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The Rhetoric of Reaction — Two Years Later

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Albert O. Hirschman
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Extract

There are various reasons why an author may wish to return, not to the ‘classic’ he wrote thirty years ago (this is a widely practised and accepted form of narcissism), but to a book he has only recently published. One such reason could be that he suffers from an acute case of what the French call esprit de l'escalier (spirit of the staircase) — thinking of the brilliant remark one might have made during the conversation only as one walks down the staircase after leaving the party. Another possibility is that the book was attacked and that some new ideas occurred to the author as he replied to his detractors. Also, upon reflecting on his book, the author may discover some connecting link between it and his earlier writings which he feels he would like to explore. While we are working on a new book we are often providentially protected by the illusion that we are engaged on an entirely novel and original enterprise. We may need this feeling to set out at all. Only after we are finished do we recognize that an argument we have put forth is closely related to points which we have made long ago or which, alternatively, stand in some tension to it.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1993 , pp. 292 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1993

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References

1 The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1991.

2 ‘Two Hundred Years of Reactionary Rhetoric: The Case of the Perverse Effect’, The Tanner Lectures in Human Values, Vol. 10, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1989, pp. 1–32 and ‘Reactionary Rhetoric’, The Atlantic, May 1989, pp. 63–70.

3 American Sociological Review, 1, December 1936, p. 895 as cited in Rhetoric, p. la..

4 See The London Review of Booh, Vol. 14, No. 21, 5 Nov. 1992.

5 Rhetoric of Reaction, p. 72.

6 The Strategy of Economic Development, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1958, pp. 118–19.

7 ‘The Political Economy of Import‐Substituting Industrialization in Latin America’, in., 4 Bias for Hope, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1971, pp. 106–114. A particularly insidious role among these resistances had been uncovered and given considerable attention at the time by studies of the effective (as opposed to nominal) protection rate. See my remarks on pp. 107 and 110, fn. 28 of the article.

8 See my ‘Industrialization and its Manifold Discontents‐West, East, and South’, World Development, 20, September 1992, pp. 1225–32.

9 Similar difficulties in completing industrialization have been characteristic of the former Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, but in the opposite direction. Here the emphasis had long been on the building up of heavy industry and machinery, but somehow the ‘next’ stage where preferential attention would be given to satisfying the consumer, was never reached. This contrast between the Latin American and Soviet experiences in getting stuck is discussed in the paper referred to in the preceding footnote.

10 A general and industry‐by‐industry survey is in Bernard Elbaum and William Lazonick (eds), The Decline of the British Economy, Oxford, Clarendon, 1986. A review of this book and a general survey of the ‘decline’ literature is in Kirby, M. W., ‘Institutional Rigidities and Economic Decline: Reflections on the British Experience’, Economic History Review, 45, 1992, pp. 637–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Pierre Rosanvallon, Le Sacre au citoyen: Histoire du suffrage universel en France, Paris, Gallimard, 1992, pp. 130–45 and pp. 393–412.

12 Rosanvallon, op. cit., p. 397.

13 Rosanvallon, op. cit., p. 394.

14 In an earlier amendment to the ‘unbalanced’ sequences of The Strategy of Economic Development and to the distinction between ‘compulsive’ or ‘permissive’ sequences, I called attention to the possible existence of a ‘sailing‐against‐the‐wind’ sequence: here a country or society wishes to move forward in two directions, say growth and equity, but it so happens that, at any one time, it can move forward in one of these directions only at the cost of retreating in the other. I showed that it is conceivable that a country can still make progress in both directions by following this pattern. (See ‘A Dissenter's Confession: The Strategy of Economic Development Revisited’ in Hirschman, Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays, New York, Viking Penguin, 1986, pp. 27 – 32.) The ‘sailing‐against‐the‐wind’ sequence is no doubt more troublesome than the various unbalanced‐growth sequences which I had envisaged earlier, but it is still superior to the abortive sequences I have passed in review here.

15 This magazine published concurrently a reply on my part. See Raymond Boudon, ‘La rhétorique est‐elle réactionnaire?’ and Hirschman, Albert O., ‘L’argument intransigeant comme idée reçue. En guise de réponse à Raymond Boudon’, Le Débat, No. 69 (March–April 1992), pp. 92–109.Google Scholar I have drawn on my reply to Boudon in part of the present paper.

16 Muller, Jerry Z., ‘Albert Hirschman’s Rhetoric of Recrimination’, Public Interest, No. 104, Summer 1991, pp. 81–92.Google Scholar

17 My argument here is obviously related to the ‘principle of the hiding hand’ which I put forward twenty‐five years ago to explain how development projects can sometimes be successful because their costs (or difficulties in general) have been underestimated initially. See Development Projects Observed, Washington, DC, Brookings, 1968, ch. 1.

18 Nietzsche’s term was ‘Selbstüberwindung’ (self‐overcoming) in ‘Nietzsche contra Wagner’. See Werke, ed. Karl Schlechta, Munich, Hanser, 1960, Vol. 2, p. 903.

19 According to Niels Bohr, by the way, the progress of science consists in moving from the ‘deep truths’ to the others. Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics’, in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein: Philosopher‐Scientist, Evanston, II., The Library of Living Philosophers, 1949, p. 240. I owe this reference to Freeman Dyson.

20 Boudon, op. cit., fn. 15, p. 99.

21 This term is used by René Rémond in his highly favourable review in Le Monde, 19 April 1991.

22 Sec ‘La rhétorique progressistc et la réformateur’, Commentaire, 16, Summer 1993.

23 Its author was Robert D. Reischauer, then a senior economist at the Brookings Institution and presently Director, Joint Congressional Economic Committee. I am grateful to him for making his memorandum available to me.

24 For the locus classicus of this point, see Stigler, George J., ‘The Economics of Information’, Journal of Political Economy, 61, June 1961, pp. 213–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 This point is also related to the ‘principle of the hiding hand’ mentioned in footnote.

26 The author is grateful to Rebecca Scott for many excellent suggestions.