attention already
afforded to the presence of a non-utilitarian ethics in Marshall’s economics (J.N. Keynes
1924; McWilliams-Tulberg 1975; Whitaker 1977 and 2008; Coats 1990; Black 1990;
Henderson 1990; Visker 1988; Coats and Raffaelli 2006; Groenewegen 1995; Cook 2005 and
2009; among many others). However, it does so by providing an account – thus far
overlooked in the literature – of Marshall’s understanding of the family’s role in supporting a
capitalism oriented towards increasing access to the normative “standard of life”. Very little,
if anything, has been written on Marshall’s account of familial economic behaviour, and yet
Marshall understands the ideal modern family to play an important role in establishing more
widespread access to a life that is purportedly worth living, and not one that merely seeks
after brute pleasures and preference-satisfactions. As others have already noted (Chasse 1984;
Groenewegen 1990 and 1995; Cook 2005 and 2009), this reveals an indebtedness not to
Bentham but to a Hegelian account of ethical institutions (“ethical life”) which unify
subjective freedom (or individual choice) with what Hegel refers to as objective will
(institutions that imply concepts of collective good). Marshall’s account of how affective
familial bonds produce obligations, particularly on the part of parents, to invest wisely in the
future realisation of family members thus throws a spotlight on Marshall’s underlying social
philosophy, according to which ends are ethical when concerned not with the utility of the
individual agent, but rather with the self-realisation of others more broadly (beginning with
family members, and extending outwards to class and ultimately to society more broadly).
This is a very different vocabulary from the classical utilitarian agenda.
After outlining this paper’s contributions to the existing literature (Part One), Marshall’s
account of familial economic behaviour (idealised and empirical) in Principles of Economics
is shown to ascribe to families an ethical responsibility to orient themselves toward
increasing the long-term labour productivity of children, on account of a purported
relationship between labour productivity in capitalism, and the widespread development of
the “higher faculties” (Part Two). In brief, Marshall argues that labour productivity produces
positive flow-on effects for the “standard of comfort” (defined by the quantity of
consumption), which he then argues becomes increasingly correlated with an increasing
“standard of life” (defined not by consumption, but rather by the quality of activities). The
latter is in turn correlated with the higher faculties and with moral character, “an increase of
intelligence and energy and self-respect” ([1890] 1920, 88-90, see also 85), along with
concern for the realisation of others too (a concern that emerges when individuals can afford
to be generous) ([1890] 1920, 330; see also [1907] 1926; Whitaker 1977, 173). This account
of the family’s idealised role in supporting labour productivity is then shown to ground
Marshall’s account of the circumstances under which a decision to begin a family should be
taken (2.1), along with ethical ideals of familial resource production (2.2), human investment
(2.3), and bequest or inheritance (2.4). However, in closing (Part Three), the ethical concern
for universal self-realisation in Marshall is shown to be compromised by a conservative
defence (mirroring Hegel’s own views in Elements of the Philosophy of Right ([1821] 1991))
of three historical and privileged Victorian institutions, namely, a gendered division of
labour, a gendered division of education, and the intergenerational transfer of capital in the
form of inheritance, institutions that threaten the self-realisation of women and even the
working class more broadly. The social philosophy that underlies Marshall’s economics is
thus shown to exemplify both the promise and the dangers involved in the attempt to ascribe
ethical objectives to economics.
Part One. Contributions to the literature: a neo-Hegelian account of
familial economic behaviour
In addition to further clarifying the non-utilitarian social philosophy that underlies Marshall’s
economics, this paper’s analysis of Marshall’s account of familial economic behaviour makes
two contributions to existing Marshall scholarship. First, although existing literature on the
younger Marshall’s social philosophy clearly identifies the influence of Hegel’s ethics of selfrealisation (Chasse 1984; Groenewegen 1990 and 1995; Cook 2005 and 2009), it overlooks
the overlapping roles that each thinker ascribes to the family institution in supporting “ethical
life”. This literature usefully features the unique influence of Hegel’s lectures on the
Philosophy of History ([1822-31] 2001) on the younger Marshall, and with it, two important
Hegelian ideas, namely, historical progress as the increasing embeddedness of the
consciousness of freedom in social institutions, and the perfectible march of history from East
to West. 2 The ideas contained in Philosophy of History are most clearly explained in
Philosophy of Right (recommended by Hegel as a textbook of sorts for the students who
followed the Philosophy of History lectures (McCarney 2000)). Freedom does not merely
require subjective freedom (both the ability to make an informed choice between options, and
the possibility or availability of different choice-options) (Hegel [1821] 1991, 39-49). That is,
freedom does not merely involve a lack of coercion, equivalent to the sort of negative liberty
that Berlin described, which has since been associated with a small, Nightwatchman State
(Nozick, 1974). Rather, freedom also specifies a particular relation of interdependency
between the free self and other selves, a relation in which the self still acts without coercion
and with due consideration, even though the content of this free choice involves fulfilling
inherited obligations to support the well-being or self-realisation of other selves. Hegel
describes freely willing inherited obligations as the “restoration to universality” of
“particularity” ([1821] 1991, 41, see also 41-43), which Hegel expresses as being “oneself in
another” ([1821] 1991, 42). In the absolute freedom ([1821] 1991, §22-28) of “ethical life”
(to use Hegel’s vocabulary), one’s subjective freedom of choice must involve supporting the
well-being or realisation of other individuals, who likewise support the realisation of one’s
self, in a mutually interdependent manner (see also Wood 1991, xi-xii). Absolute freedom is
thus closely related to existing institutions (e.g. the family, law, morality and government
etc.) that others in a shared social world generally take to represent mutually beneficial forms
of social interaction, and it thus involves a further Hegelian concept: objective will. Objective
will is submission to a legal code or to social institutions that together (in apparent
independence of individual wills) express a distinctive historical concept of the collective
good, involving pre-given obligations in its regard. Although objective will may present
itself, in an initial phase, as a constraint upon subjective freedom (cultivating actions that are
unthinking, habitual and even coerced), in the absolute freedom of ethical life, objective will
and subjective freedom coincide, such that objective freedom is not a constraint but a
condition of the possibility of subjective freedom itself.
