Characters in The Worldly Philosophers

Supporting characters

• Adam Smith

• Karl Marx

• Thomas Malthus

  Clergyman and economist whose gloomy population theory is examined alongside Ricardo's.

• David Ricardo

  Stockbroker-turned-economist whose theory of rent and wages is paired with Malthus's in the book.

• Robert Owen

  Mill-owner turned utopian socialist, covered in the chapter on the dreams of the utopian socialists.

• Henri de Saint-Simon

  French utopian socialist discussed alongside Owen and Fourier as a visionary of a planned society.

• Charles Fourier

  French utopian socialist whose eccentric schemes for social harmony are covered in the same chapter as Owen and Saint-Simon.

• John Stuart Mill

  Classical economist and philosopher discussed among the era's reforming thinkers.

• Thorstein Veblen

  Iconoclastic American economist and social critic, subject of the chapter on the savage society.

• John Maynard Keynes

  British economist whose theories on employment and demand get their own chapter, "The Heresies of John Maynard Keynes."

• Joseph Schumpeter

  Austrian economist of creative destruction, subject of the closing chapter on the contradictions of capitalism.