Predestined to heterodoxy or how I became a heterodox economist 1

How I ended up being a heterodox economist did not involve a flash of light on the road to Damascus or some similar event. Rather, in hindsight, I was ‘predisposed’ to becoming one. The journey started before I was born. My father’s father was a lawyer working in Washington D.C. for the federal government in the 1920s and early 1930s. Much of his time was spent writing legislation for Congressmen, especially in the area of agriculture price supports. As a result he was called upon by the Roosevelt Administration in 1933 to help write the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was an attempt to establish a governmental mechanism to manage and stabilize the farm sector. Consequently, for my father, the 1930s was not a time of desperation, but being a child growing up in an affluent home where important figures from the Roosevelt Administration visited and discussed pressing economic and social issues. However, the Great Depression did catch his attention and he became interested in Marxism (and nearly joined the Communist Party at one time). He acquired many of the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin; and his parents contributed to the collection by, for example, giving my father for his 20th birthday in 1944 Lenin’s State and Revolution. ²