Modern institutions of law, morality and government thus represent historical progress,
which both Hegel and Marshall describe as the perfectible march of history from East to
2
A systematic analysis of references to Hegel in Marshall’s manuscripts or in the recollections and notes of his
students has been compiled elsewhere by Groenewegen (1990 and 1995) and by Cook (2005), with other
elements analysed by Chasse (1984) and Cook (2009). It covers territory far broader than the concern with
family that defines this article. It also serves to correct the views of John Whitaker (1977) and Talcott Parsons
(1932, 332) who wrongly suggest that Hegel had only a “loose” influence on Marshall.
West, drawing a contrast between a less-developed East (represented by China and India,
whose forms of government reflect the order of a patriarchal family), and a more developed
West (represented in mature form by Christianity, particularly in its later post-feudal and
post-Medieval form in the Germanic or Western nations, forms that increasingly protect the
equality of members in families and the means by which the family – by virtue of affection –
introduces individuals to their moral obligations to other members). Modern state institutions
thus increasingly protect individual rights (making subjective freedom possible to begin with)
while also imposing obligations that require that subjective freedom be employed towards the
collective ends embodied in existing institutions (objective will). The modern State and its
institutions are accordingly viewed as the very conditions under which freedom is realised.
Chasse, Groenwegen and Cook successfully show, first, how the young Marshall appreciated
this concept of freedom, an account that sits uncomfortably with the liberal vision of the
reciprocal protection of subjective freedom (more commonly referred to as “negative
liberty”); and second, how Marshall extends Hegel’s account of progress in history to include
consideration of the institutions of economic liberalism. Marshall thus distinguishes himself
from Hegel (whose philosophy of history terminates in purportedly moral institutions of
constitutional monarchy) by assigning to his own history the telos of economic liberalism,
which unifies subjective freedom (individual choice) and objective will (acceptance of social
interdependency and the shared institutions that structure it). The literature thus successfully
shows how the younger Marshall advances Hegel’s account of historical progress to include
the expansion of freedom in the 19th century into the economic sphere in England (a
phenomenon that Hegel does not fully comprehend).
However, although this literature usefully identifies the importance of Hegel’s ethics of selfrealisation for Marshall’s concern with the universal realisation of the “higher faculties”
through economic activity, it overlooks the important and overlapping roles that each thinker
ascribes to the institution of the family. Hegel and Marshall together view the family as
maturing through history to its modern form, where it both serves subjective emotional needs
that nurture confidence in one’s freedom (or, to use Marshall’s word “self-reliance”), while
also cultivating the feeling of concern for others beyond the self. As Hegel writes in
Philosophy of History, the modern family “introduces man to community – to the relation of
interdependence in society; and this union is a moral one” (Hegel [1822-31] 2001, 441). It is
thus by virtue of family life that individuals learn of the social value of work, the main point
of the formation of the modern State (Hegel 1822-31] 2001, 442). The younger Marshall
reiterates this view: the modern family promotes a conception of “unity… essentially one of
feeling”, “a consciousness and a will not limited to individual personality and interest, but
embracing the common interests of the members generally” (Marshall [1871-3b] 2005, 73).
Marshall transcribes from Hegel the following comment in its entirety: This “virtuous” aspect
of the family relation “should be respected in the highest degree by the [modern] State; by its
means the State obtains as its members individuals who are already moral (for as persons
they are not) and who in uniting to form a State bring with them that sound basis of a political
edifice – the capacity of feeling one with a whole…” (Marshall [1871-3b] 2005, 73; see also
Hegel [1822-31] 57). The family’s introduction to the interdependency of self and collective
realisation also promotes an ethical view about the social value of work in cultivating the
“higher capabilities” of family members, and ultimately, an ethics of cooperation with all
members of society (Bankovsky 2015).
If the existing literature on Marshall’s neo-Hegelian ethics errs by overlooking the family’s
role in promoting ethical modern institutions, the body of Marshall scholarship on familyrelated issues commits the opposite error (Pujol 1984 and 1992; McWilliams Tullberg 1990,
2006a and 2006b; Groenewegen, 1995). That is, it overlooks the importance of Marshall’s
neo-Hegelian ethics for explaining Marshall’s views on idealised familial behaviour. The
literature on family-related issues in Marshall covers, first, his views on the education and
social role of women, and second, his gendered account of labour force roles. McWilliamsTullberg (1990, 2006a and 2006b) deals with the first, balancing an account of Marshall’s
youthful (and quite radical) reasons for contributing to women’s education at Cambridge with
a description of his growing concerns about their lesser intellectual abilities as well as his
later ascription of a subordinate social role to women. She explains that although Marshall’s
early “Lectures to Women” at Cambridge ([1873], 1995) sought to inspire women to extend
their domestic “caring” role to encompass a contribution to social work or teaching (beyond
mere traditional familial duties), 3 his enthusiasm for women’s education soon waned after
marriage to Mary Paley and the move to Bristol University College (which attracted workingclass and also female students). While his wife flourished as a lecturer for female students, he
became increasingly ill and developed, at this time, the views that inform his 1881
contribution to the Committee on Intermediate and Higher Education, which argued, first,
3
That said, McWilliams-Tullberg nonetheless notes that Marshall did not consider those working-class women
who might need to earn their own living, or those who might desire the financial independence that would
permit them to refuse the conditions of a Victorian era marriage (2006b).
that women were prevented from thriving in education because of their familial obligations
within the home; second, that intellectual education was unsuited to the women’s more
primary role of “household manager”; and third, that women’s intellects were indeed inferior,
because, after graduation, they failed to produce “constructive work” comparable to men
(2006b, 530).
