April 27
Amartya Sen on Albert Hirschman (Foreword in The Passions and the Interests): “Albert Hirschman is one of the great intellectuals of our time. His writings have transformed our understanding of economic development, social institutions, human behaviour, and the nature and implications of our identities, loyalties, and commitments” (ix). In one of his lectures, Jeremy Adelman points out that Hirschman was a pioneer in thinking about the micro-foundations of the social sciences and a theorist of reforms and social change. He was a brilliant concept builder, able to see things differently (for example, turning theories in development economics on their head), and as Sen pointed out, he brought freshness to ideas that are more than two-hundred-years old.
We will also look at his extremely fascinating transnational life: he grew up during the fragile Weimar Republic; was a very active member of social democratic party (radical wing); was forced to go underground and fled Germany when the Nazis seized power; went to France, England and Italy; fought for the French2 army against the Nazis; volunteered to fight against the fascists in Spain; helped many of Europe’s leading artists and intellectuals escape to the US after France fell to Hitler; moved to Berkeley (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) and as soon as the US declared war he joined the US army (age 27); and was sent to North Africa and Italy as a private to translate for captured German soldiers (he did some work for the British as well). The image below is of Hirschman next to General Anton Dostler; he translated for Dostler in Italy 1945 (war crimes tribunal, the first trial against a German officer). He worked for the Federal Reserve Board (1946-1952) on the Marshall Plan but was picked up by a security review during the McCarthy Communist infiltration paranoia and was driven out of federal government. Afraid that something was going to happen to him, he visited a friend at the World Bank (Alexander “Sandy” Stevenson) to let him know that he is no longer able to work in the US. Hirschman asked Stevenson whether he could help. The World Bank offered him the opportunity to go to Colombia, which allowed him to discover the field of development economics (stayed there almost 5 years). In Colombia he served as a financial advisor to the National Planning Board of Colombia and as a private economic counsellor.
I recommend you also check out the Princeton gathering at the Institute for Advanced Study to remember Albert O. Hirschman. His family members share particularly beautiful recollections (video). One of Hirschman’s core strengths was his ability to be truly an eclectic social scientist, going beyond disciplinary boundaries. Several of the books listed are splendid short pieces.
- Albert O. Hirschman (1970). Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and State.
- In his lecture at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Jeremy Adelman noted that book made Hirschman a “global intellectual celebrity in the late 1960s”. It is Hirschman’s most cited contribution (more than 22,000 citations on Google Scholar), and is his most well-known book among economists. When reflecting on his contribution, Hirschman stated that the book “owes much to the excitement of discovering against the axiom that competition (exit) is the unfailing and exclusive remedy against all ills of economic organization”.
- Albert O. Hirschman (1991). The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.
- In the Preface to the book, Hirschman writes: “[c]oncern, stubborn, and exasperating otherness of others is at the core of the present book”; this is a “cool” historical and analytical examination of surface phenomena such as discourse, arguments, or rhetoric.
- Albert O. Hirschman (1977). The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph.
- A reconstruction of the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteen century offering a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism. Hirschman: “This book was not written against anyone or against any intellectual tradition in particular. Neither espousing nor opposing any existing body of thought, it has the special quality of standing free and of evolving freely and independently”.
- Albert O. Hirschman (1982). Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action.
- Hirschman (Preface): I am not sure that this book qualifies as a work of social science. It is so directly concerned with change and upheaval, both individual and social, that at times I had the feeling that I was writing the conceptual outline of a Bildungsroman (with, as always in novels, a number of autobiographical touches mixed in here and there)… The journey which I undertook permitted a number of elaborate side trips which yielded, among many other observations, a critique of conventional consumption theory, a better understanding of collective action, and a new interpretation of the universal suffrage”. Robert Frank emphasizes Hirschman’s basic observation that societies seemed to oscillate on a roughly twenty-year cycle, between modes of private acquisitiveness and public spiritedness.
- Albert O. Hirschman (1958). The Strategy of Economic Development.
- The core element of this book is as follows: “Tradition seems to require that economists argue forever about the question whether, in any disequilibrium situation, market forces acting alone are likely to restore equilibrium. Now this is certainly an interesting question. But as social scientists we surely must address ourselves also to the broader question: is the disequilibrium situation likely to be corrected at all, by market or nonmarket forces, or by both acting jointly? It is our contention that nonmarket forces are not necessarily less “automatic” than market forces” (see p. 63).
- Albert O. Hirschman (1981). Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond.
- Complementary reading to the books: according to Hirschman, these essays have “a strong intellectual bond” with the books.
- Albert O. Hirschman (2001). Crossing Boundaries: Selected Writings.
- This short book consists of three parts:
- Melding the Public and Private Spheres: Taking Commensality Seriously (Jan Patocka Memorial Lecture at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 1996)
- Fifty Years After the Marshall Plan: Two Posthumous Memories and Some Personal Recollections
- Trespassing: Places and Ideas in the Course of a Life (very fascinating and long interview with Hirschman)
- This short book consists of three parts:
- Albert O. Hirschman (1995). A Propensity to Self-Subversion.
- Twenty essays self-reflecting on his previous work, new forays, and his life.
- Jeremy Adelman (2013). Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman.