A Guide to Economic Thinking
Miller, S. M.
MAIN CURRENTS IN MODERN ECONOMICS: ECONOMIC THOUGHT SINCE 1870, by Ben B. Seligman. New York: The Free Press. 1962. 887 pp., $11.75. Unemployment, automation, poverty, the gold drain,...
...I think that if Seligman had permitted himself greater space to express his own viewpoint, the reader would see more sharply the argument that he presents about the course of economic thought...
...The book is divided into three parts, in each of which there is a chronological development...
...A growing realization of the deficiencies of our economy forces us to try to understand this complicated machinery which generates a fantastic outpouring of goods and services but cannot employ our growing labor force nor move towards economic justice...
...While technical competence is important for effective economic reasoning, "the profession has bogged itself down in technical refinements and, in the main, has failed to go beyond them...
...The concluding section deals with the American institutional writers like Veblen, Mitchell, Clark, Commons and Galbraith...
...His history of economic thought is urbane and lucid, accessible to the general reader...
...The final chapter of this part, "From Realism to Technique," covers the work of Schumpeter, monopolistic competition (Sraffa, Robinson, Chamberlin), Keynes and neo-Keynesians concerned with growth, and recent developments in game theory and linear programming...
...Short-run problems are the almost exclusive focus in domestic analysis...
...Unemployment, automation, poverty, the gold drain, taxation policy have pushed economics back to center stage in American social thought...
...The analysis of the protests of the historicists — Schmoller, Sombart, Weber, Tawney and others—is followed by a study of the socialist attack, which provides a rich account of Marxian and post-Marxian writings up to the present...
...Ben Seligman, the distinguished director of research for the Retail Clerks International Union and a veteran contributor to DISSENT, has provided a comprehensive guide to the understanding of economic thinking...
...In his candid foreword, Seligman asserts that his background is that of an institutionalist and that he has "never been overly sympathetic with efforts to make economics a matter of purely analytical technique...
...Few economists are appraising the implications of the changing structure and operation of the economy...
...Seligman traces one strain of evolution of these ideas into the present-day libertarianism of von Mises and Hayek...
...The final chapter brings together English economists who reaffirmed the classical tradition: Wicksteed, Marshall, Pigou, Robertson, Hawtrey, Robbins and Schackle...
...The fascination with new mathematical tools has largely overwhelmed theoretical concerns with policy and the development of theory pertinent to policy...
...Walras, Pareto, Hicks, Samuelson and Leontief are brought together in a chapter on "Equilibrium Economics and the Unification of Theory...
...Economics should be "a study of the relationships between men: the overwhelming stress on the man-goods and goods-goods relationships may have provided the foundation for the development of certain kinds of technical analysis, but it fails to tell us much about the economic manifestations of social behavior...
...Seligman wishes to redirect eco nomics to its original focus of a political economy...
...The treatment of Commons is especially good and may help rescue his work from its unfortunate oblivion...
...Pure theory became an important trend in American thought and is discussed in the work of Irving Fisher, Frank Knight and Milton Friedman among others...
...Part II, "The Reaffirmation of Tradition," begins with the presentation of marginal utility analysis as developed by Jevons, the Austrian economists and John Bates Clark...
...Part I, "The Revolt Against Formalism," begins in the 1870's "with the revolt of the German historical writers against the seeming rigidity of classical doctrine...
...He sees economics as "primarily a social science, a study of human action in a complex environment...
...At best, tired Keynesianism is reflexively trotted out to mitigate difficulties...
...it has a viewpoint...
...Welfare economics, monetary issues and the contemporary analysis of expectations are covered...
...Any organization of material to cover 100 years cannot satisfy every reader...
...S. M. MILLER...
...MAIN CURRENTS IN MODERN ECONOMICS: ECONOMIC THOUGHT SINCE 1870, by Ben B. Seligman...
...In restricting himself largely to economic writers rather than to economic thought, he has not given a full enough account of his interpretation of the thrust of economics in the years he has covered...
...Part III, "The Thrust Toward Technique," begins with the great Swedish economists—Cassell, Davidson, Ohlin, Lundberg, Myrdal—who tried to relate theory to practice...
...His choice of the Parringtonian title is no accident...
...Old wine is poured into old bottles...
...Main Currents is a distinguished contribution, which packs almost 100 years of economic thought into an arsenal for those who want to think seriously about where we are drifting...
...it not only compactly summarizes the ideas of leading economists but places them in context, links them to others and critically assesses their work...
Vol. 11 • April 1964 • No. 2