Although Marshall’s personal views on women’s education and social role are certainly
relevant to this paper, McWilliams-Tullberg’s analysis does not consider his theoretical
account of familial economic behaviour, or the relationship between Marshall’s neo-Hegelian
account of the ethics of family life upon his views on women’s roles, a point that this paper
will illuminate. Regarding the second family-related issue (gendered labour-force roles),
Pujol provides a devastating criticism of the role of gender in Marshall’s scheme of human
capital investment. 4 She concludes (1984, 349-50; 1992), first, that although fathers are
explicitly presented by Marshall as the primary investors in their children’s future, it is
mothers who implicitly bear a large share of investment cost. Second, she notices that
Marshall understands sons (not daughters) to receive the tangible returns on this investment
(namely, monetary and public approbatory rewards, along with higher faculties, including
knowledge and ability, richness of character, and other desirable traits), with a girl receiving
only what she must later fully invest into her own children. A mother’s duty to invest into her
children what she has herself received is also her virtue, and her only “return”, if one can still
employ the word in this sense. Third, Pujol finds that the benefits accruing to male children
are unlikely to increase proportionately with the increase in their human capital, because
parental investment provides a large subsidy to industry.
The criticisms of Marshall that this article develops (namely, that the defence of a gendered
division of labour, a gendered division of education, and family property and bequest do not
indeed serve the interests of women, or even of the working class more broadly, contradicting
the underlying ethical orientation of Marshall’s economics towards cultivating the “higher
capabilities” of all) are clearly informed by Pujol’s work. But it is also evident that her
primary focus on human capital investment not only prevents her from dealing with other
important aspects of Marshall’s understanding of family life (the circumstances under which
4
Other very brief comments are made by Kiker (1966), Blandy (1967) and Bowman (1990) on the
“shortcomings” of the parent-child relationship in “suboptimal” human capital investment, but the overall
understanding of family life that underlies and frames Marshall’s comments on this parent-child investment has
not yet been explored.
one should begin a family, the considerations that should inform familial resource production,
and the defence of family-based property and bequest) but, more importantly, leads her to
overlook consideration of the ethical framework within which Marshall situates his account
of family life. Only Groenewegen’s chapter on Marshall as a feminist manqué (1995, Chapter
14) provides a glimpse of the perspective to be developed here. Although primarily
concerned to explain what might have lead Marshall to the change in attitude that
McWilliams Tullberg describes, Groenewegen briefly considers a theoretical reason that
offers overlapping support for this article’s position, namely, that Marshall’s philosophical
account of economic progress lent increasing weight to what he saw as the evolutionary
drivers of the ethical development of history, a view that Groenewegen believes may well
have influenced Marshall to defend an “angel of the hearth” model of women’s domestic duty
to cultivate the development of the family unit (1995, 499-500, 507, 512-513). It is this brief
insight into the relationship between Marshall’s views on ethical progress and his account of
family life that the article will here develop, distinguishing itself again by the particular
importance it ascribes to Hegel in this story.
This paper thus corrects the tendency of the neo-Hegelian interpretation of Marshall to
overlook the importance of the family for both thinkers, and also corrects the opposite
tendency in the literature on family-related issues in Marshall to overlook the importance of
Marshall’s neo-Hegelian ethics.
Part Two. Marshall on familial economic decision in the Principles
The young Marshall hereby channels Hegel’s Philosophy of History into a social philosophy
in which the modern family not only nurtures children’s confidence in their subjective
freedom (or self-reliance), but also educates them through feeling to objective obligations
derived from social interdependency, which cultivate the social value of productive,
individual work. It is this relationship between freedom, family and economic liberalism that
constitutes the background context for his later account of familial economic behaviour in the
Principles of Economics ([1890], 1920), to which we now turn.
In the Principles, Marshall’s ongoing commitment to this social philosophy is revealed by an
account of familial economic behaviour that implicitly distinguishes between “ideal” and
empirical forms of family life. The normative (or ideal) family is required to play a specific
role in sustaining the labour productivity necessary for increasing the “standard of life” of the
working class, with good flow-on effects for a more widespread development of the “higher
faculties”. Let us now consider the specific type of familial obligations that Marshall believes
to obtain, featuring, in each case, the striking resemblance of key aspects of this view to
Hegel’s own interpretation, in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, 5 of the family’s role in
supporting modern ethical institutions. Marshall’s views of familial obligation may be
divided into the following duties: first, the duty to begin a family when certain circumstances
obtain (2.1); second, the duty to effectively engage in efficient resource production, within
and outside of the family (2.2); third, the duty to invest in the human capital of children (2.3);
and finally, the duty to work hard to provide an inheritance, in the context of economic liberal
institutions that defend the right to such bequest (2.4).
