A Review of the Troops: Social Economics in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Ellerman, David P. Socialization of Entrepreneurship: Empresarial Division of Cajas Laboral Popular, Somerville, MA: Industrial Cooperative Assoc., 1982. Ferguson, Charles. Macroeconomic Theory of Workable Competition, Durham: Duke University Press, 1964. Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. Inequality, Limits and Growth from a Bioeconomic Viewpoint, Review of Social Economy, December 1977. In 1991 year of fiftieth anniversary of founding of Association for Social Economics Valparaiso University Professor James Henderson was commissioned to look ahead to next fifty years and to next He was asked to edit winter 1993 issue of Review of Social Economy with theme the facing social economists in twenty-first century. I was greatly honored when he asked me to look back before he looked forward to what social economists had accomplished in our century; that is, to do something in format of Alfred Marshall's talk to Cambridge Economics Club in 1886 when he hoped to give, some estimate of preparation has been made by nineteenth century and old generation of economists for new generation of economists and twentieth century (1925, p. 295). To use occasion of turning of a century to appraise contributions to development of social economics is a task as difficult as it is interesting, for there are no guiding criteria. Selection was reduced to picking social economists who according to this writer best contributed to supplying building blocks of a realistic and personalist economy. What follows then is a review of troops -- a phrase borrowed from one of social economists on list, a truly great social economist of our century, Joseph A. Schumpeter (1950, part III, chap. 4) whose turn to be memorialized in Review of Social Economy comes in winter 1994 issue, one year after challenges issue. Noticeably, many well-known economists are left off this list, as are some close colleagues; their work has not yet made as great an impact personally as ones included or, however important, did not fit into this writer's personal overview of a workable and effective social economy. Understandably, effort is flawed by space limitations imposed by a journal article. But even a book may not do justice to such a task. An implication from Jim Henderson's invitation is clear however: it is not enough to look ahead, heritage of social economics is rich and calls out for continuous synthesis building from work of scholars who have gone before us. 1. John Maynard Keynes. The ideas are here expressed laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. difficulty lies, not in new ideas, but in escaping from old ones.... (Keynes, 1936, p. viii). With such views Keynes helps in sorting out building blocks of social economics by insisting that philosophical premises -- that is, underlying ideas -- are important to science. He convinces some of us in preface to General Theory of need to examine philosophical platform upon a body of science is built, for if platform is not constructed soundly rest of structure will not be sound. What Keynes called economics, tradition that dominates from time of predecessors of Ricardo through Marshall, Edgeworth and Pigou and to present, describes an economy so limited and special, that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to facts of experience (Keynes, 1936, p. 3). classical base rests on one of those philosophical ideas which more than vested interest are dangerous for good or evil (Keynes, 1936, p. 383). ... ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed world is ruled by little else. …