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...initially intended to study writing, but came under the influence of Joseph Schumpeter, Alvin Hansen, Edward Mason, Wassily Leontief, and other economists. At Harvard, Paul Sweezy was his tutor, of whom he later wrote: "I rather doubt that Paul was ever aware of his voice within my head, but am certain he knew of such a connection with many others, like himself in search of a perspective from which one could better grasp the world" (Heilbroner 2000, 53). Heilbroner graduated in 1940, summa cum laude, in economics, history, and government.
Heilbroner later did his graduate work at the New School under the unwavering mind of Adolph Lowe. He was clear about Lowe's influence on his thought, and has dedicated almost all of his work to him. Lowe held the view that (1) Traditional Economics has lost the predictive power it once had under simple conditions, and (2) Traditional Economics must be replaced by political economy with an "instrumental" twist, i.e., "laws and rules which permit us to predict what means are suitable for the attainment of a given end" (Hutchison, 1970, 445). Although Heilbroner admitted Lowe's influence on him, he remained an independent thinker. For instance, he told of how Lowe advised against starting work on The Worldly Philosophers, but later encouraged him after he had seen a few chapters (Heilbroner 1999, 8).
Heilbroner came to perceive economics broadly. In his discussion of capitalism, he wrote: "I cover a wide range of material: anthropological investigations into early civilization; psychologically based speculations with regard to 'human nature'; various aspects of political and sociological theory; and of course a good deal of general and sometimes quite specific history" (Heilbroner 1985, 19). According to Edward Neil, "Heilbroner falls clearly into that set of economists, mostly classical, but including the leading American institutionalists, who see economics as the analysis of the engine that drives the progress of history.... Economics therefore has two tasks, both prefigured in Adam Smith: to understand the logic of capital accumulation, and to comprehend the nature of markets" (1993, 2). Therefore, we find that in his Ph.D. dissertation from the New School University in 1963, The Making of Economic Society, he went beyond the traditional exposition of micro and macro economics, expounding on the APPSH (anthropology, psychology, politics, sociology, and history) forces behind capitalism. His famous book The Worldly Philosophers, documenting the life and work of major economists, including Karl Marx, was a best seller, selling approximately 4 million copies. The fruits of his erudition came out in a review of his book The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, by W. W. Rostow, who wrote that Heilbroner's ideas belong "at the center of political economy in the century and a half from David Hume to Alfred Marshall" (Rostow 1986, 577). Only a few people can claim such stature in that classical span.
What Heilbroner gained from the classics, he transmitted to us in palatable doses in 20 books and over 100 articles. Yet, he did not feel that he had to commit to the belief of a particular school of thought. He read every work--neoclassical, classical, Marxian--and showed interest in both their literary and mathematical forms. In his popular seminar on Adam Smith, he wanted all the current theories discussed, and no limit was placed on the time to get it done. In an oral Ph.D. defense, he asked that the mathematical forms of Smith's, David Ricardo's, and Lowe's growth models be presented, and he asked questions to make sure that the verbal content of their exposition was adequately represented. Heilbroner perceived capitalism as a research program punctuated by progressive and degenerative phases. At times, he talked as if a paradigmatic shift has taken place. This is the point of view we wish to take as we cover his major works, starting with methodology.
HEILBRONER ON METHODOLOGY
Heilbroner's methodological thought is latent in The Worldly Philosophers, and made explicit in his subsequent works, especially his 1973 Social Research article. We will lay out his methodology as a prelude to his other contributions to the literature.
The Worldly Philosophers
The Worldly Philosophers was first published in 1953. Heilbroner explained that the title could have been "The Money Philosophers" or "The Great Economists" (Heilbroner 1999, 8). It's a sample of economists who "embrace in a scheme of philosophy the most worldly of all of man's activities--his drive for wealth" (Ibid. 1999, 16). The central theme of the book is the "search for the order and meaning of social history that lies at the heart of economics" (Ibid. 1999, 16). We study not "principles" but "history-shaping ideas," for the great economists have discovered a "welter of social patterns" from which we find and trace "the roots of our own society" (Ibid. 1999, 16-17). The sample of great economists we meet starts with Smith and ends with Schumpeter.
