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A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures
A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures
A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures
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A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures

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Lionel Robbins's now famous lectures on the history of economic thought comprise one of the greatest accounts since World War II of the evolution of economic ideas. This volume represents the first time those lectures have been published.


Lord Robbins (1898-1984) was a remarkably accomplished thinker, writer, and public figure. He made important contributions to economic theory, methodology, and policy analysis, directed the economic section of Winston Churchill's War Cabinet, and served as chairman of the Financial Times. As a historian of economic ideas, he ranks with Joseph Schumpeter and Jacob Viner as one of the foremost scholars of the century. These lectures, delivered at the London School of Economics between 1979 and 1981 and tape-recorded by Robbins's grandson, display his mastery of the intellectual history of economics, his infectious enthusiasm for the subject, and his eloquence and incisive wit. They cover a broad chronological range, beginning with Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, focusing extensively on Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and the classicals, and finishing with a discussion of moderns and marginalists from Marx to Alfred Marshall. Robbins takes a varied and inclusive approach to intellectual history. As he says in his first lecture: "I shall go my own sweet way--sometimes talk about doctrine, sometimes talk about persons, sometimes talk about periods." The lectures are united by Robbins's conviction that it is impossible to understand adequately contemporary institutions and social sciences without understanding the ideas behind their development.


Authoritative yet accessible, combining the immediacy of the spoken word with Robbins's exceptional talent for clear, well-organized exposition, this volume will be welcomed by anyone interested in the intellectual origins of the modern world.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 16, 2000
ISBN9781400822799
A History of Economic Thought: The LSE Lectures

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    A History of Economic Thought - Lionel Robbins

    A History of Economic Thought

    LIONEL ROBBINS

    A History of Economic

    Thought

    THE LSE LECTURES

    EDITED BY

    STEVEN G. MEDEMA

    AND

    WARREN J. SAMUELS

    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

    PRINCETON AND OXFORD

    Copyright © 1998 by Princeton University Press

    Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

    In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place,

    Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 0X20 1SY

    All Rights Reserved

    Robbins, Lionel Robbins, Baron, 1898-1984.

    A history of economic thought : the LSE lectures / Lionel Robbins; edited by Steven G. Medema and Warren J. Samuels.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

    ISBN 0-691-01244-X (cloth : alk. paper)

    1. Economics—History. I. Medema, Steven G. II. Samuels, Warren J., 1933-. III. London School of Economics and Political Science. IV. Title.

    HB75.R526 1998 330.1—dc21 97-51808

    www.pup.princeton.edu

    eISBN: 978-1-400-82279-9

    R0

    TO THE MEMORY OF

    • LADY ROBBINS •

    (1896 - 1997)

    CONTENTS

    LIST OF FIGURES xi

    FOREWORD xiii

    INTRODUCTION xv

    A. ANTICIPATIONS 3

    LECTURE 1

    Introduction—Plato 5

    LECTURE 2

    Plato and Aristotle 16

    LECTURE 3

    Aquinas and the Scholastics 26

    LECTURE 4

    Pamphleteers—Money (Oresme, Bodin, W.S.) 35

    LECTURE 5

    Pamphleteers—Mercantilism (Malynes, Misselden, Mun) 46

    LECTURE 6

    Sir William Petty 55

    LECTURE 7

    Child and Locke (Interest) 66

    B. EMERGENCE OF SYSTEMS 75

    LECTURE 8

    Cantillon 77

    LECTURE 9

    Cantillon (cont.)—Physiocracy 86

    LECTURE 10

    Physiocrats—Turgot 95

    LECTURE 11

    Locke and Hume on Property—Hume on Money 104

    LECTURE 12

    Hume on Interest and Trade—Precursors of Adam Smith 114

    LECTURE 13

    General Survey of Smith’s Intentions—The Wealth of Nations: Analytical (I) 125

    LECTURE 14

    The Wealth of Nations: Analytical (II) 133

    LECTURE 15

    The Wealth of Nations: Analytical (III)—Policy (I) 143

    LECTURE 16

    The Wealth of Nations: Policy (II) 153

    C. NINETEENTH-CENTURY CLASSICISM 165

    LECTURE 17

    General Review—Malthus on Population 167

    LECTURE 18

    Value and Distribution: Historical Origin—Analytical (I) 176

    LECTURE 19

    Value and Distribution: Analytical (II) 185

    LECTURE 20

    Value and Distribution: Analytical (III) 192

    LECTURE 21

    Overall Equilibrium 201

    LECTURE 22

    International Trade 210

    LECTURE 23

    John Stuart Mill 219

    D. OTHER MID-NINETEENTH-CENTURY THOUGHT 229

    LECTURE 24

    Mill (cont.)—Saint-Simon and Marx 231

    LECTURE 25

    Marx (cont.)—List and the Historical School 238

    E. BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ANALYSIS 247

    LECTURE 26

    The Historical School (cont.)—Precursors of Change: Cournot, von Thünen, and Rae 249

    LECTURE 27

    The Marginal Revolution (I): Jevons 258

    LECTURE 28

    The Marginal Revolution (II): Jevons and Menger 268

    LECTURE 29

    The Marginal Revolution (III): Costs (Wieser)—The Pricing of Factor Services (Wieser, Clark, Wicksteed) 277