Central to an understanding of Marshall’s account of family behaviour is an implied
distinction between description and normative prescription. On the one hand, Marshall aims
to undertake empirical observation of regularities in economic behaviour, and thus to identify
actual regularities in family behaviour. Unsurprisingly, the regularities that he identifies vary
across class, with families belonging to the higher and middle classes, the artisanal class, and
the working class often displaying quite different general behaviour. On the other hand, the
descriptions are also presented in evaluative and prescriptive language: Marshall believes that
the familial behaviour of the working class is short-sighted, producing suboptimal decisions
in a number of the aforementioned areas (2.1-2.4). His evaluative comments about the
comparative empirical differences in class-based familial behaviour reveal the goal that he
ascribes to the ideal family, namely, that of increasing the overall labour productivity of the
family as a whole. This is deemed to be good not only for families themselves, but also for
the nation as a whole. It is this unacknowledged but basic interest in increasing overall labour
productivity (with the tangible benefits that this brings for health and strength, knowledge
and ability, and richness of character) that informs Marshall’s interpretation of the role of the
family in supporting capitalism.
5
Although Groenewegen (1995) and Cook (2009) are correct that the explicit textual evidence indicates
Marshall drew uniquely from Hegel’s Philosophy of History (a series of lectures delivered at the University of
Berlin on five separate occasions, at two-yearly intervals, over the course of 1822 to 1831), it is possible that
Marshall was at least aware of the general content of Hegel’s well-known and central account of family life in
the 1821 publication Elements of the Philosophy of Right.
2.1 Circumstances under which one should begin a family
Marshall’s account of the “ideal” circumstances under which one should begin a family are
embedded in his study of population growth ([1890] 1920, Book IV, section iv) and
population health and strength (Book IV, section v), which defend the view that a growth in
numbers alone is of little value if it is not accompanied, first, by an average per capita
increase in health and strength, and, second, by the widespread distribution of this increase
among the working class. In other words, the average standard of living must improve along
with population growth, and the distribution of the improvements must extend, in particular,
to the working class. Only then will the ethical goal of the increased labour productivity of
individual workers be achieved. Improved industrial efficiency must, in this sense, produce
good flow-on effects for the “standard of life” and “higher faculties” of individual workers
themselves.
Certain implications follow for the decision as to whether to begin a family. The family is
morally bound to cultivate an increase in the strength and vigour of its individual members
(for otherwise population increase would reduce living standards and fail to increase
working-class access to the normative “standard of life”). Two principles should regulate an
individual’s decision to enter family life ([1890] 1920, 202-3). The first expresses negative
restriction: one must not enter into family life unless one can provide one’s children with at
least as good an education, physical and mental, as one had oneself (202-3). Marshall thus
views infant mortality as an “an unmixed evil” (202), a symptom of a population whose
health and strength is diminished. The second principle expresses positive obligation: one
must enter family life just as soon as a sufficient ability to satisfy the first principle (to
provide at least as good a standard of life as one has received) is achieved: “marry moderately
early, provided the family can be kept within the above limits without transgressing moral
laws” (202).
The view that marriage and family life is not simply a subjective choice option but an
objective duty overlaps with Hegel’s view in Elements of the Philosophy of Right that “to
enter the state of marriage is an objective determination, and hence, an ethical duty” ([1821]
1991, 201). It is a duty for the reason identified in the previous section, namely, that marriage
and family life are the condition of sound moral education. Through the feeling of love, the
institutions of marriage and the family introduce individuals to the obligations that result
from the fact of social interdependency (the need to unite subjective freedom with an
objective concern for the well-being of other family members, and ultimately, of others in
one’s shared wider community). The family is thus the emotive means by which I “know
myself as the unity of myself with another and of the other with me” ([1821] 1991, 199),
from which it follows that the self-limitation of freedom through marriage and family life is a
liberation, the growing unification of subjective and objective will ([1821] 1991, 201). Family
life thus cultivates moral concern for others, “since ethical principles must be implanted in
the child in the form of feeling” ([1821] 1991, 213).
This account of the “ideal” circumstances under which one should begin a family provides
the implicit standard against which to understand Marshall’s evaluative descriptions of the
empirical regularities that exist across class.
Earlier marriages 6 produce larger birthrates, and it is thus important to consider whether the
birth-rate patterns of families in the various classes permit parents to provide their children
with a standard of life at least as good as what they themselves have received, which
Marshall appears to approximate by an analysis of class-based infant mortality rates. The
lower classes are found to marry earlier than the artisanal, middle and upper classes ([1890]
1920, 181), but the link between this earlier marriage and increased mortality rates is found to
depend on a range of other factors. Marshall does not automatically decry the working class
tendency to marry early, because the standard of comfort that prevails amongst this class is
easier to achieve for a family at a younger age. However, he decries circumstances and
policies that encourage an “unduly early” marriage ([1890] 1920, 188), along with the upper
and middle class tendency to marry too late in life.
Factors that Marshall considers when evaluating working marriage age include that unskilled
labourers earn full-wages at age 18, that the standard of working-class life is not high, and
that children begin to work – and thus pay their own expenses – earlier in their lives (with the
Factory Acts of 1878 permitting half-day work for 10-14 year-olds). It is thus possible for
working class parents to marry earlier and have more children, while still providing a better
6
Marshall understands marriage, in a broad sense, to mean “not only legal marriages, but all those informal
unions which are sufficiently permanent in character to involve for several years at least the practical
responsibilities of married life” ([1890] 1920, 181).
standard of life than they themselves received. In the artisan classes, “a man earns nearly as
much at 21 as he will ever do, and the cost of children lasts around 15 years (after which they
are sent to the factory)” ([1890] 1921, 181). Marriage in the artisanal class tends to be a bit
later, with fewer offspring, and this, too, may well be acceptable. The later marriage and
lower fecundity of middle and higher classes is explained by reference to the fact that income
does not reach its maximum “until a male is 40 or 50 years old” (181), the severity of “mental
strain” is high (185), and the cost of children large, lasting many years (181). However,
Marshall nonetheless believes that it should be possible for the middle-classes to marry
earlier, while still providing their children with a life-standard at least equivalent to their own.
