Perspectives on Michael A. Bernstein's A Perilous Progress: Economists and Public Purpose in Twentieth-Century America*

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Notes

 * A Perilous Progress was recently republished in paperback by Princeton University Press.

Economists, however, have retained significant influence in the collection of economic numbers, whose categories and organization remain central to public policy discourse. Indeed, Bernstein writes rather little about the crucial importance of statistics in the twentieth century as a whole. For instance, the collection of Gross National Product (GNP) becomes somewhat lost in the account of Keynes's influences.

This is Davis's argument.

This is Coats's argument.

In addition, the concept of ‘public purpose’ in Bernstein's title is characteristically vague — much more so than ‘public policy.’ Many public purposes could be enumerated, but the idea would be woolly.

For readers unfamiliar with the history of academic freedom in America the following reading list may be helpful: Furner (1975), Hofstadler and Metzger (1955), Schrecker (1986), Coats (1998, 2001). Most of the items, but not all, are in Bernstein's bibliography, and make for stimulating, dramatic, and, at times, shocking reading.

In our opinion, Bernstein seeks an authoritative community, but is vague about the meaning of this.

We suspect that Bernstein consciously or unconsciously believes economics is a key profession that should have a major role in the public policy process. However, like many critics, the author is ambivalent about economic theories and techniques.

This is Sent's argument.

This is Backhouse's argument. Some of his arguments are also discussed in Backhouse (2003).

This is Sent's argument.

A further manifestation of which would be the failure of the Cambridge, UK critique of the concept of aggregate capital to acquire any significant purchase in the US

This is Davis's argument.

This is Backhouse's argument, along with the subsequent paragraphs on this topic.

Bernstein seems to argue at points that the economists were entitled to be respected and not ignored. Yet, given the many attacks on individual economists, they would probably welcome ‘being ignored.’

In his Prologue, Bernstein points out ‘that this is a study resolutely focused on American economics’ (p. 5) and that ‘[r]ethinking the history of the American economics profession is thus very much tied up with rethinking the history of modern American culture itself’ (p. 3).

This is Davis's argument.

This is Sent's argument.

This is Hagemann's argument, along with the subsequent paragraphs on this topic.

See, e.g., Coser (1984) for a substantial treatment concerning the impact in economics, the social sciences and the humanities.

Morgenstern (1959) later made a major contribution to the conception of the Polaris submarine strategy that he substantiated in his The Question of National Defense, but he always remained critical towards general equilibrium theory as the highbrow version of neoclassical economics.

Modigliani had emigrated from fascist Italy in 1939 and come to the New School, where Marschak had the decisive intellectual influence on him.

Baran got his PhD from the University of Berlin in 1932 with his supervisor Emil Lederer, who became the Founding Dean of the ‘University in Exile’ at the New School in the subsequent year.

Block had written his PhD thesis on Marxian monetary theory with Karl Diehl at the University of Freiburg in 1926, came as an émigré to the United States in 1940 where he left the New School for Washington in 1944 and after a short time became Section Head of the OSS department for the Soviet Union. Block moved to the State Department in 1950 where he was one of the leading experts for Eastern Europe until his retirement in 1973.

The Notes occupy so many pages of the book that the serious reader must feel obliged to read them. They are often interesting, and in some parts they constitute a detailed supplementary commentary on the text. Many of the longer Notes present the author's effort to demonstrate the historical and social context of his story.