    LECTURE 30

    Capital Theory: Böhm-Bawerk and Fisher 285

    LECTURE 31

    Walras—Pareto 295

    LECTURE 32

    Marshall 303

    LECTURE 33

    Money: Fisher, Marshall, Wicksell 312

    AFTERWORD

    The Further Evolution of the Subject 321

    APPENDIX A

    Robbins’ Reading List 337

    APPENDIX B

    Robbins’ Writings in the History of Economic Thought 347

    REFERENCES 353

    INDEX 371

    • LIST OF FIGURES •

    Figure 1: Quesnay’s Tableau

    Figure 2: Ricardo’s Rentless Margin

    Figure 3: Comparative Costs and Gains from Trade

    Figure 4: Barone’s Trade Diagram

    Figure 5: Marshallian Trade Diagram

    Figure 6: Jevons’ Intensity of Satisfaction

    Figure 7: The Edgeworth Box

    Figure 8: Jevons’ Labour Diagram

    Figure 9: Menger’s Magnitude of Satisfactions

    Figure 10: Fisher’s Rate of Interest

    Figure 11: Fisher’s Exchange between Present and Future Income

    • FOREWORD •

    WILLIAM J. BAUMOL, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

    THESE ELOQUENT lectures speak for themselves, and so does the careful and scholarly accomplishment of the editors. What, then, can I hope to add in a foreword? The answer is that I was there. I, like so many before and after me, had the unduplicable experience of hearing these illuminating lectures delivered by this remarkable man, my teacher, who became my close friend. Anyone reading these lectures can, and surely will, admire their style, the range of material they cover, the dazzling intellectual brilliance, and the stimulation they provide. I can only attempt to convey, although inadequately, the flavor of the unforgettable experience.

    Central to that experience was the man himself. Tall, massive, stately, with a sonorous voice and a leonine mane that made all his students marvel at his parents’ perspicacity in providing such felicitous genes. It is sheer understatement to describe him as a man with a powerful personality. His students would find themselves unconsciously mimicking his style, the personal attributes and speech patterns which recalled an earlier, less mechanized age. Yet one soon learned that his was not a domineering personality. His sense of humor was profound, and his anecdotes riveting. He was invariably considerate and kind, particularly to younger people and particularly when few others were present to observe his acts. But even more striking were his command of the language, his clarity of mind, and his incredible erudition assisted by an incredible memory.

    An anecdote will illustrate two of these attributes, though I can tell many more. As sometimes happened, I found myself at lunch with Lionel, this time joined by Harold Laski. I was then an assistant lecturer, a rank so low that it has no U.S. equivalent. Soon the conversation became a heated discussion of some obscure eighteenth-century authors and their even more obscure nineteenth-century critics, none of whom I had heard of before. Still, I was not condemned to be left out of the conversation. From time to time as it progressed, after some thought had been expressed, Lionel would turn to me: Don’t you agree, my dear William? with a pause long enough for me to add a comment if I wished, but not so long as to embarrass me if I had nothing to say.

    He knew incredible amounts about the visual arts, opera, literature and history besides economics, but it was the magnitude of the information he had about economics that was really overwhelming, and much of that came out in the lectures. They were delivered in the large auditorium called the old theatre, a dark paneled room, poorly lit and very poorly heated. I attended the London School of Economics from 1946 to 1949, immediately after World War II. London still bore the ugly signs of the brutal bombing it had undergone. Fuel and food were scarce and closely rationed. The student body, clothed in the durable, well-worn garments that were hoarded from an ungenerous clothing ration, were as scruffy a lot as can be imagined just this side of gentility. Yet all that was forgotten as graduate students joined undergraduates to listen, spellbound, as that sonorous voice recreated for us not only the ideas but the very frame of mind of our predecessors in economic analysis.

    On later visits to London, he would generally take his delightful wife, a powerful personality in her own right, and mine along with me to the National Gallery on a Sunday morning when it was closed to the public but open to him as a member of the board. On one of the last of these visits he complained to me that his memory was no longer what it had been. Then, as we strode through the galleries, whenever I showed particular interest in some painting he would unfailingly report how it had been acquired by the gallery, whether its first owner was known and who it was, the condition of the painting, and what the X rays showed to lie beneath its surface.

    After receiving my degree from the LSE I went on to teach my own seminar on the history of economic ideas at Princeton University for some twenty years. When I first received this manuscript from the Robbins family, who continue to be our dear friends, I wondered how much I would now get out of it. To begin with a sampling, I happened to turn to the chapter on Mandeville and came across Lionel’s praise of the style and wisdom of this migrant from another country (the Netherlands) and another discipline (medicine). The urge to rush to my own copy of Mandeville could not be resisted, and the next few weeks included the delight of discovery for myself of these observations of one great mind about another.

    In the last years, all the correspondence between us and Lionel and his wife Iris were invariably signed with love. I trust this preface communicates some of that feeling.

    • INTRODUCTION •

    THESE LECTURES, which are published here for the first time, were given by Lionel Robbins at the London School of Economics during 1979-1980 and 1980-1981.

    Lionel Robbins was one of the giants of university education in general and of economics in particular in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century. He had a distinguished career in public life, as an economic advisor to government, in the management of the arts, in journalism, and in the reform of higher education.¹ Although perhaps best known in economics for his work in economic theory and methodology (notably An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science [London: Macmillan, 1932]) and on the theory of economic policy, Robbins was the leading historian of economic thought in the United Kingdom during his professional life. He produced seminal works on a number of subjects, including The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1952), Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics (London: Macmillan, 1958), The Theory of Economic Development in the History of Economic Thought (London: Macmillan, 1968), and The Evolution of Modern Economic Theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1970).

    There have been several magisterial and duly celebrated lecture courses on the history of economic thought. Those given by Wesley C. Mitchell at Columbia, Jacob Viner at Chicago and Princeton, Joseph Schumpeter at Harvard, and Edwin R. A. Seligman at Columbia are among the best known and most revered. Included in that class in the United Kingdom was the course given by Lionel Robbins at the LSE. In that course and through his published work, Robbins either taught or greatly influenced many if not all of the leading historians of economic thought of the next generation in England and elsewhere.

