----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]