----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
When people started complaining about the contest "The Greatest Economist  
of the Millenium", I first thought that they were just spoiling a fun game. 
Why  
not?   
 
As the discussion went on, however, I tended to agree with the complainers. 
Basically, I think that the period of time defined in the contest is too 
long for a  
science such as economics. 100 years, OK. The last quarter of the 
millenium,  
OK. There would be a healthy dispute, a few good candidates, but we could  
always get to a conclusion using a majority criterium.   
 
But then, a millenium? This not only broadens the number of candidates to  
the tittle, but, what is most important, it brings over the complicated 
issue of  
definining what is an economist and what is economics, after all. In my 
view,  
one cannot speak of economists before the Great Transformation that created 
a market society. Before that period, we had economic conceptions, we had  
thinkers with bright insights about the functioning of the economy, from  
Aristotle to the Islamic writers mentioned. But we had not economics, not  
even in the sense of Political Economy, hence no economists.   
 
Which brings us back to an old discussion, about Karl Polanyi and all that. 
As for Marx, as much as I admire his work (specially, I should say, the  
writings of his youth), I think he lacks the basic credential to the title: 
a great  
part of the economic community does not recognize him as an economist.   
 
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