It is implied that infant mortality rates are a clue to determining whether the above patterns
are desirable, since Marshall’s analysis provides correlations of mortality rates with marriageage, birth rate, and standard of living. Unskilled labouring families often have high infant
mortality rates, although this varies in response to a range of factors (political, social and
natural). To provide an example, from the 1700s until 1834, the Old Poor Laws made the age
of marriage “unduly early” (since a father with many children could “procure more
indulgences for himself without working than he could have got by hard work if he… had
only a small family” ([1890] 1920, 188)), which produced very high infant mortality rates in
the unskilled, along with a low standard of living. This produced the morally undesirable
effect that “the laziest and meanest of people (with least self-respect and enterprise) thrived”
(188). This did not change until the passing of the New Poor Law in 1834, which raised the
age of marriage, and lowered birth and morality rates. Marshall’s evaluative language relies
on assuming that the “chief importance” of material wealth “lies in the fact that, when wisely
used, it increases the health and strength (physical, mental and moral) of the human race”
(193). When regularities in marriage age in the various classes reduce health and strength,
they are deemed to be less moral.
Once the decision to begin a family has been taken, further obligations obtain. These may be
divided into three key themes, which again overlap in orientation with Hegel’s account of
familial duty in Elements of the Philosophy of Right ([1821], 1991).
2.2 Familial resource production: a gendered division of labour
Through the feeling of love and attachment to family members, individuals are introduced to
the interdependency of their freedom and that of others. From this is derived a duty to
effectively distribute resources between family members, with a view to promoting the labour
productivity (and higher capabilities) of the family as a whole. Marshall’s account of resource
production (and distribution) again assumes an “ideal” that permits him to evaluate his
empirical findings about actual patterns of familial resource distribution. This ideal ascribes
different duties of production to male and female members respectively, an argument that
purportedly relies on the impact that this allocation of labour has on the health outcomes and
infant mortality rates of children. Mothers and daughters are responsible for intra-familial
resource production, whereas the father’s and son’s production is to be extra-familial. It will
be explained that Marshall thus defends policies that encourage married women to remain
housebound, including: first, the further extension of the factory acts; and second, genderspecific minimum wages.
The woman’s task is to devote herself to the “production” and care of her children, particular
during early childhood. Marshall reasons, first, that the “influence of the mother in early
childhood is supreme” in its ability to foster health and strength, and thus “infant mortality is
generally higher where there are many mothers who neglect their family duties in order to
earn money wages.” Indeed, “the degradation of the working classes varies in proportion to
the amount of rough work that is done by women” ([1890] 1920, 564), and “those [children]
who do not entirely succumb to this want of motherly care often grow up with enfeebled
constitutions” (195-6). Second, he notes that work interferes with reproductive capacity. “The
birth of children who die early from want of care and adequate means is a useless strain to the
mother and an injury to the rest of the family” (202). Married women must thus give up
employment, which, is “a great gain in so far as it tends to develop their faculties; but an
injury in so far as it tempts them to neglect their duty of building a true home, and of
investing their efforts in the personal capital of their children’s character and abilities” (685).
Her labour in production is best utilised in the effective distribution of resources towards the
production of needed household goods (clothing, meals, emotional and physical care and the
like). The housewife and mother must thus aim for “an ideal distribution of wool [or
groceries or time etc.] between the different needs of the family” (170). Her ability to
distribute resources for the production of necessary family goods is of the utmost importance
in poorer households, where bad decisions have a major impact on mortality rates. Working
class women are thus directed to build a “true home” that cultivates the greater health,
character and ability of workers (read males) and their children. This duty is a virtue, which
Marshall presents as a sufficient reward for a woman’s contribution to society.
A father’s duty, however, is to seek his own reward – higher wages – for labour productivity
outside the home. Already reaping the reward of his wife’s investment in the health and
strength of himself and his children, he is able to further benefit from higher wages (and their
associated approbatory rewards of public esteem) that greater efficiency in labour production
permits.
Marshall’s use of the language of “ethical duty”, and “virtue” to describe these gendered
roles overlaps with the Hegelian vocabulary, implicit in Philosophy of History and explicit in
the earlier Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which illuminates the relationship between
gendered duties and the purported realisation of self. For Hegel, the woman is “passive and
subjective”: she “has her substantial vocation in the family, and her ethical disposition
consists in this family piety” ([1821] 1991, 258). The family permits her to satisfy her
emotional need for recognition (the admiration of husband, children and society) through the
fulfilment of her duties as wife and mother. The ability of the woman to discover her ethical
destiny in family life is contrasted, by Hegel, with the ethical role of a husband and father,
which is not limited to his familial role. A man cannot satisfy his need for recognition (the
admiration of wife, children and society) through family life alone, because there exists a
social expectation that such recognition be pursued through the achievement of public
approbation, by earning an income to support the family, and by achieving the esteem of
other men. Public honour lies at the very basis of the admiration bestowed by wife and
children. A man thus “has a field for ethical activity outside the family”. He is “powerful and
active… and has his actual substantial life in the state, in learning, etc. and otherwise in work
and struggle with the external world and with himself, so that it is only through his division
that he fights his way to self-sufficient unity with himself” ([1821] 1991, 258).
