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The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers
by Robert L. Heilbroner

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82120.The_Worldly_Philosophers_The_Lives_Times_And_Ideas_Of_The_Great_Economic_Thinkers?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171012238m/82120.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/82120.The_Worldly_Philosophers_The_Lives_Times_And_Ideas_Of_The_Great_Economic_Thinkers?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/45396.Robert_L_Heilbroner">Robert L. Heilbroner</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/32383357?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars If you're a Goodreader (or a Virtual Bookshelfer?), you may have come to know and enjoy particular reviewers' reviews. For example, I've become something of a fan of the reviews of fellow Goodreaders Trevor McCandless and Ginnie Jones. I mean it as the height of compliments to say that reading Heilbroner is like reading McCandless and Jones. In a nutshell, Heilbroner surveys and summarizes the major ideas/writings and lives of economists beginning with Adam Smith and culminating in John Kenneth Galbraith. Malthus, Mill, and Marx all put in an appearance, among others, and the tone is always light, easy to read, thought-provoking, and entertaining.
 
 This book is apparently in its 7th edition, which I'll have to pick up, as the copy I read was the "Revised" (2nd edition) from 1961, thanks in no small part to my spouse's real (as opposed to virtual) bookshelf. That said, it's remarkable how current and applicable this historical review remains. There’s something prophetic in Heilbroner’s devoting 32 riveting (I’m serious) pages to Thorstein Veblen’s Vanderbilt/JP Morgan-era beliefs that (a) venal, corrupt CEOs serve more as parasites that suck the productivity of otherwise well-oiled industrial businesses (Halliburton, Enron, step right up), while cautioning against Veblen’s fascist-leaning desires to (b) place the salvation of corporate mores in the hands of its engineers/technocrats (hello, Gates-led Microsoft, Google, Apple, and every other innovation-driven corporation whose original vision gets corrupted into monolithic, monopolistic, make-‘em-buy-schlock attitudes, which “may stifle and frustrate our imaginations and emotions” a la Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times). (p. 212)
 
 I find myself greatly intrigued by the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, that ongoing investment (whether public or private) and the flow of currency from hand to hand to hand is what drives a capitalist economy (in which case, thank goodness for global markets and the communal stimulus of wikinomics). Since I can’t intellectually hold the hem of Keynes’ trousers, I don’t doubt for a minute that this is true – at least, I have no reason and insufficient math to rationally dispute it, but is that all? (I guess Galbraith, with his segregation of public and private activity into separate economies might say no, or at least not quite.) It sounds to me like a great shell game. Just keep hopes high and everything in motion and prosperity will follow.
 
 But if defense spending ultimately got us out of the Depression, we know it bankrupted the Soviet state. War is hell on both people and economies. Indulge me a one-paragraph rant/digression and excuse me for asking, but why must we squander so much taxpayer money on engines of destruction instead of promoting agents of understanding? Outreach? The arts? Education? Heck, I’d settle for more equitable distribution of good homes, food, and social welfare. America seems to have a preference for indulging millions of individual cruelties over running the risk of collective incompetence. Doesn’t seem to gibe with the Constitutional concept of check-and-balance, but perhaps I’m conflating two unrelated bases of policy. In any case, I feel strongly that economic and social policy (public or private) should promote in some positive way one or more of the essentials for life (food, shelter, clothing, personal safety, and mutual tolerance) without sacrificing one or more of another. In our mutually inconsistent priorities and definitions, there the devil lies.
 
 Rant over. Two more 'what I learned from this book' observations. First, I wonder if Heilbroner has evolved from his position of almost half a century ago that in (occasionally) regulating market forces to promote moral ends (for example, favoring the tyranny of oligopoly over that of outright monopoly, investing in social security, workfare, or unemployment plans, health and safety regulations, etc.) “society no longer obeys its economic impulse alone.” (p. 283, emphasis in Heilbroner) Why should economics restrict its definition of value to those that can be monetized (raw materials, labor, capital, goods)? Rather, why can we not include in our calculus the value of improving the lot of our neighbor, or less altruistically, just simply enjoying Life-on-Earth, the Ride? I know I’ve read this idea recently, though I don’t think I’ve been exposed to any philosopher’s application of it. It would seem to throw wide open the realm of economics into an impossible-to-predict iterative complex like the weather, as wholly incompatible individual value systems are understood to influence communal activity. (Case in point, as this Goodreader indulges in, er… invests his time in… his passion for online blather, an activity that in conjunction with the like activity of millions of others around the world presumably helps drive the engine of the internet as a whole. And thanks again to the McCandlesses and Joneses whose shared passion adds tremendously to my weekly literary consumption.)
 
