I learned a lot of economic history, well atleast one side of the history, from The Worldly Philosophers. Its author Robert Heilbroner passed away early this month. He was one socialist who had the courage to publicly amdit the failure of socialism after the collapse of the Wall. He famously said, “Mises was right” (about the socialist calculation debate). David Boaz has written a nice piece on him here. A short quote of Heilbroner; peace be upon him:
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
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The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of CCS.
