Not all histories are the same. Some are told in grand sweeps, others in footnotes. Some illuminate, others obscure. And when it comes to the history of economic thought — the lineage of ideas, visions, and assumptions that have shaped how we understand economies — the question arises with quiet urgency: which history are we telling?
In The Wealth of Ideas, Alessandro Roncaglia doesn’t just walk us through the past. He walks us through the ways we tell the past — and how those ways reflect the theories we hold today. He reminds us that history is not merely what happened, but how we choose to remember, interpret, and reconstruct what happened. And so, when we ask, Which history of economic thought?, we are really asking: Which vision of the economy are we willing to see? And which are we still silencing?
Two Paths Diverged
There are two dominant paths through the history of economic thought: the cumulative and the competitive. But they are not just different methods. They are different philosophies.
The cumulative view, often implicit in textbooks, tells a story of linear progress. Economics gets better, more scientific, more accurate. Older theories are stepping stones. Misguided, perhaps — but necessary. Smith led to Ricardo, Ricardo to Walras, Walras to Arrow-Debreu, and onward to today’s models. Errors are corrected, tools refined, truths accumulated.
This view is clean, efficient, and comforting. But it is also a narrowing. It treats theory as a scaffold to be discarded once the building is finished. It silences those who asked different questions or used different lenses — especially if their conclusions don’t fit today’s models.
The competitive view, by contrast, sees the history of thought as a battlefield of visions — not just answers, but different questions. Not a single stream, but a confluence of rivers, sometimes joining, often diverging. Here, Smith is not just a precursor to marginalism — he is a moral philosopher with his own project. Marx is not a footnote to Ricardo, but a critique of the whole structure. Keynes is not just a special case in general equilibrium; he is a reimagining of economics under uncertainty.
This view is less tidy, but more truthful. It restores complexity. It lets the dead speak in their own voice.
Internal and External Stories
Every history has a boundary: where do we draw the line between theory and world?
Some histories stay “internal” — tracing the development of concepts, equations, logical structures. These are invaluable. They show how ideas evolved, how debates sharpened, how methods improved. But if left alone, they risk becoming sterile. They float above time.
Other histories are “external” — placing theories in their social, political, and economic context. Why did Malthus write about population when he did? Why did Marx use the language of dialectics? Why did Keynes emerge during the Great Depression?
These questions do not weaken theory. They humanize it. They show that economic thought is not produced in isolation but in dialogue with history — with crises, revolutions, inequality, war.
The best histories weave both: they trace the thread of logic and the fabric of life. They show that behind every model is a moment — and behind every assumption, a society.
What Do We Forget?
The danger in choosing the wrong history is not merely distortion. It is amnesia.
When we forget the diversity of economic thought — its debates, its dead ends, its suppressed voices — we begin to mistake one tradition for the whole truth. We confuse dominance with correctness. We elevate technique over meaning.
How many students today know that classical economics was about surplus and class, not equilibrium? That utility was once a moral, not mathematical, category? That “rationality” has been defined — and contested — in countless ways?
To ask which history is also to ask: what have we chosen not to remember? And what might we gain if we remembered it?
More Than a Pedagogical Tool
Some defend the history of thought as a useful teaching device — a way to learn modern theory by seeing how it evolved. This is fine, but it misses the point.
The history of economic thought is not a ladder. It is a library. A garden. A field of paths not taken.
It offers not just information, but orientation. It gives us the tools to question our models, to reimagine our assumptions, to break out of inherited frameworks.
As Roncaglia puts it, it is not just about the past. It is about the foundations of economic reasoning. If we do not study how these foundations were built — and by whom — we risk building castles on sand.
Toward a Generous History
So which history should we tell?
One that is plural. That includes Smith and Marx, Keynes and Hayek, Sraffa and Friedman — not as one long lineage, but as a chorus of voices. One that is self-aware — not pretending to be neutral, but honest about its values and frames. One that is connected — showing how theories arise from lives, from conflict, from hope.
We need a history that prepares economists not just to solve problems, but to ask deeper questions.
A history that teaches not just what to think, but how to think — and how to see what lies beneath.
In the end, which history we tell is also which future we allow.
To open the canon is to open the horizon.
To remember complexity is to rediscover choice.
And to study the history of thought — with care, with curiosity, with courage — is to remember that economics is not just about the world as it is.
It is about the world as it could be.