Marshall thus defends the further extension of the Factory Acts, which placed restrictions not
only on children’s but also on women’s employment in factories. This is said to provide
working class children with a better chance to cultivate their education and health, and to
encourage women to devote more time to family duties. Marshall argues that the “temporary
material loss” generated by having less bodies in factories will eventually lead to a “higher
and ultimate greater gain” (751), namely, overall increases to the National Dividend that
should be expected once women’s housebound labour produces the valuable effect of
increasing the efficiency of the male (and temporarily unmarried female) workforce.
Marshall proposes a second scheme, gender-specific minimum wages, to discourage women
from seeking employment. A women’s wage is to be kept at subsistence level (to cover the
requirements of necessaries for labour efficiency for herself alone), but a man’s wage must be
sufficient to support the subsistence requirements of a housewife with children. Marshall thus
writes: “in estimating the cost of production of efficient labour, we must take as our unit the
family. At all events, we cannot treat the cost of production of efficient men as an isolated
problem; it must be taken as part of the broader problem of the cost of production of efficient
men together with the women who are fitted to make their home happy, and to bring up their
children vigorous in body and mind, truthful and cleanly, general and brave” ([1890], 1920,
564). This is a commitment that further supports an interpretation of the underlying purpose
of Marshall’s defence of gender-specific labour force roles as the cultivation of labour
productivity.
2.3 Human capital investment: a gendered division of education
A key duty of the family is to invest in the education of children. Again, Marshall does not
simply observe empirical regularities in investment patterns, but also passes evaluative
judgment on these findings. The empirical and class-based patterns of parental investment in
children’s human capital are thus evaluated with respect to their impact on the labour
productivity of the nation’s workforce. It should be recalled, however, that Marshall does not
believe labour productivity to be of value in and of itself, but rather believes its value to lie in
its correlation with increases to the “standard of life” of the working class, associated with the
development of the aforementioned “higher faculties” (the true object of wealth). The
analysis permits Marshall to identify cases of underinvestment and to propose courses of
action to permit adequate educational investment in education.
Marshall’s comments deal, first, with the circumstances under which parents should be
willing to invest (2.3.1); second, with the best means available for parents to invest (2.3.2);
and third, with the reasons for parental underinvestment in their children’s education (2.3.3).
2.3.1 Circumstances in which parents should be willing to invest in children’s
education
Marshall thinks that parents should ideally be willing to invest in the productivity of their
children’s labour (through education) for the sake of the development of the children’s higher
faculties, even if this involves personal sacrifices, with only children to reap the rewards. The
purpose, as indicated, is to increase the long-term labour productivity (and development of
higher faculties) of the family unit, even after the death of the parent who invests. The
principle is thus that investment in one’s children’s education should take place if the benefits
to the labour productivity (and higher faculties) of the family unit in general will exceed the
costs, with a certain leeway for decision as to the extent of the investment. Parental concern is
thus described as ethical and unselfish, because it is not concerned with individual parental
productivity (and its associated gains) but rather with the productivity of the family unit.
A not dissimilar idea is found in Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, which defends
childhood education at parents’ expense as an ethical duty for families ([1821] 1991, 211).
Children in general (both boys and girls) have the right to maintenance and education at the
expense of the family’s common capital, in order to teach them their respective duties
(through discipline (211)), and befit them with the capacities to fulfil them. “Human beings
do not arrive by instinct at what they are destined to become, they must attain this by their
own efforts. This is the basis of the child’s right to its upbringing… the services which may
be required of children should therefore contribute solely to the end of their upbringing; they
must not claim to be justified in their own right, for the most unethical of all relationships is
that in which children are slaves” (211). Moreover, early childhood education that instils in
children a sound sense of their duties to other family members and to society more broadly is
also a moral duty on the part of parents. “As far as [children’s] relationship to the family is
concerned, their upbringing has the positive determination that, in them, the ethical is given
the form of immediate feeling which is still without opposition, so that their early emotional
life may be lived in this context, as the basis of ethical life, in love, trust and obedience”
(212). But upbringing also has “the negative determination of raising the children out of the
natural immediacy in which they originally exist, to self-sufficiency and freedom of
personality, thereby enabling them to leave the natural unit of the family” (212). The aim of
“discipline” and upbringing (or education) is thus “rather of a subjective and moral nature,
seeking to have a deterrent effect on a freedom which is still entrammelled in nature and to
raise the universal into the children’s consciousness and will” (211). Indeed, it is the parents
who thus “constitute the universal and essential element” which “entails the need for
obedience on the part of the children” (212).
Marshall provides two reasons – which provide insight into the ideal that underlies the
analysis – as to why parental investment in the education of their children is to be
distinguished from the capitalist’s motivation to erect a new machine. The first concerns the
immediate motivation. Whereas the capitalist is motivated by interest in personal or
individual profit, the motive of parents to invest in their children’s education concerns the
children’s good at personal cost, and, moreover, with the benefits to children not accruing
until many years later. The second concerns the conditions under which investment should
take place. Parents should ideally be willing to invest under conditions that would make a
capitalist hesitate. Marshall believes the period over which benefits are to be calculated to be
larger for the investment of children’s education, and the benefits to be more difficult to
predict. As he explains: “The period over which the earning power extends [that is, the period
over which a parent expects to increase family well-being] is generally greater in the case of a
man than of a machine; and therefore the circumstances by which the earnings are determined
are less capable of being foreseen, and the adjustment of supply to demand is both slower and
more imperfect” ([1890] 1920, 571). A parent should ideally be willing to invest in a child’s
education even when the monetary benefits of the investment are more futural and less
certain.
