Robert Heilbroner, the bestselling writer of economics, died early this month at the age of 85.
Heilbroner was an outspoken socialist; if only a libertarian could write an introductory book on economics that could—like Heilbroner's
The Worldly Philosophers—sell 4 million copies.
He was not entirely impervious to new evidence, however. In 1989, he famously wrote in
The New Yorker:
"Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won... Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism."
In
The New Yorker again the next year, he reminisced about hearing of Ludwig von Mises at Harvard in the 1930s. But of course his professors and fellow students scoffed at Mises's claim that socialism could not work. It seemed at the time, he wrote, that it was capitalism that was failing. T
hen, a mere 50 years later, he acknowledged: "It turns out, of course, that Mises was right" about the impossibility of socialism.
On the big issue of capitalism vs. socialism, though, he did continue his rueful acknowledgment of error. In 1992, he explained the facts of life to
Dissent readers:
Capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure. Here is the part that's hard to swallow. It has been the Friedmans, Hayeks, and von Miseses who have maintained that capitalism would flourish and that socialism would develop incurable ailments. All three have regarded capitalism as the 'natural' system of free men; all have maintained that left to its own devices capitalism would achieve material growth more successfully than any other system. From [my samplings] I draw the following discomforting generalization: The farther to the right one looks, the more prescient has been the historical foresight; the farther to the left, the less so.
Reply With Quote
