Pages

 

How To Argue Like A Reactionary

0 comments
Suppose you want to argue knowledgeably about economics and political philosophy. Then the literature you should read seems unbounded. Here are three books I read years ago and still like:
  • Hirschman, Albert O. (1991). The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
  • Myrdal, Gunnar (1953). The Political Element in the Development of Economic Thought (Translated by Paul Streeten), Routledge and Kegan Paul
  • Popper, Karl R. (1945). The Open Society and Its Enemies (Two volumes), George Routledge & Sons
Popper is relevant to the use of "utopian" as a pejorative. Utopias are "recipes for the cook-shops of the future", as Karl Marx put in his preface to the second edition of Capital. Marx and Engels famously opposed their "scientific socialism" to a prior utopian socialism. (See the first and second chapter of the third section of Anti-Dühring, also issued as a pamplet.) Popper, although opposed to so much of what he took Marx's approach to be, agreed with Marx in this. It is not the role of intellectuals to draw up blueprints for some ideal society and then to convince some actual country to adopt them. Plato, in his Republic, was misdirected. Popper thinks we should be trying to ameliorate existing evils, not globally remaking society or mandating happiness.

Myrdal writes a history of economics. He thinks one cannot correctly derive concrete policy proposals from abstract norms, such as "the greatest good for the greatest number". Nevertheless, political economists have often claimed to do exactly that. Myrdal critiques their argument.

Hirschman also writes a history. He explores how those on the right have argued against progressive policies. He identifies three main arguments rightists tend to pull out always:
  • Perversity: attempts to improve matters will frustate themselves and only make matters worse. (Think of the incorrect neoclassical economics textbook argument about minimum wages.)
  • Futility: the matters that we want to change are so deep seated that they cannot be reached, despite all our efforts.
  • Jeopardy: We may be able to effect positive change, but we nevertheless put at risk other desirable features of society.
A slippery slope argument is a kind of jeopardy argument, I think. To express any skepticism about laissez-faire is not to advocate communism. But we are not presented with a choice between only government "non-intervention" and central planning as in no-longer-actually existing socialism.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

  • Greenspan's Cult of Personality... Review topics and articles of economics: Alan Greenspan was a legend in his time and there was no shortage of praise for him back then. For example, who can forget Bob Woodow's 2000 book Maestro: Greenspan's...
  • Yes Tyler, Low Interest Rates Matte... Tyler Cowen is wondering whether the Fed's low interest rates in the early-to-mid 2000s really were that important to the credit and housing boom of the early-to-mid...
  • The Eurozone Crisis: Deja Vu... Review topics and articles of economics: Randal Forsyth sees similarities between the current unfolding of the Eurozone crisis and that of the U.S. financial crisis a few years back:Just as the problem on this...
  • Charles Plosser and the Burden of F... The Economist's Free Exchange blog is shocked to hear this from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser:"Since expectations play an important role...
  • Arnold Kling and Expected Inflation... Review topics and articles of economics: What do we know about expected inflation? According to Arnold Kling not much if we look to financial markets:I'm also not convinced that we can read expected inflation...
  • A Paper on Stabilizing Nominal Spen... Given the recent discussion on stabilizing nominal spending as a policy goal I found this article by Evan F. Koenig of the Dallas Fed to be interesting: The article...
  • Why The Low Interest Rates Mattered... Review topics and articles of economics: This is the second of two posts detailing why the Fed's low interest rate policies in the early-to-mid 2000s was one of the more important contributors to the credit and...
  • Why The Low Interest Rates Mattered... This is the first of a two-part follow up to my previous post, where I argued that the Fed's low interest rate policy was a key contributor to the credit and housing...
  • The Stance of Monetary Policy Via t... Review topics and articles of economics: There has been some interesting conversations on the stance of monetary policy in the past few days between Arnold Kling, Scott Sumner, and Josh Hendrickson. Part of...
  • Scott Sumner's New Best Friend:... Joseph Gagnon is calling for $6 trillion more in global monetary easing. This should not be too hard to implement since the Fed is a monetary superpower.Update: The...
 
Review topics and articles of economics © 2011 How To Argue Like A Reactionary