Making Modern Economics

Making Modern Economics, by Mark Skousen (ME Sharpe, Armonk, N.Y., 2001), pp. 495

The 2001 Higgins Memorial Lecture was delivered by Mark Skousen. It was quite a performance. Skousen danced along with his wife to tunes representing the great economists, recounted stories from his CIA days, and

told how he had taken up the task of writing a book to counter the influence of Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers, after being frustrated by Murray Rothbard's failure to deliver his own counter-blast, and with Rothbard's low view of Adam Smith. (Rothbard's incomplete two-volume work has been recently published by Edward Elgar.) After all, Skousen's Mormon relatives felt Adam Smith was a Godly man because he was a friend of capitalism (American style, of course). Skousen's really serious argument for capitalism, though, was a graph with an upward sloping line - no labels of axes in sight - which was briefly whisked across the overhead projector by Skousen's wife.

At least I knew reviewing the book would not be dull reading! Skousen avoids recent arguments among historians of economics over Whig approaches to history versus contextual approaches in favour of his own totem pole approach. This is best explained by Fig. (B) on page 8, which shows a totem pole with Adam Smith serenely looking out across the landscape from top, and rather sour looking Keynes and Marx down the bottom. Skousen adds 'today's histories of economics lack a running thread of truth, a consistent point of view which allows the student to realise when an academic scribbler is heading off the straight and narrow path (p. 6)'. We are never left wondering where Skousen stands. Smith is selected as the book's hero and reference point because he 'advocated maximum economic freedom, in the microeconomic behaviour of individuals and the firm, and minimal macroeconomic intervention by the state (p. 7). Although Skousen's agenda is very upfront the remainder of the book is by no means predictable. The Austrians and the Chicago school emerge later as subsidiary heroes, and the twentieth century development of American economics receives more attention than most other histories of economic thought. just at the point when one starts to feel it is getting a bit predictable Skousen's boxes and biographical snippets enliven the book. For instance 'Famous Economists' Signatures: Can You Tell Which One is the Pessimist?', 'Phrenology' (i.e. examining skulls to determine character), 'Why Did Marx Grow Such a Long Beard?', 'The New Palgrave: A Marxist/Sraffian Plot?' etc. There is lots of gossip about economists' sex lives and personal finances, lots of photos (including Skousen at the tomb of his hero Adam Smith). And never a dull moment.