Richard Lewontin offers a useful definition of evolution that 
differentiates it from development. By that definition, Marx, Marshall 
and Schumpeter are not applying evolutionary thought.

"Development is a transformational theory of change. In transformational 
theories the entire ensemble of objects changes because each individual 
object undergoes during its lifetime the same law-like history. ... In 
contrast, the Darwinian theory of organic evolution is based on a 
variational model of change. The ensemble of individuals changes, not 
because each individual is undergoing a parallel development during its 
life, but because there is variation among individuals and some variants 
leave more offspring than others." (The Triple Helix, pp. 8-9)

Michael Nuwer


On 1/21/2015 3:47 PM, Rosser, John Barkley - rosserjb wrote:
>
> Let us be clear that applications of Darwin’s ideas and evolutionary 
> thought are not the same thing as “social Darwinism,” the latter being 
> a very small subset of the former.  To mention a few people who took 
> Darwin and evolutionary thought seriously during the heyday but who 
> were not “social Darwinists,” let me mention Karl Marx, Alfred 
> Marshall, Thorstein Veblen, and Joseph Schumpeter, and that is far 
> from a complete list, but does show a bit the diversity of those 
> involved in this.
>
>