That said, there remains scope for decision-making as to the extent of the investment, because
a working father must also consider the need to take care of himself (to achieve the
consumption level that is strictly necessary for his grade of work, beyond which his work
cannot be efficiently completed) ([1890] 1920, 68).
In sum, then, the principle is thus that investment in one’s children’s education should occur
if the benefits to the labour productivity (and thus the development of “higher faculties”) of
children exceed the costs over the very long term, with scope for decision-making as to the
extent of the investment. Parental concern is ethical, because it is preoccupied with the
realisation of children’s freedom, and not with individual parental productivity.
2.3.2 How best to invest in children’s education
Marshall’s views on children’s education is a subset of his thinking on familial resource
production, where the future labour productivity of children is now considered as a resource
for investment. The account includes, first, the gendered provision of education to children;
and second, the gendered nature of education types.
Regarding the first, mothers are to educate general ability (207), whereas fathers are
responsible for specialised ability. General ability describes “those faculties [including health
& strength] and that general knowledge and intelligence which are in varying degrees the
common property of all the higher grades of industry” (207), and, importantly, it includes the
moral feeling of concern for others beyond the self. In contrast, specialised ability concerns
“that manual dexterity and that acquaintance with particular materials and processes which
are required for the special purposes of individual trades” (207). Investment in childhood
education should privilege general ability, with a lesser investment in specialised ability. The
family exerts the largest influence on general ability, but this familial influence is distributed
disproportionally among family members. The influence of the mother is paramount,
followed by the father, siblings and servants (in the case of the upper classes). Marshall thus
believes that a mother can make the future labour of her children most productive by her
investment in their general ability, through the nurture and general moral education of her
children in early childhood. A footnote states that “the mother’s influence is most easily
traceable among theologians and men of science, because an earnest mother leads her child to
feel deeply about great things; and a thoughtful mother does not repress, but encourages that
childish curiosity which is the raw material of scientific habits of thought” (207). The
ascription to mothers of a primary role in teaching moral feeling also overlaps with Hegel’s in
Elements of the Philosophy of Right: “As a child, the human being must have lived with his
parents in a circle of love and trust, and the rational must appear in him as his own most
personal subjectivity. In the period of infancy, the mother’s role in the child’s upbringing is
of primary importance, for [the principles of] ethics must be implanted in the child in the
form of feeling” ([1822] 1991, 213).
In contrast, fathers make the labour of children most productive by investing in specialised
education designed for the most advantageous occupation (in term of working conditions and
wage per unit of labour) that the children can access (143, see also 207-209). Thoughtful
fathers thus choose occupations for their children “that offer the best reward, in wages and
other advantages, in return for labour that is not too severe in quantity or character, and for
skill that is not too hard to be acquired” (143). This “thoughtful” selection of specialised
occupations for children facilitates an “adjustment between demand and supply” in the job
market, which reflects the idea that “the reward to be had for any kind of work at any time
does stand in some relation to the difficulty of acquiring the necessary skill combined with
the exertion, the disagreeableness, the waste of leisure, etc. involved in the work itself” (even
if “this correspondence is liable to great disturbances”) (143).
Second, it is not just the provision of types of education that is gendered, but also the very
nature of these types. Types of education should suit the future role that children can be
anticipated to play in their own families. Education for women and girls need not focus on
improving work-skills, but must rather support them to be better mothers and housewives,
contributing most effectively to the proper moral and physical rearing of their own future
children. 7 The educational needs of women and girls are thus exhausted by knowledge of
healthcare and nutrition, household economising and proper moral comportment (Pujol 3358). However, education for men and boys must produce those specialised skills pertaining to
the grade or trade that the family hopes the boy will achieve. As Pujol notes, females and
males are ascribed specific and complementary roles, in view of improving the productivity
of the male workforce as a whole.
Once again, this gendered account of the nature of education also overlaps with Hegel’s
analysis in Elements of the Philosophy of History. The ethical duties (and associated freedom)
of husband/ worker and wife/ mother require different types of investment in childhood
education. “A girl’s vocation consists essentially only in the marital relationship” ([1821]
7
Interestingly, it is implied, but not explicitly stated, that mothers will educate their daughters in ways of
healthcare and nutrition, household economising and proper moral comportment. Marshall does not discuss
whether this is a type of specialised education, excluding it entirely from the discussion.
1991, 205), and this means that a girl’s education (in line with the ethical duties of wife and
mother) should not be directed towards activities that demand a “universal faculty” for
thinking, but should rather cultivate sentiment and devotion. “Women may well be educated,
but they are not made for the higher sciences, for philosophy and certain artistic productions
that require a universal element. Women may have insights, taste and delicacy, but they do
not possess the ideal. The difference between man and woman is the difference between
animal and plant; the animal is close in character to man, the plant to woman, for the latter is
a more peaceful process of unfolding whose principle is the more indeterminate unity of
feeling” (207). “The education of women takes place imperceptibly, as if through the
atmosphere of representational thought, more through living than through the acquisition of
knowledge” It is thus suggested that girls do not require (and are not capable of) the sort of
education that is fitting for boys, and this also lends them to befit themselves for “freely
choosing” certain ethical duties. In contrast, boys’ education (in line with the ethical duties of
father and worker) should be directed towards developing the capacity for thought and
technical specialised ability: “Man attains his position only through the attainment of thought
and numerous technical exertions” (207).