    The lectures transcribed here, delivered when Robbins was in his eighties, were truly magisterial. Robbins had the erudition and rhetorical capacity, as well as the motivation and loving care, to teach his subject interestingly and well. The lectures, given their varying levels of specificity, are masterly examples of concision, clarity, and brilliance of exposition. But these are only lectures, subject to the limitations of the mode of presentation, constraints of time, style of language and exclusion of both relevant content and detail. The text is not that of the treatise Robbins might have written. But the lectures do present Robbins’ major themes on the subjects covered.

    One can learn a good deal about the history of economic thought from these lectures. Although they probably are not the best initial reading for someone just getting started in the field, the reader will not go wrong in perusing them. The greatest value in these lectures will be for those interested in Robbins himself or in the teaching of the subject, as well as in how he handled numerous interpretive matters.

    The history of economics does not write itself. The economy, the development of economic thought and of economics as a professional discipline, and the historical account of that development are artifacts, each socially constructed. Accordingly, the reader will be interested in Robbins’ construction of the history of economic thought.

    In his first lecture, Robbins justifies his subject and identifies his mode of expounding it. Paraphrasing, Robbins regards the history of economic thought as of some use in understanding what goes on in both the contemporary world and intelligent conversation about economic topics. Whereas the history of natural science is not necessary for understanding contemporary physics and biology, that is not true of economics. Contemporary institutions and contemporary thoughts are shot through with the heritage of the past, and to know how various ideas originated, what their vicissitudes have been, intrinsically in the development of the subject, extrinsically in their influence on general thought about society, how they have become transformed, their implications in everyday speech—all this is important if one is to have a sophisticated rather than a naive view of what is going on. In this connection he puts to good use quotations from Mark Pattison and John Maynard Keynes. It is difficult to understand contemporary developments without some knowledge of the way in which they developed. One of Robbins’ examples is laissez faire, and in several of his aforementioned publications, especially The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, he made essential contributions to our understanding of the fundamentals of the economic role of government. If contemporary discourse on the subject were seriously informed along the lines Robbins identifies, that discourse would indeed be far more sophisticated, and less amenable to ideological manipulation, than it presently is. The reader should understand that such sophistication would not involve antecedent assumptions as to whose interest should count in government policy; it would make both the fundamental involvement and the nature of policy changes much clearer.

    Robbins next considers how his subject will be expounded. He argues in favor of using a catholic approach, which avoids the extremes of considering economic ideas to be only by-products of contemporary socioeconomic conditions and of treating economic ideas as only examples of pure thought. He aptly illustrates this position with the work of David Ricardo, whose thought was stimulated by the great issues of his day but which was conducted on terms of pure abstract reasoning in greater remoteness from contemporary conditions than any but modern mathematical economists. He also takes a catholic, or eclectic, approach to how he will arrange his subject: I shall go my own sweet way, he says, and will sometimes talk about doctrine, sometimes talk about persons, sometimes talk about periods. And, apropos of the problem of taking an impartial view of matters so intimately concerned with one’s interests and one’s daily life, Robbins adopts Gunnar Myrdal’s position of revealing one’s bias whenever one is conscious of it.

    The design and content of the lectures reflect Robbins’ conception of what economics, as well as the economy, is all about. Like most mainstream economists, Robbins concentrated on exchange, pricing (value), and the allocation of resources and therefore on the price mechanism and the operation of pure conceptual markets. Broader considerations—such as the organization and control of the economic system, the relationships between the theory of knowledge and social policy, and the problem of order (considerations of freedom versus control, continuity versus change, and hierarchy versus equality), considerations which were central to the work of such mainstream economists as Frank H. Knight and Joseph J. Spengler—often receive only tangential attention. In the case of Plato and Aristotle, for example, Robbins concentrates on the issues of communism for the ruler-guardians and of slavery—though larger implications of the division of labor are considered—and in the case of Rome presents the conventional view that there was no significant economic theorizing. Yet questions of justice (which he acknowledges) and of systemic organization and control were rampant in both Athens and Rome, and the two Greeks are known for their different attitudes toward the problem of knowledge as the basis of policy (idealism versus realism).

    The treatment of the history of economic thought thus depends on the lecturer’s conception of the scope of economics. When Robbins treats premodern economic thought as a matter of anticipations of economic thought or of economics in the historic literature of moral philosophy, rather than considering early thought in its own context and within larger concerns, he clearly intends to identify economic thought with the modern mainstream, even though post-eighteenth-century economics has always been diverse, comprised of varieties of orthodox and heterodox schools and individual thinkers. Thus, his anticipations theme is a solidly Whig history of economic thought.² The meaning of past ideas is considered largely only in relation to modern economics, for example, exchange, interest, price—and to more or less only one version of it. The economics of earlier periods dealt with problems not significantly covered qua economics by neoclassical theorists—though they constituted major topics for Marxian, Austrian, and Institutional economists, and even for Robbins himself in certain of his works (The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy [1952]; Robert Torrens and the Evolution of Classical Economics [1958]; Politics and Economics: Papers in Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1963); The Theory of Economic Development in the History of Economic Thought [1968]; The Evolution of Modern Economic Theory [1970]; and Political Economy: Past and Present [1976]). Such considerations notwithstanding, Robbins does acknowledge that Economics and what I call political economy have taken different paths and affirms his greater interest (than in Samuelson’s book Economics [1948]) in the questions dealt with so profoundly in John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy—though he also notes that Mill’s Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy is economics in the strict sense of the word, the narrow sense of the word.

