Robert L. Heilbroner - The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers 7th Edition

By Robert L. Heilbroner

T HE W ORLDLY P HILOSOPHERS

B EHIND THE V EIL OF E CONOMICS

T HE E SSENTIAL A DAM S MITH

T HE N ATURE AND L OGIC OF C APITALISM

T HE F UTURE AS H ISTORY

M ARXISM, F OR AND A GAINST

A N I NQUIRY INTO THE H UMAN P ROSPECT

T HE G REAT A SCENT

B ETWEEN C APITALISM AND S OCIALISM

T HE L IMITS OF A MERICAN C APITALISM

T HE E CONOMIC P ROBLEM
(with James Galbraith)

E CONOMICS E XPLAINED
(with Lester C. Thurow)

T HE D EBT AND THE D EFICIT
(with Peter L. Bernstein)

T HE M AKING OF E CONOMIC S OCIETY
(with William Milberg)

21ST C ENTURY A MERICAN C APITALISM

T HE C RISIS OF V ISION IN M ODERN E CONOMIC T HOUGHT
(with William Milberg)

T HE E CONOMIC T RANSFORMATION OF A MERICA
(with Aaron Singer)

V ISIONS OF THE F UTURE T EACHINGS FROM THE W ORLDLY P HILOSOPHY

TOUCHSTONE
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Copyright 1953, 1961, 1967, 1972, 1980, 1992,
1999 by Robert L. Heilbroner

Copyright renewed1981, 1989, 1995 by Robert L. Heilbroner

All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.

Updated Seventh Edition

T OUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Manufactured in the United States of America

19 20 18

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heilbroner, Robert L.
The worldly philosophers : the lives, times, and ideas of the
great economic thinkers / Robert L. Heilbroner.Rev. 7th ed.
p. cm.
A Touchstone book.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. EconomistsBiography. 2. EconomicsHistory.
I. Title.
HB76.H4 1999
330.0922dc21

[b] 99-14050
CIP

ISBN 0-684-86214-X
eISBN 978-1-4391-4482-4

To my teachers

This is the seventh revision of a book I wrote some forty-six years ago, making The Worldly Philosophers today a good deal older than I was when I wrote it. The altogether unforeseen life span of this venture, undertaken when I was still a graduate student, serves as an excuse briefly to tell its story, before saying a word with respect to important changes that have been made in this latest, and, I expect, last edition.

While pursuing my graduate studies in the early 1950s, I earned my living as a free-lance writer, ranging very far from economics when the need or the occasion presented itself. As a consequence of one or another such piece, Joseph Barnes, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, asked me to lunch to explore various book ideas. None of them seemed quite right, and a pall fell as the salad arrived and I realized that my first publishers lunch was not likely to result in a book contract. Barnes, however, was not so easily discouraged. He began asking me about my graduate studies at the New School for Social Research and I found myself talking with enthusiasm about a particularly fascinating seminar on Adam Smith that I was taking under the inspired teaching of Adolph Lowe, of whom the reader will learn more later in this book. Before dessert had arrived we both knew that I had found my subject. After my next class I hastened to tell Professor Lowe of my determination to write a history of the evolution of economic thought.

The very exemplar of German scholarship at its formidable best, Lowe was aghast. That you cannot do! he declared with magisterial finality. But I had the strong conviction that I could do itborn, as I have written elsewhere, of the necessary combination of confidence and ignorance that only a graduate student could have possessed. Between free-lance assignments and further studies, I produced the first three chapters and with some trepidation showed them to Professor Lowe. It is a measure of that remarkable man (who remained, until his death at 102, my warmest and severest critic) that after he read the pages he said, That you must do! With his help, that is what I did.

The book written, it was necessary to find a title. I was aware that the word economics was death at the box office, and I racked my brains for a substitute. A second crucial lunch then took place with Frederick Lewis Allen, editor of Harpers magazine, for whom I had done a number of pieces, and who had been extraordinarily kind and helpful to me. I told him about my title difficulties, and said that I was thinking of calling the book The Money Philosophers, although I knew money wasnt quite right. You mean worldly, he said. I said, Ill buy lunch.

My publishers were not as pleased with the title as I was, and after the book to everyones surprise began to sell, they suggested retitling it The Great Economists. Fortunately nothing came of this. Perhaps they anticipated that the public would not be able to master worldly, which has indeed been misspelled wordly on a thousand students papers, or perhaps they foresaw difficulties such as one about which I heard many years later. A student inquired at his college bookstore about a book whose authors name he could not remember, but whose queer title was, to the best of his recollection, A World Full of Lobsters.

Over the years The Worldly Philosophers has sold more copies than I could have imagined possible, and has lured, I am told, tens of thousands of unsuspecting victims into a course on economics. I cannot answer for the pains that may have been experienced as a consequence, but I have had the pleasure of hearing from a number of economists that their interest was first aroused by the vision of economics conveyed by the book.

This edition differs from previous editions in two respects. The first is that, as before, a fresh look at its pages enables me to rectify the errors that inevitably creep into manuscripts or that are revealed by research after publication. It is a chance, as well, to alter emphases and interpretations that reflect my own evolving views. These changes are small, noticeable perhaps only to scholars in the field, and not of sufficient significance in themselves to warrant a new edition.

A second change is more important. For some time I had been considering whether there might not be an important thread missing from my booka thread that would tie together its chapters more firmly than a mere chronology of remarkable men with interesting ideas. Then, a few years ago, I became convinced that precisely such a thread existed in the changing conceptsthe visionsthat lay behind all social analysis. That idea was broached in the 1950s by Josef Schumpeter, one of the most imaginative of the worldly philosophers. Insofar as Schumpeter himself did not apply his insight to the history of economic thought, I hope I may be forgiven for having missed it myself for so many years.

In this preface I do not want to discuss further this new view of the evolution of the worldly philosophythat would be like announcing the plot of a mystery novel before the action had even begun. Hence, although the role of social vision will be mentioned many times as we go along, not until we reach our last chapter will we stop to consider its relevance for our own time.