2.3.3 Reasons for parental underinvestment in childhood education – an
empirical analysis of class-based tendencies
The above account of ideal forms of parental investment in children’s human capital is what
informs Marshall’s assessment of class-based investment patterns. Investing in the above
senses requires that parents do not overly discount the anticipated future benefits of their
children but instead display an ability to avoid the distraction of far smaller immediate
benefits. In other words, parents require an ability to “distinctly realise the future and
discount it at a low rate of interest” ([1890] 1920, 561). But Marshall finds that working-class
families have not developed this ability and thus underinvest in their children’s education. He
concludes that the desirable ability to apply small discounts to future gains exists only among
the middle (or artisan) and higher classes (561-4). The ability to “distinctly realiz[e] the
future” (217) is a habit that “is at once a chief product and a chief cause of civilization, and is
seldom fully developed except among the middle and upper classes of the more cultivated
nations” (217).
As to why the lower class does not display this ability to apply small discounts and thus fulfil
the moral duty to invest in childhood education, Marshall identifies the “slender means and
education of parents” (562), which is thus an “evil” that is “cumulative” (561-3). Those
parents who have themselves received but few opportunities and who thus lack a broader
view of life or insight into the nature of a higher business work are unlikely to value these
opportunities or insight for their children.
This cumulative lack of a sound education is thus the reason why working class mothers do
not assume their moral duty (but instead “neglect their family duties in order to earn money
wages” in manual work (198)) and why working-class fathers do not thoughtfully select the
most advantageous occupation for their sons (but instead bring them up to occupations in
their own grade alone). In contrast, mothers in middle- and upper-class families are more
likely to fulfil their duty to a housebound life, and fathers of the artisanal classes (and above)
are more likely to investigate opportunities for their children to develop skills in more
profitable and challenging occupations.
2.4 Family property and bequest
Marshall assumes (rather than stating explicitly) that familial duty also encompasses the duty
to save for the future, so as to leave the family on a “higher round of the social ladder than
where they began” (228). Family affection, Marshall notes, is thus the “main motive of
saving and of growth” (227-8), which, as already explained, Marshall ultimately links to a
development of the higher faculties.
Hegel offers further ethical reasons to support the institutions of family property and bequest,
which overlap with Marshall’s acceptance of these institutions. Regarding property, Hegel
explains that the family requires property in order to express its personality and existence (the
unification of subjective choice and concern for others): “The family, as person, has its real
external existence in property; and it is only when this property takes the form of capital that
it becomes the embodiment of the substantial personality of the family” ([1821] 1991, 208).
The family thus “incurs the need for possessions which are determined as permanent and
secure, i.e. it needs resources” (209), because, in the family, the “abstract property” that
“contains the arbitrary moment of the particular need of the single individual… is here
transformed, along with the selfishness of desire, into care and acquisition for a commonal
purpose, i.e. into an ethical property” (209). Regarding bequest and inheritance, Hegel
accepts that since property is commonly owned by the family, and expresses its personality
and existence, the family itself may determine how that property is to be used on its own
dissolution. “The natural dissolution of the family through the death of the parents,
particularly of the husband, results in inheritance of the family’s resources. Inheritance is
essentially a taking possession by the individual as his own property of what in themselves
are common resources” (214), the implication being that civilise social life conjoins “the
institution of permanent property”, on one hand, and “the institution of marriage”, on the
other (209).
Marshall views this property-owning and bequesting character of the modern family as
producing good flow-on effects for the “standard of life”. By promoting the desire to
accumulate, the idea of family property and bequest increases the normative “standard of
life” of the average working class family. It is also implied by the investment in the human
capital of children (see above), which itself constitutes a form of intergenerational transfer
and bequest, the regularities of which have been studied above.
Closing reflections. The promise and dangers of ascribing ethical
objectives to economics
Firstly, by grounding his account of familial economic behaviour (idealised and empirical) in
a neo-Hegelian social philosophy of self-realisation, Marshall’s account of the family
constitutes a resource in the broader task of thinking through the sorts of ethical objectives
that a social philosophy of economics might set for itself, if economics relinquishes its
orthodox, but controversial (Davis 2015, Hands 2014, Colander 2015), claim to the status of a
neutral science. As we have seen, ends are ethical, for Marshall, when they are concerned
with the interdependency of the self-realisation of the individual and that of others more
broadly (first of all in families, and then in society at large). The idealised family’s ethical
obligation thus involves increasing the labour productivity of children, on account of the
positive flow-on effects of such productivity for the “standard of comfort” (the quantity of
consumption), which then becomes increasingly correlated with a better “standard of life
(defined no longer by consumption but by the quality of activities, and the faculties that these
require).
However, returning to the critique offered by Pujol, the specific content Marshall ascribes to
idealised familial behaviour is particularly unsettling, because it involves the uncritical
inheritance of de facto institutions (a gendered division of labour, a gendered division of
education, and family property and bequest) that cannot easily be viewed as serving the
interests of women, or even the working class more broadly. Marshall himself admits, at one
point, that the purportedly ethical duties of wives and mothers involve costs to their own
ability to develop their faculties (685). Moreover, the investments that working class families
make in their male children provide a large subsidy to capital, which then benefits from a
more highly skilled and efficient labour force).
The study that has been provided of Marshall’s interpretation of the purportedly ethical
family thus illuminates the way that an attractive social philosophy about the normative
purpose of economic life can become identified with a defence of unattractive historical
institutions that appear to undermine the normative purpose itself.
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