The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development

Abstract

DOI: 10.1355/ae23-2m The Pioneers of Development Economics: Great Economists on Development. Edited by Jomo K.S. New Delhi: Tulika Books; London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. Pp. 234. The central preoccupation of modern economic thinking over past two centuries has been question of how best to foster national economic development. Emerging in conjunction with industrial capitalism, economic thinking has given rise - after many permutations - to a dominant orthodoxy popularly known as Washington Consensus, which promotes a Neoliberal economic order based on profit motive, markets, and free trade. The current book is part of a trilogy that aims to trace and reassess of economic ideas, presenting both a critique and an alternative discourse to dominant Neoliberal paradigm. In a crucial contribution to history of economic thought, contributors to this book revisit and reassess important contributions to debates surrounding economic through analysing work of many economists that are not normally considered pioneers of economics. The authors of volume suggest that way forward for is to reject imperialist and nineteenth century English liberal economic orthodoxy and instead build on heterodox economic legacies of various economists examined in book. Indeed, this book (and two others in trilogy) is part of ongoing reassessment of as a discipline to make it less autistic and respond more effectively to needs of developing world. In doing so, essays in this collection provide a critical response to formalistic reductionism in as well as a wealth of alternative views on economic ideas from the pioneering generation of post-war decades, reflecting diversity that still characterised economic thought at that time, before orthodoxy of today was established (pp. vii-viii). This current volume is comprised of sixteen chapters, and in its introduction, Jomo K.S., currently Assistant secretary General for Economic Development in United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), contends that a re-evaluation of history of provides an opportunity to challenge current 'limited and limiting' Neoliberal perspective, whose fundamental categories of analysis are necessarily linked to particular historical circumstances (p. viii). Prabhat Patnaik, in first chapter of book, argues that division between economics and development as disciplines should be rejected, as underdeveloped economies are not merely laggards struggling to catch up with economies. Rather, their state is a result of their interaction with metropolitan capitalism, and not due to their pristine pre-capitalist condition. Prabhat Patnaik argues that developed and underdeveloped countries together constitute totality of capitalism (p. 6) and this totality must be domain of analysis of economic theory, to be treated as a whole. The following chapters reassess contributions of many different economists in their richness and variety to ideas on economic development. While Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Alexander Gerschenkron, Raul Prebisch, Arthur Lewis, and Hans Singer are normally seen as key - albeit heterodox - thinkers in of ideas in economics, other contributors in book also assess works and ideas of economists such as William Petty, Friedrich List, Alexander Hamilton, Alfred Marshall, Michael Kalecki, Nicholas Kandor, and John Maynard Keynes. Given richness of debates that chapters in volume discuss, this review focuses on two chapters as examples: Utsa Patnaik's chapter on David Ricardo and Kari Polanyi Levitt's on his father, Karl Polanyi. Utsa Patnaik, in his contribution to volume, takes David Ricardo to task and argues that his theory of comparative advantage rests on an erroneous assumption. …