    Robbins’ view of these matters is suggested by his language in going from Hume’s theory of property to his theory of money. Having spoken at some length about Locke’s theory of property and in even greater detail (in part through extended quotations) about Hume’s theory of property, he says, you’ll find Hume’s contribution, not to the background of political economy, which is what I have been talking about now, but to analytical economics. A stronger version of the statement comes earlier, just before his discussion of Locke, wherein Robbins says that he will deal first with his [Hume’s] reflections on property and then . . . proceed to the more analytical part of [Hume’s] essays which deal with economics. Such a reiterated, and strongly expressed, point is not incidental. Some would say that the theory of property, so fundamental to the organization and control of the economy and to the determination of putatively market outcomes, is indeed part of economics, even of analytical economics, and not just so much background. At any rate, all this is in aid of understanding Robbins’ notion of economics as it affected what he covered and what he said in the lectures. Robbins seemed to have exhibited some tension in these matters.

    What is one to make of the following statement: And make no mistake, that although Jevons is very high up in the history of economic analysis, he is higher still as an all-round intellect in the social sciences? The answer is suggested by a distinction coming shortly thereafter: His important works, from your point of view—not from the point of view of these lectures. . . . One surmises that Robbins had difficulty in pursuing a strategy for making his course coverage manageable; that the distinction between analytical economics (sometimes seemingly equated with economics) and political economy, applied economics, social science, and so on, was in aid thereof; and that one should not make too much of narrowing statements from a disciplinary point of view. Apropos of making the course manageable, one finds Robbins saying at one point (and implying at numerous other points) that I shall ignore all that as not being, so to speak, within the limits of the subject which I am engaged to lecture on. Of course, the solution to the problem of manageability gives effect to some principle(s) of design and thereby to some notion of the subject matter. Still, in discussing Wieser’s theory of imputation, Robbins argues that the sociological and moral influences—boring subjects . . . are relevant; they form part of a conception of . . . causation. A similar point is made in his lecture on marginal productivity theory:

    Imagine putting to a very intelligent but very low-paid wage earner the proposition that Your wages are determined by marginal productivity and therefore are just. And this very intelligent but low-paid man might reply saying, I agree that I am rewarded according to marginal value of my product to the employer, but you haven’t dealt with the reasons why my marginal productivity is so low—the failure of my parents to obtain access to capital which would have made my marginal productivity higher, not to mention all the institutional obstacles which prevent my mobility being greater, and having a wider range of choice, and having access to places where the wages as determined by marginal productivity are higher. I think that that puts paid to J. B. Clark’s simple proposition.³

    The reader is cautioned against drawing hard and fast distinctions on the basis of statements made in lectures which may have been made to establish minor points. For example, in discussing Smith’s attention to the increased costs of defence since the invention of gunpowder and the greater specialization of defence, Robbins concludes by saying, that doesn’t involve economic analysis, and I pass on—which is strange coming from an author who had published books on The Economic Causes of War (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939) and The Economic Problem in Peace and War (London: Macmillan, 1947). On another occasion, having discussed Malthus’ theory of population and its reverberations, he says that that’s the history of political economy rather than the history of economics, by the latter of which he apparently means theoretical economics; and shortly thereafter he emphasizes that the theory of population provided, together with Adam Smith, the essential background to nineteenth-century classical economics. One is not certain if anything analytical or historiographical is to be conclusively read into such passages. At any rate, the course was on the history of economic thought, not theory.

    Also noteworthy—for its admiration of an American classic and for its implications regarding political economy (rather than economics, despite his occasional narrowing statements)—is Robbins’ statement about The Federalist, which in my judgement is the best book on political science and its broad practical aspects, written in the last thousand years. He goes on to say that Alexander Hamilton perhaps doesn’t enter into the textbooks on the history of economic thought as he deserves to.

    Also revealing—that one should go beyond seemingly narrowing statements—is Robbins’ injunction that You oughtn’t to be mere economists; you ought to take a broader view of social studies than that. And anybody who takes social science seriously, even if you disagree with a good deal of it, should make the acquaintance of Max Weber.

    Interestingly, early in Lecture 3 Robbins seems to imply that the development of economics as we know it had to await the development of a primarily money economy characterized by commerce and industry; also pertinent in this connection is his treatment of certain aspects of the just price in terms of isolated versus organized social exchange.

    One has to be impressed with Robbins’ civility and open-mindedness in the lectures. This is illustrated by the several occasions in which he remarks that a commentary or statement of his own or by someone else is tendentious. His candor is illustrated by his acknowledgment that in his lectures on economic thought in the Middle Ages he is relying very largely on secondary authorities. Otherwise he reports on his own work; even here he is not hesitant to offer interpretive judgments, though he does not present them as definitive. He also notes that he gets a small royalty from his preface to a book but nonetheless does not recommend student purchase.

    A function of courses in the history of economic thought is to expand the mind of the students.⁵ Robbins attempts this admirably. The following come readily to mind: His catholicity, rather than doctrinaire exclusivism, in his approach to the history of thought. His calling to his auditors’ attention the word, and thereby the concept, natural creeping, as he puts it, into economics, thus providing a basis for the student’s recognizing its problematicity and not taking for granted some pet attribution of his or her own. His distinction between mercantilism in the narrower and wider senses. His emphasis that what a writer said can be historically important, whether you agree with him or not. His distinction between arguments advanced with reference to contemporary circumstances and those that are doctrinaire and absolute. His emphasis on the distinctions between quantitative and nonquantitative versions of utilitarianism and between simplistic and sophisticated interpretations of natural law. His caveat, apropos of Locke’s contract theory of money, that it doesn’t make particularly convincing sense to me, but it’s certainly an apologia which was bandied about in the political discussion of the eighteenth century, and you ought to know about it. His critique of modeling: models in the pretentious way in which we envelope, very often, pure banalities in this jargon. . . . His drawing attention to the importance of definitional differences in comparing different authors. His defense of J. B. Say: But there it is: give a dog a bad name and it will stay with him. And so I suppose this will go on being called Say’s Law even though the history of economic thought shows that Say was not so guilty as other people. His defense of the combination of natural endowment with circumstance and education, saying that I wouldn’t have been an academic for so long if I didn’t think that education was sometimes good to some of you. His lament of certain interpretations, saying, You have to go back to the original texts, you know, to get the truth. His indicating that issues of continuity and discontinuity in the history of economic thought are a function of how one formulates fundamental concepts, and his indicating that a particular matter is open to controversy, and reasonable people, provided that they define their terms, are entitled to claim him [J. S. Mill] on one side or the other.

