Historians of economic thought have always had a love-hate relationship with Paul Samuelson’s work in the history of economic thought—but there has generally been a lot more hate than the love. The hate seems to come easily. Paul Samuelson was one of the most important figures in the mathematization of economics during the 1950s and often used modern mathematics to reconstruct the arguments of earlier economists. Although he was concerned with many of the issues that have traditionally concerned heterodox economists, such as income distribution, his central tenet was always that those concerns were more effectively addressed by mainstream economics than by heterodox theory (and the concentration of heterodox economists has consistently been higher among historians of economic thought than in other fields). Most problematically, he openly endorsed Whig history of economic thought, which, as Medema and Waterman note, amounts to flaunting a “red rag” (p. 10) in the face of most historians of economic thought. On the love side, Samuelson was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century and one who influenced an entire generation of undergraduate (with Economics) and graduate (with Foundations) economics students. He certainly didn’t need to be writing history of economic thought, and yet there he was, writing about 140 papers on various topics in the history of economic thought and speaking to the profession about “our specialty” (p. 25) and “our subject” (p. 26) in a keynote address. Add to this the fact that even a quick scan of his non-historical research reveals that he was extraordinarily knowledgeable about the history of economics and, unlike most mathematical theorists, often went out of his way to discuss the historical background of the particular theoretical problem he was working on. There certainly was some love for an influential Nobel-prize-winning theoretical economist who seemed to be, in some sense, on “our” side. A love–hate relationship indeed.

Medema and Waterman have performed a great service by pulling together many of the key papers from Samuelson’s historical writings. The volume contains a short introduction by the editors and seventeen of Samuelson’s published papers, arranged generally from oldest to most recent subject matter (starting with David Hume and François Quesnay, and ending with John Maynard Keynes and monopolistic competition). Since Samuelson’s controversial 1987 HES keynote is historiographical and not about any one particular figure in the history of economic thought, it is the first Samuelson paper in the collection, followed by the paper on Hume’s theory of international trade and the rest. There are quite a few papers on classical economics—nine out of sixteen—most of them written in the Samuelson way, using lots of mathematics that was not in the original texts. There is the “Canonical Classical Model” from 1978, one paper on Adam Smith, three on David Ricardo, one on Johann Heinrich von Thünen, and two on Karl Marx. Some of these are the papers that historians of economic thought find to be most disconcerting: economic analysis as if these early economists had not only modern mathematical tools but also our penchant for deductive consistency and tight priors. The remaining six papers are from more recent economics: Samuelson’s 1968 “What Classical and Neoclassical Monetary Theory Really Was”; a paper on Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s capital theory; a chapter each on Joseph Schumpeter, Dennis Robertson, and Keynes; and a final chapter on the monopolistic competition revolution. The editors have also included a bibliography of 139 Samuelson papers that are most clearly history of economic thought. All in all, it is an excellent collection, which includes many of Samuelson’s well-known papers along with a nice collection of his less well-known, but in some ways more interesting, contributions to the history of economic thought.

The editors’ introduction provides a nice lead-in to the papers. It gives some background to the love–hate relationship between Samuelson and historians of economic thought and offers a way of contextualizing his notion of Whig history. In particular, they suggest—I think rightly—that the most Whiggish of Samuelson’s historical writings were those about classical economics and that as the time frame moved closer to when he was writing there was much more emphasis on the context, personalities, and the type of historical detail that concerns contemporary historians. They suggest that it

This certainly seems to be one of the reasons for the difference in Samuelson’s Whiggish intensity, but there also seem to be other things that might have mattered. For example, both the Ricardo papers were originally published in 1959 and one of the Marx papers in 1957, and it is certainly possible, given what we now know about McCarthyism and various accusations that were made regarding the “socialist” stance of Samuelson’s Economics (e.g., Giraud 2014), that the Whiggish—and, with respect to the labor theory of value, explicitly negative —spin that Samuelson put on his presentation of Ricardo and Marx were in part a response to the American political context of the 1950s. The second Marx paper in the volume was originally published in 1974 and that was after the publication of Micho Morishima’s Marx’s Economics: also a matrix-algebra-based rendition of Marx but one with a very different interpretation of key components like the labor theory of value. This Samuelson paper and other papers on Marx from this period may have been motivated less by how long it had been since Marx wrote, or by McCarthyism, and more by the simple fact that, as he himself often admitted, “I hate to be wrong” (Samuelson in Barnett 2003, p. 533). In any case this remains a very interesting question and there seems to be no doubt that the arguments made in the introduction are an important part of the story.

