ABSTRACT
Leszek Kolakowski started his great book on Marx with a statement of what should be, but apparently is not, blindingly obvious – Karl Marx was a German philosopher (1978: 1). We begin with a correspondingly obvious but equally neglected truth; John Ramsay McCulloch was a Scottish economist. The neglect of this truth seems to spring from an Anglocentric approach to the history of economics, dating at least from Alfred Marshall and extending through most of last century, an approach which all too easily became Ricardocentric. As will, however, become clear from the following account, Ricardo’s influence upon McCulloch was one of many during a long professional life; it was, though for a time deep, transient; and to understand McCulloch’s position as a whole it is necessary to look at the very wide range of influences upon him.