    Of many splendid linguistic constructions, the following may be cited: Speaking of Oresme’s De Moneta: It is not tinged with the vices of pamphleteering. It is tinged, rather, with the virtues of pamphleteering. Speaking about Malynes: There is some continuity between the history of economic thought and even the history of economic error. Speaking about a nonquantitative prediction by Petty: Predictions in economics, you know, are not to be relied upon. If anybody tells you what will happen next year in quantitative terms, write him down as being either simple or talking without justification. Discussing investment in human capital and its assumption that lectures didn’t perish in the moment of their production, he remarks that Having been a lecturer for nearly sixty years of my life, I am not quite so sure. Discussing increasing returns, he notes the history of the automobile industry, the pioneers of this mode of travel, which takes us about quickly on Sundays but which hampers progress nowadays on weekdays.

    A few oddities are present. In one, Robbins defends Adam Smith against Terence Hutchison’s charge that his failure to acknowledge James Steuart’s work was shabby, saying that it was perfectly legitimate for Smith to refrain from giving his opponent, who was by that time returned to Scotland and who was mixing in much the same circles as Adam Smith, a free advertisement.

    Robbins also indicates that one function of work in the history of economic thought is to correct wrong-headed attributions to, and interpretations of, past writings. Nowhere was this more important than in the case of the classical economists:

    As time went on, I had been increasingly disturbed by the crudity and wrong-headedness of many contemporary conceptions [of the origins of contemporary controversy], particularly in regard to the famous classical system. At a very early stage I remember Cannan drawing my attention to an allegation by the then Master of Balliol that the classical economists had defended subsistence wages—as unscholarly and misleading a proposition as it is easy to imagine; and, as the contemporary debate on theories of policy proceeded, I felt more and more that the classical system in general, misrepresented almost beyond belief, was being used as a convenient Aunt Sally by any writer or speaker who wished to set his soi-disant enlightened views against a background of black reaction. I felt this to be quite deplorable. I was far from thinking that the classical outlook was always correct; still less that it contained any degree of finality in its treatment of the questions with which it dealt. But it seemed to me that current conceptions thereof not only falsified history, but also lowered the quality of what should be a serious and important argument—made it much less interesting than it should have been—by this degree of inaccuracy and superficiality. (Robbins 1971, p. 226; see n.1)

    This led directly to The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy.

    If one theme of the lectures is that students and scholars should aim at correct, rather than distorted, understandings of what authors had to say, another theme is that particular economic theories—for example, the theory of interest, value theory, the quantity theory—have been given varied specifications, and that one role of the history of economic thought course is to alert students to the richness of a theory beyond its contemporaneously taught formulation. Moreover, his treatments of value, capital, money, and interest suggest that each particular theory of each subject covers only one aspect and that full understanding requires both the existence and comprehension of multiple theories. Economic nationalism was but one topic to which apply his admonition that all simple generalisations in this sphere are liable to be misleading.

    On the subject of the mathematization of economics, Robbins makes a number of interesting statements. Speaking of Jevons’ Theory of Political Economy, he says that it’s fiddling mathematics, and indeed I think Marshall was probably right when he said that Jevons would have done well to leave mathematics out. In discussing Fisher, Robbins notes that of course he doesn’t confine himself to geometrical representation. He goes on with the chaste use of mathematics. (The great mathematical economists, you know, always use mathematics rather chastely. They don’t end up with conclusions which can’t be put into economic terms.) As for the device of indifference curves, he remarks that God knows what observations you would have to make in order to find any large set of indifference curves. This may be strange, coming from a theorist.

    Robbins relates in his Autobiography his preparation and delivery procedure in lecturing, at least in his early years: I wrote out my lectures in full and spent much time conning them over. I hasten to say that, when they had to be delivered, I never read them. I used as a reminder only brief summaries inscribed in broad margins (Robbins 1971, p. 104). Not only was Robbins both learned and on top of his materials, he clearly carefully planned his lectures in advance. In the lectures he remarks that Following my unswerving rule of refreshing my memory on things that I am going to talk about, I read it [Locke’s second essay on government] myself in half an hour. This is also attested to by his bringing to class copies of the works he was discussing, which must have had the effect of helping bring the works alive.

    Both graduate (doctoral and master’s) and undergraduate students, and both foreign and U.K. students, constituted Robbins’ audience in the course. Robbins expected a high level of interest on the part of his students, including some considerable (however uneven) background work, especially on the part of the graduate students. Yet he was obviously prepared to distinguish between the serious-minded among his audience and those who were not.