 Second, I note that Heilbroner ends the Revised Edition (pp. 290-292) by classifying the spectrum of economic philosophy from the Marxists (“at the extreme left;” dooming capitalism in the long run, when as Keynes would have it, “we are all dead”) through the socialists, the “advocates of managed capitalism” (distinguished from socialists since these advocates “do not believe that capitalism must disappear, and… do not want to displace the institution of private ownership with public ownership”), and ending with the “Right-of-Center” laissez-faire capitalists (like Adam Smith?) who believe that good things (or at least no worse things) come simply of leaving God to sort out the mess however it may unspool. I’ve always been flummoxed at how this spectrum was arbitrarily laid out in a metaphoric left-to-right axis (surely not Heilbroner’s concern), and more puzzled still by what seem to me to be pointless distinctions.
 
 Here I find myself with John Stuart Mill, who (Heilbroner has taught me) wrote that, “The things are there, [we:], individually or collectively, can do with them as [we:] please…. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society.” (quoted at p. 108) In other words, our lives do not depend on economics defined as the laws of production, but on politics defined as the laws we establish and effort we exert to spread material joy irrespective of geography and immediate self-interest. So Heilbroner appears inconsistent between restricting economists’ purview to worldly (material) philosophy on the one hand and allowing this purview a spectrum defined by the level of tolerance for political (immaterial) intervention on the other. This is a red herring; Heilbroner illustrates throughout the book how the output of these major thinkers was of their time and yet resonates still. I’m happy to testify to this, as I’ve felt my horizons expand for the pleasure of their temporary company. A Goodreads proof -- check the consensus -- good books make a reader verbose.
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/897874?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Bruce's review
rating:

recommended for: everyone
status: Read in September, 2008

If you're a Goodreader (or a Virtual Bookshelfer?), you may have come to know and enjoy particular reviewers' reviews. For example, I've become something of a fan of the reviews of fellow Goodreaders Trevor McCandless and Ginnie Jones. I mean it as the height of compliments to say that reading Heilbroner is like reading McCandless and Jones. In a nutshell, Heilbroner surveys and summarizes the major ideas/writings and lives of economists beginning with Adam Smith and culminating in John Kenneth Galbraith. Malthus, Mill, and Marx all put in an appearance, among others, and the tone is always light, easy to read, thought-provoking, and entertaining.

This book is apparently in its 7th edition, which I'll have to pick up, as the copy I read was the "Revised" (2nd edition) from 1961, thanks in no small part to my spouse's real (as opposed to virtual) bookshelf. That said, it's remarkable how current and applicable this historical review remains. There’s something proph...more If you're a Goodreader (or a Virtual Bookshelfer?), you may have come to know and enjoy particular reviewers' reviews. For example, I've become something of a fan of the reviews of fellow Goodreaders Trevor McCandless and Ginnie Jones. I mean it as the height of compliments to say that reading Heilbroner is like reading McCandless and Jones. In a nutshell, Heilbroner surveys and summarizes the major ideas/writings and lives of economists beginning with Adam Smith and culminating in John Kenneth Galbraith. Malthus, Mill, and Marx all put in an appearance, among others, and the tone is always light, easy to read, thought-provoking, and entertaining.

This book is apparently in its 7th edition, which I'll have to pick up, as the copy I read was the "Revised" (2nd edition) from 1961, thanks in no small part to my spouse's real (as opposed to virtual) bookshelf. That said, it's remarkable how current and applicable this historical review remains. There’s something prophetic in Heilbroner’s devoting 32 riveting (I’m serious) pages to Thorstein Veblen’s Vanderbilt/JP Morgan-era beliefs that (a) venal, corrupt CEOs serve more as parasites that suck the productivity of otherwise well-oiled industrial businesses (Halliburton, Enron, step right up), while cautioning against Veblen’s fascist-leaning desires to (b) place the salvation of corporate mores in the hands of its engineers/technocrats (hello, Gates-led Microsoft, Google, Apple, and every other innovation-driven corporation whose original vision gets corrupted into monolithic, monopolistic, make-‘em-buy-schlock attitudes, which “may stifle and frustrate our imaginations and emotions” a la Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times). (p. 212)

I find myself greatly intrigued by the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, that ongoing investment (whether public or private) and the flow of currency from hand to hand to hand is what drives a capitalist economy (in which case, thank goodness for global markets and the communal stimulus of wikinomics). Since I can’t intellectually hold the hem of Keynes’ trousers, I don’t doubt for a minute that this is true – at least, I have no reason and insufficient math to rationally dispute it, but is that all? (I guess Galbraith, with his segregation of public and private activity into separate economies might say no, or at least not quite.) It sounds to me like a great shell game. Just keep hopes high and everything in motion and prosperity will follow.

