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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:34 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
For what it is worth, my vote goes to Adam Smith as the "greatest
economist."
But Marx is surely a close runner-up. He is admired even by his critics.
Karl Popper, for example, in THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS
ENEMIES, wrote (p. 82, third paragraph of chapter 13) that "one
cannot do justice to Marx without recognizing his sincerity. His open-
mindedness, his sense of facts, his distrust of verbiage, and especially
of moralizing verbiage, made him one of the world's most influential
fighters against hypocrisy and pharisaism. ... His sincerity in his search
for truth and his intellectual honesty distinguish him, I believe, from
many of his followers."
Nonetheless Popper would have answered Brad DeLong's query "Does
anyone think Marx was correct?" in the negative. "In spite of his
merits," wrote Popper, "Marx was ... a false prophet. He was a
prophet of the course of history, and his prophecies did not come true;
but this is not my main accusation. It is much more important that he
mislead scores of intelligent people into believing that historical
prophecy is the scientific way of approaching social problems."
Larry Willmore
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