In the modern world — all speed and speculation, numbers and news — the past is often considered obsolete, and with it, the history of economic thought. Yet beneath every line of policy, every flash of stock ticker, every neat equation scribbled on a whiteboard, lies a silent procession of thinkers: some long gone, some forgotten, some misunderstood. It is this quiet lineage that Alessandro Roncaglia revives with precision and grace in The Wealth of Ideas, and nowhere more vividly than in his meditation on The history of economic thought and its role.
To engage with the history of economic thought is not to court nostalgia. It is to lean in closer to the murmurings that continue to shape the world we live in. For Roncaglia — and for anyone willing to listen — the study of economics is less a ladder to progress and more a dense, intricate tapestry of conceptual shifts, ruptures, and rediscoveries. It is not a straight line. It never was.
The Myth of Progress
The dominant view today, especially within Anglo-American economics, is the “cumulative view” — the belief that economics, like physics, ascends step by step toward greater truths. Yesterday’s errors are cast aside; today’s models are the best we’ve ever had. In this view, the past is a quaint museum, full of charming but obsolete tools. You might stroll through it on a Sunday, but you wouldn’t bring its contents into a lab.
Roncaglia gently but firmly dismantles this idea. For him, economic theory is not built brick by brick but braided and rebraided like a skein — with frayed edges, dead ends, and unexpected crossovers. Far from being obsolete, past ideas contain the DNA of our current thinking. Understanding them doesn’t hinder progress; it deepens it. He argues that if we want to comprehend the economy — with all its contradictions and complexities — we must first understand the intellectual soil from which our theories grow.
Two Visions: Arc and Spiral
At the heart of Roncaglia’s framework is a striking duality: the “arc” view and the “spiral” view of the economy. The arc vision sees the market as a site of equilibrium, where supply and demand dance in elegant balance, like electricity arcing between two poles. It is the realm of marginalism, of utility, of smooth functions and curves.
But the spiral — the spiral is different. It represents the economy as a living, evolving organism: production leads to exchange, leads to consumption, which leads again to production, in ever-widening cycles. Growth is not balance; it is imbalance over time. Here we find the classical thinkers: Smith, Ricardo, Marx, and later Keynes and Sraffa — not searching for perfection in models, but trying to capture the restless motion of societies in change.
Roncaglia’s brilliance lies in refusing to declare either vision “correct.” Each framework, he shows, arises from different philosophical commitments, different views of human nature and social structure. The history of thought is not a courtroom of verdicts. It is a map of possibilities.
The Philosopher’s Toolkit
So what does it mean, really, to study the history of economic thought? It is not merely to read old books, nor to idolize the great minds. It is to become aware — rigorously, philosophically — of the foundations beneath our own beliefs. It is to ask: Why do we think the way we do about value, price, labor, capital? Why do we model choice the way we do? What assumptions do we inherit without noticing?
This is why Roncaglia, echoing Schumpeter, stresses the difference between conceptualization and model-building. Before a model is born, a vision precedes it — often unconscious, often unexamined. Without history, we risk being technocrats of shallow thinking: precise in math, blind in meaning. With history, we begin to see.
Against the Silence
There is another reason this history matters, quieter but no less urgent: democracy. Roncaglia recalls the words of Władysław Kula — “To understand the others: this is the historian’s aim.” In the cacophony of modern economic discourse, where debates devolve into rival slogans and policy choices hide behind technicalities, understanding becomes an act of resistance.
The history of thought teaches us to listen. It reminds us that there were always alternatives, always dissenters. It reminds us that even widely accepted theories are temporary — not because they are false, but because they were born in a context, and our context is never the same.
This, perhaps, is its most radical lesson: that the economic “truths” of today are not eternal. They are choices, and as such, they can be questioned. And changed.
Where We Go From Here
Near the end of his chapter, Roncaglia poses a quiet challenge. Shouldn’t economists, as creators and consumers of theory, also be its historians? Shouldn’t they be equipped not just with calculus and data but with memory and imagination?
It is a fair question. In a world spinning faster than ever, perhaps the best way forward is not to rush ahead but to pause, trace our steps, and remember. Not in order to retreat, but to return with clarity.
In the end, the history of economic thought is not just about the past. It is about cultivating the humility to recognize that our present is also provisional — and the courage to imagine what might come next.
“To understand the others: this is the historian’s aim. It is difficult to have a more interesting one.”
— Władysław Kula
And perhaps, in understanding others — even those long gone — we finally begin to understand ourselves.