34 J. Magnuson
Another important institutionalist economist, John Commons, refers to these social structures as “working rules.”19 Commons shares with Veblen this vision that at the core of the human self is a volitional will to “do something” but still directed by the institutional rules of the game. For institutionalists, therefore, the nature of the individual self is to be an active agent—to act in the world outwardly in some way. The specific nature of the action is contingent on whether the individual is conditioned by patterns established with the social milieu. Commons takes a holistic view of social environment as a total constellation of all the material elements of culture that include physical capital, resources, and technology, along with social elements that include values, ideology, worldviews, and the social institutions that convey rules of economic activity. The dual life of our institutional nature is that we both creating these elements of our cultural complex and are formed by them. For Veblen, the individual is subject to “permanent alteration by a cumulative series of actions. In fact, the actor becomes the product of the cumulative series.”20 We are all in continuous state of dynamic interplay between our individual selves and the social milieu, and both are in state of flux and change. Economic historian, Allan Gruchy summarizes that, “The assumptions of the holistic economists relating to the nature of human behavior are in conformity with their view of the economic system as an evolving cultural complex.”21 The questions that follow are, What kind of social environment are we being formed within? Which direction is it evolving? Does it serve the pragmatic goal of social provisioning for the population?
Institutional Economics and Evolution For the institutionalists, the whole of culture is not something that is static or fixed in nature, but is subject to change and transformation. Human behavior, as it is formed within culture, is also subject to cumulative change. As we act in the world, we change the world; as the world changes, it changes how we act in it in a series of cumulative changes and adaptations time. Economic historian, David Hamilton,
