Economists, social scientists, and the reconstruction of the world order in interwar Britain

Abstract

The early decades of the 20th century witnessed much discussion about the separation between positive and normative analysis, and the legitimacy of the prescriptive claims often advanced by social scientists. The paper investigates British debates about the reconstruction of the world order as a topic that brought together social analysts with very different backgrounds, and had the LSE as one of its focal points. The urgency of international politics at the time made it more difficult to sustain a clear distinction between positive analysis and policy prescription. To Lionel Robbins, the topic belonged to the applied domain of political economy.

Keywords:

• Social sciences
• political economy
• expertise
• London School of Economics
• international politics

JEL CODES:

• B20
• B41

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union (grant number 565337-EPP-1-2015-1-BR-EPPJMO-MODULE). The authors would like to thank Bruce Caldwell, Rogério Arthmar, and Constance André-Aigret for their comments on a previous version of this manuscript, and two anonymous referees from EJHET for their very insightful suggestions. Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak would like to thank FAPEMIG, CNPq, and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais for their financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Most of the writing for the book was completed while Myrdal and his wife were in London, in 1929, under a Rockefeller fellowship.

2 Mannheim himself was an admirer of the book, which he tried, unsuccessfully, to get translated into English in 1945 (Swedberg 1990, pp. xix–xx).

3 For an overview of Russell’s activities at the time, see Clark (1975, chs. 15-18).

4 The proximity between Hobson and the LSE has been noted before. Kenneth Boulding argues that Hobson might “almost be placed in the London School group” (1956, p. 3), whereas Malcolm Rutherford (2007) indicates how Hobson was part a network of British dissenters – including the Webbs, Cannan, Tawney, and Beveridge – who established close working relationships with American institutionalists during the interwar years.

5 After obtaining a degree in history in 1914 at Oxford, Laski went on to teach at McGill University in Montreal. In 1916, he became an instructor at Harvard, at which point he was already working on political science. He met Wallas while in the United States, who was then working at the New School for Social Research. Laski returned to England in 1920, when Beveridge hired him following a recommendation from Wallas (Dahrendorf 1995, p. 225).

6 Mannheim was one of the hundreds of emigrants who were helped both by the LSE' Academic Freedom Committee and by the Academic Assistance Council, both initiated by Beveridge after he heard of the first academic dismissals in Germany (Dahrendorf 1995, pp. 286–290, Howson 2011, pp. 236–238).

7 Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia was one of E. H. Carr’s confessed sources of inspiration (Jones 1997).

8 For a thorough account of “The Beveridge Years”, see Dahrendorf (1995, chs. 3–5).

9 Comparing Beveridge’s inaugural and farewell lectures (1921 and 1937, respectively), one notes a change of tone regarding his hopes for the social sciences: from restrained optimism to a lament that they were still very far from gaining public esteem and a recognized place (Robbins 1971, pp. 141–142, Dahrendorf 1995, p. 197).

10 Even though Russell is mostly associated with Cambridge University, he actually spent most of the interwar period estranged from that institution, working as an independent scholar. Before World War I, Russell was involved in the activities of the Fabian Society, having donated part of his inheritance to help fund the creation of the LSE, and then serving as a member of its advisory committee (Ironside 1996, p. 62). The School’s website credits him as “one of [its] spiritual and financial founders,” whose “involvement in the early life of the School helped to define its ethos” (http://www.lse.ac.uk/about-lse/lse-people/Bertrand-Russell?from_serp =1). Russell lectured at the LSE on two occasions: first during the 1890s, and again in the late 1930s.

11 For a thorough review of Robbins’ role at the LSE during the interwar years, see Howson (2011, pp. 68–102).

12 Letter from Sidney Webb to Arthur Steel-Maitland, 1916, cited by Dahrendorf (1995, p.183).