So, given that this is an excellent collection of Samuelson’s papers, effectively introduced and well edited by two respected contemporary historians of economic thought, what could one possibly say in the way of criticism? Well, frankly, there is not much. There were some little things that bothered me a bit about the way the volume was put together, but they might not be an issue for anyone else. The main one was that there was no cross-referencing to the corresponding chapters in Samuelson’s Collected Scientific Papers: it is as if the Collected Papers didn’t exist. This meant that I spent the first hour or so with the book going through and handwriting Vol. VI, Ch. 389; Vol. V, Ch. 315, etc., on the table of contents and on each of the chapters so that I had some idea of where each paper fit historically into the grand scheme of Samuelson’s writings. Yes, this was bothersome, but I am also willing to recognize that I may be the only reader bothered by it.

My only real complaint is that the volume has too much classical (eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) economics and not enough of Samuelson’s writings on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century economics. Granted, there are only two more classical papers than later papers, but because the classical papers are on average much longer, it means that almost two-thirds of the pages are on classical economics. The editors note that the publisher wanted them to “avoid significant overlap with” (p. 17) volumes VI and VII of the Collected Papers, but this doesn’t seem to be a binding constraint since Samuelson’s historical writings on both classical and more modern economics were spread out fairly evenly from the 1950s on. I have a couple of concerns about this. One is just the “red rag” problem noted above. Since most readers will be historians of economic thought, why give them so much opportunity to be discontented? This is particularly problematic since the classical material is presented first. But the main issue is not just too much classical economics, it is too little modern economics; as the editors themselves say “these essays on modern economists and modern economics … are both historical analyses in and of themselves and the source of a treasure trove of data for other historians of modern economics” (p. 10). If that is the case—and I agree that it is—why not have more treasure trove and less Whig history?

So here is my suggestion, starting with trimming down the classical papers. Surely Hume or Quesnay (not both) would be enough, and just one Ricardo paper, not three. One Marx would be sufficient as well, particularly if it was one of the later papers, since Samuelson often reminded readers of what he said about Marx in earlier papers. As for the more modern replacements, I have four suggestions, but there are of course many other possibilities. The first, and I think most valuable addition, is “Remembering Joan” from 1989 (ch. 540 of vol. VII of Collected Scientific Papers). This is a beautiful paper that explains Samuelson’s respect for, and yet (particularly in later years) frustration with, Joan Robinson. It also helps clarify the evolution of Robinson’s own work on Marx as well as some of the important issues about the monopolistic competition revolution that are not discussed in the reprinted paper on that topic. For the second, I think it would be nice to have a paper where Samuelson discusses the history of welfare economics—a subject that he was concerned with for essentially all of his professional life. The paper on “Bergsonian Welfare Economics” from 1981 (ch. 629 of vol. VII) would be a good choice. Another interesting paper, one that brings a number of different historical ideas together in one place, is the “Marx, Keynes, and Schumpeter” paper from 1983 (ch. 304 of vol. V). Finally, I would like to see a paper where Samuelson discussed the history of some of the mathematical tools used in modern economics. A good example is “The Hawkins and Simon Story” from 2004 (ch. 424 of vol. VI). If one wants to let readers know that Samuelson’s historical work was much more than translating earlier economics into mathematics, why not include a paper where he translates earlier mathematics into interesting history?

In closing I want to be clear that I believe this is an excellent volume and that the editors deserve much credit: first, for thinking of it and making it happen, and, second, for executing it so well. My quibbles about the mix of papers may just be a matter of my revealing my own preferences about the history of economic thought. But then again, when given the opportunity to share the love, why not do so?