    Robbins is not inappropriately held in reverent awe by many of his former students and is typically spoken of with enormous respect by others. But he did not appeal to all, though the fault may well have been with the others than with him. Thus, Herbert Simons writes of meeting Robbins for the first time in 1974 in Nafplion, Greece: Lord Robbins reminded me of all the things I disliked in the arrogance of economics and its detachment from facts. Irritated by his pomposity, I replied to one of his discussion comments in a distinctly insulting way, for which I was later scolded (privately) by John Hicks.⁶ On the other hand, Mark Perlman, more positively impressed with Robbins, refers to his patrician lordliness,⁷ and James Meade to [h]is good companionship, his infectious enjoyment of all that was around him, his marvellous sense of the ridiculous, [and] his gift as a kind-hearted raconteur of the foibles of oneself, of himself and of others.⁸ In the words of William Baumol, Lord Robbins was the embodiment of all the virtues of civilized behaviour and scholarship.

    What do these lectures suggest as to Robbins’ demeanor? He clearly projected a tone of seriousness, self-confidence, and authority. Yet he is clearly also modest and restrained. He calls attention to his reliance on other authorities, to interpretive problems on which he is unable to reach a conclusive position, to limitations of his knowledge, and to necessarily abbreviated, even crude (the word is his, as is odious in its superficiality) summaries of ideas compelled by the pressure of time. He displays a considerable mastery of the materials of the field, especially of those materials he considered important and that his expertise enabled him to master. His interpretive judgments are typically sensible, though, as he often notes, not without controversy. Like all courses on the history of economic thought, his was not given for intended specialists alone. But it was one on which, thanks largely to his magisterial treatment, a specialist could begin to erect a career in a field clearly laden with adventure and meaningfulness.

    Otherwise, he was an impressive man and intellect who, like most other people, did not appeal to everyone. He had perhaps more of an appeal to the layman and the ordinary person than have most academic economists. For us, the lectures—which, among other qualities, exude charm and are sensitive lest they give offense to any student—speak for themselves. The lectures reveal not only a theoretician’s mastery of his subject but also a large mind, perceptive and sensitive, going out of its way, as it were, to avoid doctrinaire statements. The course had more or less conventional coverage and was rich and deep, laden with sophisticated interpretive commentary. As for his students, even though he occasionally chides them for their limited or narrow reading (at one point he says, I know that you don’t like me to recommend the reading of whole books),¹⁰ they apparently had great affection for him, giving him a card celebrating his birthday, surely an unusual event in academia. William Baumol has written of the powerful impression [Robbins] made upon us students, particularly through his incredible erudition, his deep and genuine modesty and his abilities as a teacher.¹¹ No doubt the generation of students to whom these lectures were addressed was similarly impressed, as will be the reader.

    Among the several leitmotifs running through the lectures is Robbins’ assumption that his students will be interested in building up a personal professional library. Indeed, Robbins’ personal library, much of which is now held by the Banca d’Italia, included some three thousand volumes, spanning the range of economic thought from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century. In this connection, it is interesting to note his role in having Torrens’ Letters on Commercial Policy reprinted: It’s [the original edition] an extremely rare book, and I coaxed the London School of Economics to reprint it, partly because I had never been able to find a copy of it myself except in museums.¹² We sympathize with Robbins here: One of the motives behind the Transaction Books series of reissues—Classics in Economics—which we now co-edit, is the same.

    The reader has to be taken with Robbins’ charming defense of his use of quotations: Adam Smith said of the professors at Oxford, who had long ago abandoned The pretence of teaching,’ that they sometimes saved their self-respect by reading aloud boring books. Well now, I hope I don’t read aloud to you boring books. I only read aloud to you, rather than depend on my own improvisation, because I think that the passages are more vivid than anything I can make them. Anyone who has lectured, perhaps especially on the history of economic thought, can appreciate his sentiment.

    Two comments in particular manifest Robbins’ decency and charm. One is his comment on J. S. Mill’s review of William Thornton’s On Labour: cordial and friendly, as befitted a review written by one of one’s friends (and should be of most of one’s enemies). The other has to do with Marx: "Marx, I ought to say, whether you agree with him or disagree with him, was probably the best historian of economic thought of his time, although I personally think—and this is a value judgement—that Marx was frightfully unfair to some of the people he criticised."

    Also charming, and instructive, is Robbins’ example to illustrate the possibility of exchange given different comparative costs. Whereas a common American teaching example is the employer who can type better than his secretary, Robbins’ is the gentleman academic who is superior to his gentleman’s personal gentleman. As Jeff Biddle said, on being told of this, both examples reflect not only comparative cost but hierarchy (and, in the American example, sexual division of labor): one could use a carpenter and plumber as an example; the difference is that the former examples capture the imagination.

    Something of the nature of the origins of interpretive fads in the history of economic thought is suggested by Robbins in his handling of John Stuart Mill’s reputation: When I was a young man there was a tradition in this school—clearly created by Cannan—of rather looking down one’s nose at John Stuart Mill. And I have no doubt that this arose in Cannan’s mind when he was a young man, and when John Stuart Mill was probably rammed down his neck at Oxford as having uttered more or less the last word on the subject. Not inappropriately, Robbins summarizes George Stigler’s list of Mill’s important contributions to theory. Much earlier Robbins wrote about Cannan’s course at LSE that it was a safeguard against immersion in the doctrines of any particular School and neglect of doctrines which already had been discovered.¹³

    The lectures were tape-recorded by Robbins’ grandson, Philip Robbins, who was then a student at LSE.¹⁴ The original transcription of the tape recordings was done by Rosemary Pedder of Surrey. This typescript, with handwritten edits by Lady Robbins and Christopher Johnson, Robbins’ son-in-law, is on file in the archives at the London School of Economics, where it was deposited by the Robbins family in 1989. When Medema ran across this manuscript while doing some research at the LSE archives in the summer of 1995, it was immediately apparent to him that this was something special, and that a wider circulation was in order. When we contacted the Robbins family about the possibility of publishing the lectures, we were informed that the original tape recordings were available, and, armed with these, we began the lengthy process of editing the lectures for publication.

