Eli Heckscher’s Ideological Migration Toward Market Liberalism

For most of his life economist and economic historian Eli Heckscher was the most firmly principled economic liberal Sweden had. He fought against state-socialist tendencies, Keynesian crisis policy, and economic planning. In his younger days, however, he was a social conservative who adopted an almost state-socialist stance. This article provides an account of Heckscher’s ideology and its development, drawing on previously untranslated policy-oriented discourse and focusing on Heckscher’s movement toward market liberalism. It details Heckscher’s liberal insights in political economy and his fears of a government with unprecedented resources, the creation of a “Frankenstein’s monster.”