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

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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.'"

A revisionistic view of many of the orgins of the central beliefs of classical economics.

Economics has long been called 'the dismal science' supposedly as a response to the writings of Malthus, who grimly predicted that starvation would result as projected population growth exceeded the rate of increase in the food supply. And because economics so often discusses the less plesant aspects of life such as depressions, starvations and the like.

The author of this book looks at some of the writings of the time and presents a view of the time where slavery was being held as morally correct in that the 'colored races' need the protection of the white. He quotes heavily from Thomas Carlyle's 1849 paper 'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.' Carlyle was arguing that freeing the slaves had led to a moral and economic decline.