Hilarious anecdote offered by the RGE Monitor via Robert Heilbroner on the antics of Joseph Schumpeter, who is Austrian by nationality but not fully when it comes to economic theory, so it wouldn’t be right to point to his ideas as indicative of Austrian opinion. Nonetheless, Schumpeter is right about this one. Heilbroner reports that at Harvard, Schumpeter enjoyed telling people in 1932 that the depression “is for capitalism like a good, cold douch,” by which he meant shower of course. RGE comments that this is “why Keynesians dominate in public policy decision-making.”
I suppose it’s true that people are far more willing to listen to economists who claim that they can turn stones to bread. The problem is that it isn’t true.
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I read a book by him called the Worldly Philosophers – it was interesting.
“Though an outspoken socialist for nearly his entire career, Heilbroner famously wrote in a 1989 New Yorker article:
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.[1]
He further explained in Dissent in 1992 that “capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure”[2] and complimented Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises on their insistence of the free market’s superiority. He emphasized that “democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist.”[3]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Heilbroner
Eric, thanks for the info on Heilbroner. I read his book, also, and it’s good to know that some people will eventually come around to the truth, though it may take them half a century to do so.
The Worldly Philosophers is charmingly written and a fun read if you don’t already know much about the history of economic thought.
My very first intro to macro class was organized around “The Worldly Philosophers”. Luckily I had already read a lot of Mises’ work.
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