[...]... important to him What led Karl Marx to think the contradictions of capitalism would lead to a fatal crash? Why was Thorstein Veblen so disturbed by the behavior of business managers as to want to restructure industry around engineers? As important as pure analytics, mathematics, and statistics are, if we know only the tools of the trade, we will be unable to know the place of economics within the broader... nonetheless remained stable, a stability that gave order where anarchy otherwise would have prevailed Since the system was noticeably kinder and gentler to the landholding aristocracy than to others, feudalism did not give way easily to the marketplace Still, Europe always has had a great variety of resources and climates and different types of crops and livestock so that the potential for exchanging... economics of capitalism is the economics of markets (and pricing) and capital accumulation No other system uses the market mechanism as a network The third element of capitalism, according to Heilbroner, is "political." As a social system, capitalism requires an architecture of horizontal and vertical order The horizontal maintains stable relations within social classes; the vertical maintains widely accepted... of 1 2 INTRODUCTION ideas, much less be able to explain it to the uninitiated We will be unable to engage in the rhetoric of the intellect We want to soar out of the narrow valley of rational reconstruction’ to survey a wider horizon A broader approach invites readers to range across the neighboring fields of history, philosophy, mathematics, politics, natural science, and literature It allows us to. .. society necessarily includes social rules as well Whereas the great English scientist and mathematician Isaac Newton made people aware of the natural order, the dalliance of economics with it and physical science began with Adam Smith He, too, was under the influence Newton’s universe operated with the precision of a giant clock; Smith hoped to show the social order as part of the gearing This seventeenth... of a peace treaty to seal the victory in Normandy of French King Philip Augustus over King John of England in January 1200, a marriage was arranged John’s sister Eleanor had two eligible daughters, 13-year-old Urraca and 12-year-old Blanche (girls were legally mature at age 12 and available for sealing political alliances or gaining property) As royal luck would have it, Louis, the 13-year-old heir to. .. contrast to the Blanche of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, is of both custom and command, not of passion Louis’s Blanche would never have had to say, ”I have always depended on the kindness of stranger^."^ As with Blanche and Louis, family had little effect on the obligations of a man to his lord or king, whereas the king and other lords had control over the families of their vassals... contributed to making labor a scarce resource Thus, we can see that the feudal ties that bound the serf to the land had obvious advantages over slavery The tenant-in-chief did not have to worry that his slaves would be stolen or taken from him as long as he remained loyal to his lord And the serf enjoyed at least some of the benefits of his own labor as well as a degree of protection from the pillaging barbarians... Smith called the competitive market a ”system of liberty.’’ The economy of the United States is often pointed to as an example of a competitive market system, but Americans know that this is a fuzzy characterization There are few ingredients of a customary economy in the United States today, but a large part of the economy is ”public,” which means there is a considerable amount of centralized command... by a subject wrapped in the soft cloak of biographies of figures (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, Thorstein Veblen, Milton Freidman, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Robert Heilbroner) and the warm familiarity of history- of the Jazz Age, of the Great Depression, of Reaganomics, and so on Third, I would like to . Neoclassical Ascendency and Public Policy A Notable Absence of Harmony Veblen Passes into Legend 9 The Jazz Age: Aftermath of War and Prelude to Depression The Edwardian Age and the Early. Heilbroner) and the warm familiarity of history- of the Jazz Age, of the Great Depression, of Reaganomics, and so on. Third, I would like to extend the good luck of past generations to those of the. Ricardo versus Malthus The Cold Water of Poverty and the Heat of John Stuart Mill’s Passions KarI Marx Alfred Marshall: The Great Victorian Thorstein Veblen Takes on the American Captains