Institutions and Progress

Much of the research for this paper also connects with the work of the ESRC funded NEXSUS project coordinated by Peter Allen. I am particularly grateful to Richard Nelson and an anonymous referee for their constructive and helpful comments on a previous draft. An insistent theme in Richard Nelson's work is that of 'capitalism as an engine of progress'. In this paper I explore this idea through a sequence of his writing, distinguishing progress as outcome from progress as instituted process. This leads to a deeper issue within this Nelsonian theme, namely the incompatibility between progress and equilibrium. I argue that evolving systems are ordered and coordinated but they are never in equilibrium. Capitalism is restless – it always generates change from within and the proximate source of this progressive tendency is the uneven accumulation of knowledge. Capitalism is restless because knowledge is restless.