Review of Robert L. Heilbroner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (1986)

In this review I carried forward a stance toward Marxism that had been established during my freshman days at Yale (1932-1933) when I wrote a long paper about a figure from the French Revolution. In the course of that exercise I read a good many histories of the French Revolution including studies by various kinds of Marxists, which led me into reading Marx himself. I emerged respectful of the questions he posed, but in profound disagreement with his answers: notably, his view of society as a superstructure determined uniquely by changing technological and property relations and his consequent view of individuals as simply components of social classes or masses.