But if defense spending ultimately got us out of the Depression, we know it bankrupted the Soviet state. War is hell on both people and economies. Indulge me a one-paragraph rant/digression and excuse me for asking, but why must we squander so much taxpayer money on engines of destruction instead of promoting agents of understanding? Outreach? The arts? Education? Heck, I’d settle for more equitable distribution of good homes, food, and social welfare. America seems to have a preference for indulging millions of individual cruelties over running the risk of collective incompetence. Doesn’t seem to gibe with the Constitutional concept of check-and-balance, but perhaps I’m conflating two unrelated bases of policy. In any case, I feel strongly that economic and social policy (public or private) should promote in some positive way one or more of the essentials for life (food, shelter, clothing, personal safety, and mutual tolerance) without sacrificing one or more of another. In our mutually inconsistent priorities and definitions, there the devil lies.

Rant over. Two more 'what I learned from this book' observations. First, I wonder if Heilbroner has evolved from his position of almost half a century ago that in (occasionally) regulating market forces to promote moral ends (for example, favoring the tyranny of oligopoly over that of outright monopoly, investing in social security, workfare, or unemployment plans, health and safety regulations, etc.) “society no longer obeys its economic impulse alone.” (p. 283, emphasis in Heilbroner) Why should economics restrict its definition of value to those that can be monetized (raw materials, labor, capital, goods)? Rather, why can we not include in our calculus the value of improving the lot of our neighbor, or less altruistically, just simply enjoying Life-on-Earth, the Ride? I know I’ve read this idea recently, though I don’t think I’ve been exposed to any philosopher’s application of it. It would seem to throw wide open the realm of economics into an impossible-to-predict iterative complex like the weather, as wholly incompatible individual value systems are understood to influence communal activity. (Case in point, as this Goodreader indulges in, er… invests his time in… his passion for online blather, an activity that in conjunction with the like activity of millions of others around the world presumably helps drive the engine of the internet as a whole. And thanks again to the McCandlesses and Joneses whose shared passion adds tremendously to my weekly literary consumption.)

Second, I note that Heilbroner ends the Revised Edition (pp. 290-292) by classifying the spectrum of economic philosophy from the Marxists (“at the extreme left;” dooming capitalism in the long run, when as Keynes would have it, “we are all dead”) through the socialists, the “advocates of managed capitalism” (distinguished from socialists since these advocates “do not believe that capitalism must disappear, and… do not want to displace the institution of private ownership with public ownership”), and ending with the “Right-of-Center” laissez-faire capitalists (like Adam Smith?) who believe that good things (or at least no worse things) come simply of leaving God to sort out the mess however it may unspool. I’ve always been flummoxed at how this spectrum was arbitrarily laid out in a metaphoric left-to-right axis (surely not Heilbroner’s concern), and more puzzled still by what seem to me to be pointless distinctions.

Here I find myself with John Stuart Mill, who (Heilbroner has taught me) wrote that, “The things are there, [we:], individually or collectively, can do with them as [we:] please…. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society.” (quoted at p. 108) In other words, our lives do not depend on economics defined as the laws of production, but on politics defined as the laws we establish and effort we exert to spread material joy irrespective of geography and immediate self-interest. So Heilbroner appears inconsistent between restricting economists’ purview to worldly (material) philosophy on the one hand and allowing this purview a spectrum defined by the level of tolerance for political (immaterial) intervention on the other. This is a red herring; Heilbroner illustrates throughout the book how the output of these major thinkers was of their time and yet resonates still. I’m happy to testify to this, as I’ve felt my horizons expand for the pleasure of their temporary company. A Goodreads proof -- check the consensus -- good books make a reader verbose.
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message 1: by Trevor

09/10/2008 02:58AM

Thank you for your comments at the start of this review – I’m delighted someone likes my reviews quite so much. It is hard to say how much I enjoy writing them, but that joy is always increased when an intelligent and close reader tells me they found it worthwhile.

I will need to try to find this book and move it up my ‘to read’ list. It sounds fascinating. As you know, I’ve recently finished reading Galbraith’s The Affluent Society and I found many of his ideas there utterly compelling. Like you I now feel I need to learn more about economics – particularly Smith and Keynes. I’ve known about Keynes’ multiplier for some time, but really do need to gain more than my current very superficial understanding.

I’m fascinated with the myths of economics, as you allude to here around the left / right divide, for example. I’d always thought of the USA as a ‘free enterprise’ system committed to the benefits of competition and prepared to face the consequences of competition, no matter how stark. So, I've watched the last week with the nationalisation of banks in the USA with fascination. I thought that it was only unreconstructed communists who nationalised banks – who could have guessed this would be what a Bush administration would be doing?

Thanks again for your comments and also for this wonderful review - particularly the last line - I think the last line is right on the money and very clever.