The Discipline of Economics and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract This article examines the formation of the discipline of “Economics,” emerging from “Political Economy,” in relation to the transformation of industrial (or “entrepreneurial”) capitalism into finance (or “corporate”) capitalism in the late nineteenth century. In so doing, it explores the creation of the structure and goals of the modern disciplines of higher education in the Euro-American Victorian era. The contrast between “classical” economics of Political Economy, which was individualist and “unincorporated,” and the discipline of “neoclassical” Economics articulated by Alfred Marshall at Cambridge (among others in the late nineteenth century), which was collaborative and “incorporated” in higher education, is notable as a reflection of intellectual and cultural values in the Victorian era. Thus, the article describes the renovations and innovations of institutions of higher education as part and parcel of the rise of corporate capitalism in the late nineteenth century, particularly in Britain and the United States. More specifically, it analyzes the collaborative understanding in the emerging discipline of Economics in the late nineteenth century; the anonymous understanding of knowledge in Economics; and the institutional understanding and structure of Economics as a discipline in the emerging consumerist culture of the late nineteenth century.