Robert L. Heilbroner (March 24, 1919 – January 4, 2005) was an American economist and historian of economic thought. The author of some two dozen books, Heilbroner was best known for The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953), a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.
After World War II, Heilbroner worked briefly as a banker and entered into academia in the 1950s as a research fellow at the New School for Social Research in New York. During this period, he was highly influenced by the German economist Adolph Lowe, who was a foremost representative of the German Historical School. In 1963, Heilbroner earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research, where he was subsequently appointed Norman Thomas Professor of Economics in 1971, and where he remained for more than twenty years. He mainly taught History of Economic Thought courses at the New School.
Although a highly unconventional economist, who regarded himself as more of a social theorist and "worldly philosopher" (philosopher pre-occupied with "worldly" affairs, such as economic structures), and who tended to integrate the disciplines of history, economics and philosophy, Heilbroner was nevertheless recognized by his peers as a prominent economist. He was elected Vice President of the American Economic Association in 1972.
Though an outspoken socialist for nearly his entire career, Heilbroner famously wrote in a 1989 New Yorker article prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union:
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.[3]
He further wrote in Dissent in 1992 that "capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure"[3] and complimented Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises on their insistence of the free market's superiority.[4] He emphasized that "democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist."[3] However, Heilbroner's preferred capitalist model was the highly redistributionist welfare statesofScandinavia; he stated that his model society was "a slightly idealized Sweden."[5]
Published in 1953, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953) has sold nearly four million copies, making it the second-best-selling economics text of all time (the first being Paul Samuelson's Economics, a highly popular university textbook).[7] The seventh edition of the book, published in 1999, included a new final chapter entitled "The End of Worldly Philosophy?", which included both a grim view on the existent state of economics as well as a hopeful vision for a "reborn worldly philosophy" that incorporated social aspects of capitalism. Its content is:
The Worldly Philosophers, 1953, Simon & Schuster, 7th edition, 1999: ISBN0-684-86214-X
The Quest For Wealth: A Study of Acquisitive Man, Simon & Schuster, 1956
The Future as History, Harper & Row, 1960
The Making of Economic Society, 1963, Prentice Hall, 10th edition 1992, 11th edition 2001: ISBN0-13-091050-3 (the first edition served as his PhD dissertation)
The Great Ascent: The Struggle for Economic Development In Our Time, Harper & Row, 1963
A Primer on Government Spending (with Peter L. Bernstein), New York: Vintage Books, 1963
The Limits of American Capitalism, Harper & Row, 1966
An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, 1974, W. W. Norton, 2nd edition 1980: ISBN0-393-95139-1, R. S. Means Company, 3rd edition 1991: ISBN0-393-96185-0
Business Civilization in Decline, Marion Boyars Pubs. Ltd., 1976. Also, Pelican Books, 1977: ISBN0-14-022015-1
Marxism: For and Against. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980. ISBN0-393-95166-9
The Economic Transformation of America: 1600 to the Present. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977; 2d ed. (with Aaron Singer), 1984; 4th edition (Wadsworth Publishing), 1998, ISBN0-15-505530-5.
Economics Explained: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going (with Lester Thurow), 1982, 4th edition, 1998, ISBN0-684-84641-1
The Nature and Logic of Capitalism, 1985, W. W. Norton, ISBN0-393-95529-X
Behind the Veil of Economics: Essays in the Worldly Philosophy, 1988, W. W. Norton, ISBN0-393-30577-5
^Uchitelle, Louis (January 23, 1999). "Arts". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 May 2019. His 1953 book, "The Worldly Philosophers," which has sold nearly four million copies, is a "Profiles in Courage" of the great thinkers who shaped modern economics. So it is somewhat surprising to find Heilbroner increasingly critical of the economists he helped to inspire. They have missed the point, he says. . . . [T]heir models are too simplistic. They overlook factors that shape the economic and social system and in doing so forfeit the deep understanding achieved by an Adam Smith or a John Maynard Keynes, two of his worldly philosophers.