    The original typescript contains innumerable errors and omissions, most of which owe, understandably, to the typist’s lack of familiarity with the history of economic thought. A photocopy of the original typescript was scanned into a computer and edited against the tape recordings by Medema, and the text was then edited by the two of us. The lectures are reproduced as they were given, with only stylistic and other minor corrections. No attempt has been made to correct putative errors. With the exception of bracketed insertions within quotations, all annotations (in square brackets) are by the editors. All of the endnotes are also editorial insertions. With the exception of quotations (unless otherwise indicated), words appearing in italics are words which were emphasized by Robbins in his lectures.

    The copy of Robbins’ reading list, reprinted here as appendix A, includes an outline of the lectures. However, as some of these lectures were not given and two of those given were not recorded, we have decided to number the lectures sequentially rather than according to Robbins’ numbering scheme. Because material treated in one lecture sometimes carries over into the next lecture, we have also renamed certain of the lecture titles (vis-à-vis the titles given in Robbins’ outline) so that the titles more appropriately reflect the contents of the lectures. In doing so, however, we have attempted to remain as close as possible to Robbins’ own titles.

    Christopher Johnson supplied a number of citations to the works referred to or quoted by Robbins in the original typescript copy, and we have completed the citation process here, including providing page citations for the quotations and a complete list of references. Wherever possible (and there are only a handful of exceptions), the citations given are to the works from Robbins’ own library or editions identical to those Robbins owned—and thus to the exact works from which Robbins was quoting during the lectures.

    The process of preparing these lectures for publication has left us indebted to numerous organizations and individuals who have assisted us in this work. Generous financial support was provided by the American Philosophical Society, which funded the visit to the LSE during which Medema initially ran across the manuscript copy of the lectures as well as a subsequent visit to Rome to check quotations and citations against Robbins’ own library, now in the possession of the Banca d’Italia. We would particularly like to thank Eleanor Roach and Mildred Cohn, Chair of the A.P.S. Committee on Research, for their efforts in making this funding possible. Additional funding was provided by the University of Colorado at Denver Office of Sponsored Programs.

    We are also grateful to Dr. Angela Raspin and the staff at the LSE archives—Sue Donnelly and Brenda Lees in particular—for their invaluable assistance during Medema’s visit to the LSE.

    We would also like to thank the Banca d’Italia and the staff of the Servizio Studi, Divisione Biblioteca e Pubblicazioni, who went out of their way to facilitate the process of quotation and citation checking during Medema’s visit. Maria Teresa Pandolfi, Head Librarian, Patrizia Pagliano, Antonio Rubiu, Pierino D’Armi, Roberto Pisani, Romano Mancinelli, Roberto Marzinotto, and Renzo De Francesco bent over backwards to assist us in tracking down all manner of materials. All of this was done with cheerful enthusiasm and efficiency, which helped to overcome both the tight time constraints on the visit and Medema’s almost complete lack of knowledge of the Italian language. A special thank you is due to Patrizia and Antonio, who came to feel like friends within two weeks’ time.

    The staff of the Auraria Library at the University of Colorado at Denver, and, in particular, the people in the office of Inter-Library Loans, provided ongoing assistance in tracking down various works quoted or referenced.

    Numerous individuals assisted us in various ways throughout this process. Kate Denning ably handled the scanning of the transcript and the conversion and cleaning of the scanned files. Therese Cogeos did yeoman’s work in cleaning scanned files, compiling the citation list, tracking down references, and assembling the bibliography of Robbins’ writings in the history of economic thought, which is included as an appendix to this volume. All of this was done with her usual efficiency and enthusiasm. The figures were prepared by Timothy Potter, and Lynn Ferguson provided her usual efficient secretarial support. Debra Medema provided extremely valuable assistance in tracking down quotations and citations during our visit to the Banca d’Italia, taking upon herself the not-too-inspiring task of wading through book after book in search of extracts as short as a couple of words. And, as always, she was an inspiration throughout.

    William Barber was kind enough to help us pin down the Irving Fisher story to which Robbins refers in lecture 30, Donald Moggridge assisted us in tracking down some material on Keynes, and Donald Walker did likewise for Walras. Andrea Salanti provided a translation from the Italian of Barone’s trade theory diagram and analysis. Susan Howson, Robbins’ official biographer, assisted us in the preparation of the bibliography of Robbins’ writings in the history of economic thought, as did Denis O’Brien, whose biography of Robbins was most helpful in this regard. Special thanks are also due to William Baumol and Mark Perlman, both for their support for this project and their suggestions regarding the editing of the manuscript.

    As always, Peter Dougherty and the folks at Princeton University Press were incredibly supportive throughout the process of bringing these lectures to publication. We are grateful to them for their willingness to undertake the publication of these lectures and for their assistance in seeing this project through to completion.

    Finally, and most importantly, we would like to thank the Robbins family for granting us permission to undertake this project, for providing us with the tape recordings of the lectures, and for all the assistance that they have given along the way. Christopher and Anne Johnson have provided an enormous amount of information throughout this process and have opened many doors for us.

    One of the many highlights associated with this project was learning how thrilled Lady Robbins was that the lectures were going to be published. In January 1997, at the age of 100, Lady Robbins passed away. She was, for Robbins, a sensitive, spirited, and intelligent companion.¹⁵ It is to her memory that this book is dedicated.

