ABSTRACT
Since 1958 Harcourt has been a strong advocate of a democratic, collectivist-based society. However, as a serious economic theorist he has necessarily had to engage in discussion about efficiency in such a system: he has tempered his enthusiasm for a socialist pattern of society (he calls it his utopianism) with an awareness that people’s assets could be wasted by bad investment strategies, imposing unacceptably high opportunity cost and levels of forced savings on the masses.
