Robert Lekachman
Levinson, Mark
I admired Bob Lekachman long before I met him. It was not only that we shared a political perspective. an interest in the history of economic thought. and a belief that economics is too...
...he took up economics...
...willing to do what had to be done...
...More significant for me...
...Bob continued to write and speak...
...Fearful that he would not be able to support himself, and convinced that the coming socialist revolution would result in a demand for economic planners...
...able to write enough technical articles for tenure, which allowed him...
...Whether puncturing the "scientific" posture of the economic establishment...
...as he said...
...I saw him almost only at Dissent meetings and occasional conferences...
...on call...
...Bob's writing was infused with moral vision...
...Walking to the podium he appeared frail...
...savaging Gerald Ford's anti-inflation policy (remember WIN buttons...
...A year-and-a-half ago I saw him speak to three hundred rank-and-file autoworkers at the UAW education center at Black Lake...
...Bob deplored the deterioration of economics from the grand vision of nineteenth-century political economy to its present state as a branch of applied mathematics...
...I met Bob through Dissent—in fact...
...despite struggling with cancer...
...a sense of history...
...Bob Lekachman's lucidity...
...if it weren't for the fact that when respectable economists are wrong...
...his steady work...
...It was not only that we shared a political perspective...
...He regretted the lack of historical sense among most economists...
...Yet within minutes—his humor communicating an outrage at Reaganite policy that the audience responded to—he had won over the crowd...
...he contributed political and economic commentary to Dissent...
...his humor...
...In recent years...
...He once told me that as a young man he aspired to a career as a writer...
...He was always available...
...Bob represented the idea of the economist as public intellectual—one conversant with specialists but whose writings addressed a larger public...
...Bob embodied the ethic that has made it possible for Dissent —with a small staff and little money—to exist...
...and concern for the less fortunate...
...and a belief that economics is too important to be left to the academic specialist...
...survive as examples to emulate...
...He was, he said with a wry smile, correct about his fear of earning a living as a writer, but well ahead of his time in estimating the need for economic planners...
...Here was an economist (there aren't many of them) these workers felt comfortable with...
...For over twenty years...
...deriding the timid liberalism of Jimmy Carter or destroying the exaggerated claims of supply-side theorists...
...an interest in the history of economic thought...
...Michigan...
...writing in his polemical mode...
...It wouldn't matter so much, he used to say...
...other people usually suffer the consequences...
...MARK LEVINSON SPRING • 1989 • 285...
...deflating Nixon's pretensions...
...Bob was an "outsider" in the economics profession...
...to revert to my natural polemical mode...
Vol. 36 • April 1989 • No. 2
