Thomas Sowell and his Marxist Roots: An Examination of One Man’s Intellectual Development

Abstract

This paper consists of an examination of the intellectual development of Thomas Sowell. As a youth, Sowell studied Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extensively—until he became a Marxist. Years later, however, Sowell could be described as a laissez faire economist. The paper is both an attempt to determine the extent to which, if at all, Marxism influenced Sowell’s intellectual development and an attempt to show how and why Sowell abandoned his Marxist roots. In order to bring this task to fruition, I establish a framework within which the links between Sowell and Marxism can be analyzed, concurrently with an identification of how Sowell’s current views developed out of its Marxian roots. In doing so, I attempt to demonstrate that Sowell’s study of Marxism affected his intellectual development so strongly that it still affects him today.