How the Dismal Science Got Its Name : Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Corrective to Politically Correct Fables
Review: For a mind-blowing companion to, and crucial expansion of, this theme, see the superb *Lost Literature of Socialism,* by George Watson.

Nathan Rosenberg, Department of Economics, Stanford University, says: "Levy's scintillating volume offers a startlingly original reinterpretation of Carlyle's well-known characterization of classical economics as 'the dismal science.' Levy examines the positions of classical economics and its nineteenth-century Victorian literary critics, as seen through the specific prism of the antislavery debate. He argues, persuasively in my view, that it was the economists, and not the poets, who were the 'true friends of humanity.'"