    Steven G. Medema

    and

    Warren J. Samuels

    NOTES

    1. See Lionel Robbins, Autobiography of an Economist (London: Macmillan, 1971), and biographical and other materials in D. P. O’Brien, Lionel Robbins (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), and Lionel Charles Robbins, 1898-1984, Economic Journal 98 (March 1988): 104-25; Mark Blaug, Great Economists since Keynes (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1985); T. W. Hutchison, Robbins, Lionel, in D. L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 18 (New York: Free Press, 1979); M. Peston, Lionel Robbins: Methodology, Policy and Modern Theory, in J. R. Shackleton and G. Locksley, eds., Twelve Contemporary Economists (London: Macmillan, 1981); and B. A. Corry, Robbins, Lionel Charles, in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, and P. Newman, The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, vol. 4 (London: Macmillan, 1987).

    2. The Whig approach analyzes the history of economic thought in terms of a progression from error to truth, with the discipline’s history being important only or largely as measured against the ideas of the present, rather than on its own terms or within the context in which the ideas were developed.

    3. This presentation parallels that given in The Evolution of Modern Economic Theory (1970, pp. 19-20), in which Robbins wrote that In this connection, I would like to go out of my way, here and now, to repudiate certain uses to which this analysis has been put. It has sometimes been argued—J. B. Clark is perhaps the chief culprit—that a proof that, under competitive conditions, productive agents are paid according to the value of their marginal physical product is a proof that such a system is just. This of course is a complete non sequitur, and one that is a temptation to tendentious usage. Before we can begin to discuss distributive justice in this connection, we must investigate the arrangements—the distribution of property, the accessibility to appropriate training, the availability of appropriate information and so on—which bring it about that a man’s marginal product is what it is and not otherwise, and that involves many considerations quite outside the range of the kind of analysis I am discussing. It is to be noted, however, that the leading exponents of this idea, with the exception of von Thünen, have made no such claims. If we take Marshall as providing the locus classicus of its prudent application, we find that he definitely goes out of his way to deny that it affords a complete theory of distribution, even in the narrow sense, and throughout puts it in its proper place as a partial explanation of derived demand and as an essential ingredient of the idea of substitution. Robbins twice notes the relevance of the criticism of the use of abstinence by Senior in explaining interest, a criticism of naïveté about rich people suffering austerity. Further apropos of partial theories, see below.

    4. Apropos of the history of economics—in contradistinction to the history of economic thought and theory—Robbins interestingly remarks that "Economics, as it developed in the nineteenth century, was not a subject which was a part of the obligatory reading of a well-educated gentleman."

    5. Perhaps that explains Robbins’ saying that "I have been told that meetings of the American Economic Association . . . in which trainloads of Americans go to the skyscrapers in different capital cities of different states in the United States, and there you have learned papers read, and there is a sort of cattle market for junior economists being bid for by senior economists to improve their own departments. It does not work badly, you know. Let us not look down our noses at this system. There are two ways of looking at it, but it hasn’t turned out awfully badly as regards the production of economists in the United States this century." Of course, his description of academic labor markets is incomplete.

    6. Herbert A. Simon, Models of My Life (New York: Basic Books, 1991), p. 321.

    7. Mark Perlman, What Makes My Mind Tick, American Economist 39, no. 2 (fall 1995): 12.

    8. Meade’s obituary tribute to Robbins, Economica 52 (February 1985): 3-5 at 5.

    9. Baumol’s obituary tribute to Robbins, Economica 52 (February 1985): 5-7 at 5.

    10. He himself points to the impossibility of reading everything. Speaking of Böhm-Bawerk’s theory of roundabout methods of production, he says that it was the famous ground which has occupied so many articles in my middle age that I can’t bear to think of the ones that I have left unread.

    11. Baumol’s obituary tribute to Robbins, Economica 52 (February 1985): 5-7 at 5.

    12. Speaking about the rarity of John Rae’s New Principles of Political Economy, Robbins confesses that I have often seen a copy at a club that I used to belong to, and have felt fantastically inclined to theft. Nobody had read it since it was published, but, being well brought up, I refrained.

    13. Lionel Robbins, A Student’s Recollections of Edwin Cannan, Economic Journal 45 (June 1935): 396.

    14. Most of the lectures were recorded in 1979-1980. However, certain of the gaps were filled in 1980-1981.

    15. Lionel Robbins, Autobiography of an Economist (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 97.

    The Robbins Lectures

    A. Anticipations

    • LECTURE 1 •

    Introduction—Plato

    IN GENERAL, I don’t intend to begin lecturing until six past the hour. This is partly by reason of the difficulty of passing from one lecture room to another, which some of you have to do, partly by reason of the fact that I think that fifty-five minutes on the history of economic thought is as much as most of you can take at a time, so, if I start just a little early at this moment, it is that I think that sufficient of you are gathered together, and I want to make some preliminary remarks.

    First of all, about these things that I’ve passed around [see appendix A]. Don’t let them strike terror into your hearts. If you’ve read the first paragraph, you will realise that they are not, underline not, in the American sense a reading list—a list of the things which you are expected to read. On the contrary, I don’t expect you to read one-twentieth, or even less, of the books and articles which are enumerated there. The reason for the circulation of this list is simply to save a certain amount of trouble. In my young days, when the literature of the subject was much less extensive, the first professor of economics at LSE—the famous Edwin Cannan—used to refuse to give any injunctions with regard to reading at all. His maxim was: Let them plunge in at the deep end of the library and learn to swim for themselves. And doubtless in those days that was very good advice indeed, because the economics books in the library on the open shelves consisted of two stacks such as one might accumulate in the first few years of one’s work as a professional economist, and it was interesting and illuminating to take down the books to get the smell of them and to decide which one was worth reading as part of the educational process in those days. But now the literature of the subject has multiplied so much. I’ve been told in the Economist Bookshop that one book on economics is published every three minutes in the world, and it really would be a matter for the society for the prevention of cruelty to young adults if I were to leave

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