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not headed to any pre-ordained end. Darwinian evolution is open-ended, and the direction of change cannot be foretold. There is no pre-determined ending point such as the long-run equilibrium of neoclassical2 economics or the Communism of Marxism. There is not even an inescapable drift toward improvement. A priori, there is only change. Veblen wrote that
The evolutionary point of view … leaves no place for a formulation of natural laws in terms of definitive normality, whether in economics or in any other branch of inquiry. Neither does it leave room for that other question of normality, What should be the end of the developmental process under discussion? [1919,76].
Predicting the future is impossible. No human can know the final outcome of an evolutionary process.
A second important feature of Veblen’s vision is that the evolutionary idea was to him more than just a metaphor. Veblen read Darwin quite carefully [Edgell, 2001]. Darwin’s ideas were of central importance to Veblen. Veblen was well-versed in the evolutionary biology of his time, which is something that few economists could say today. Edgell goes so far as to say that “the Darwinian influence on Veblen is even more profound than has previously been judged to be the case” [2001, 86-7].
It seemed natural to Veblen to apply evolutionary thinking to the economy, where one observes the same continuous, gradual, cumulative change as in the biological world. To that end, he sought to identify the elements in the economic sphere that are analogous to the elements necessary for evolution in the biological sphere. For