The methodological view of The Worldly Philosophers is not about Smith's maximization of individuals in society, Marx's dialectical materialism, or John Maynard Keynes' government role in capitalistic society. The works of Smith, Marx, and Keynes are central in the book, but the underlying methodological view builds on Schumpeter's view of a "vision" in the history of economics. Methodologically, the word "vision" conveys a "virtually identical" idea as Imre Lakatos' idea of the "hard core" (Blaug 1983, 37). The "hard core" is composed of ideas that scientists are not willing to give up. They are much like one's cherished beliefs. Schumpeter distinguished "vision" from "analysis." Vision is "preanalytic." It precedes logic. It is necessary in that it is "a process from which we cannot escape." It is on the "value" side as opposed to the "positive" side of thought because it deals with the way in which we "wish" to see things, whereas "analytic work ... embodies in the picture of things as we see them" (Heilbroner 1999, 308).
Heilbroner developed the notion of Schumpeter's "vision" in a unique direction. His first step gives "an illustration of which Schumpeter himself was almost certainly unaware," which relates to a distinction between consumption and investment output (Heilbroner, 1999, 308). Keynes attracted attention away from Schumpeter by this distinction, dominating economic thought in the first half of the 20th century. Heilbroner's second and more fundamental step from Schumpeter's vision went in the direction of not giving prominence to the marginal revolution, in the sense that the names of Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, and Carl Menger do not have a central place among The Worldly Philosophers. Here we can use John R. Hicks' term, catallactic, to mark the difference. It means a "vision" of economic life out of the theory of exchange, as the classics had done out of the social product (Hicks 1983, 10). "Schumpeter ... judges economists by their contribution to economics in the catallactic sense. It is the great catallactists (Jevons, Walras, and Menger, together with their predecessors such as ]Jacques] Turgot and [Jean-Baptiste] Say) who receive particular praise; while others, whom most would regard as greater names, such as Smith and Ricardo, Marshall and [Arthur Cecil] Pigou are treated somewhat grudgingly. Why does he write them down? Because they belong to the other party" (Hicks 1981, 238). We now turn to some other steps Heilbroner takes in the development of Schumpeter's "vision."
Heilbroner links his concept of "vision" with history. For their discussion of the history of economics, both Schumpeter and Heilbroner look at history. For Schumpeter, "the ocean of facts has innumerable different aspects which call for innumerable different modes of approach" (Machlup 1978, 464). He would therefore allow the "historical method in business-cycle analysis" and the "mathematical method in economic theory" (Ibid., 461). For Heilbroner, "the histories of social change, of science or literature or even fashion--in short most of the innumerable histories that can be written about America--require for their full understanding a grasp of the profound economic transformation through which America has passed" (Heilbroner 1977, 3). He described the choice of transformation thus: "Its cast of characters features business leaders, working men and women, inventors, not the usual presidents, generals, or patriots. Its plot ignores the great epic of American Democratic developments and dwells instead on the less familiar currents of economic expansion and conflict. Technical processes, such as steel-making, play a role as central as those usually accorded in political processes such as lawmaking. Enormous events like the Civil War appear only in the background; whereas matters that we ordinarily hardly bother to notice, such as J. P. Morgan's purchase of the Carnegie Steel Company, suddenly loom very large" (Ibid., 2). On the other hand, Heilbroner does not have a proper role for mathematics. He applauds the use of mathematics as an expositional tool, such as in the explanation of growth theories.
Heilbroner's concept of a "vision" is not an invariant view in society, but a "changing concept" (Ibid., 9). The United States has undergone three episodic changes recently--the depression of the 1930s, the growth period of 1945-mid-1960s, and the modern period characterized by the "absence of interest in the developmental tendencies of economic society" (Heilbroner 1990, 1098, 1101, 1106). Recognizing that the periodization of history is arbitrary, Heilbroner looks for the vision from the thought of representative spokesmen of the period. The "vision" in The Worldly Philosophers is "a thread that would tie together its chapters more firmly than a mere chronology of remarkable men with interesting ideas"(Heilbroner 1999, 9). Heilbroner continues to look for the "vision" from the spokesmen, or, worldly philosophers "whose outlook I shall seek to justify as representing the most significant views of the time span in question. In all 'periods' of capitalist developments few voices attain commanding presence" (Heilbroner 1999, 1098). The "vision" that the spokesmen espouse is grounded in history, and is not always understood. "If current events strike us as all surprise and shock it is because we cannot see these events in a meaningful framework. If the future seems to us a kind of limbo, a repository of endless surprises, it is because we no longer see it as the expected culmination of the past, as the growing edge of the present. More than anything else, our disorientation before the future reveals a loss of our historic identity, an incapacity to grasp our historic situation" (Heilbroner 1960, 15).
In summary, what we get from The Worldly Philosophers is a view of economics framed, on the one hand, by the term "worldly," and, on the other hand, by speculative theories...
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