Well, Well, Well: July 13, 2022 Was a Very Good Day for þe Book "Slouching Towards Utopia"
BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-07-13 We
Preorder: <bit.ly/3pP3Krk>
Tweetstorm:
I confess that I do not think it would've been realistic to ask for a better book trade press reviews, or for better blurbs from people of weight and influence who do not happen to be my friends: these are wonderful in themselves, and also wonderful because they are real guides to how reviewers in general will react to the book when they push their way through it.
But then there is the question of general readers. General readers are neither paid nor under social obligation to push their way through to the end of the book, and so are a very different kettle of fish Dash or, rather, very, very many different kettles of fish with respect to how they read. And I really, really want them to greatly enjoy the book and tell all their friends to read it.
In writing the book, I tried very hard to make it the case that on every page there was:
an important or arresting fact to catch their interest,
enough of a sense of narrative thrust to make them want to turn the page to see what happens next, and
a way to slot what happened on that page into the grand narrative or at least into one of the principal subsidiary narratives—(a) the power and importance of the economic, (b) the world globalizing, (c) the driving technological cornucopia, (d) governments mismanaging, or (e) tyrannies intensifying.
I do not think I managed to accomplish this on every page. But I tried. And I managed on some.
I am not worried about priming reviewers—I think that when they pick up the book, google, skim a few links, and start to read, they are and will be primed properly (because they will immediately run across Noah Smith’s very gracious review:
But this is the question I am now asking myself: Is there anything I can do to general readers, so that they will be predisposed to be appreciative? Or is it just too late for me to do anything?
TRADE REVIEWS:
Publishers Weekly: J. Bradford DeLong: “Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century”: ‘Spectacular economic growth in the long 20th century fueled visionary hopes, but never quite fulfilled them, according to this sweeping study. UC Berkeley economic historian DeLong (coauthor, Concrete Economics) surveys the period from 1870 to 2010, an era when, he argues, advances in global shipping, vertically integrated corporations, and new technologies hatched in industrial research labs created an unprecedented rise in productivity that for the first time raised humanity out of poverty. It was also a period when economic theories and crises drove history, from the pursuit of a communist utopia in the Soviet Union to the Great Depression that propelled Hitler to power in Germany.
Beneath the century’s upheavals, DeLong sees a perennial tension between economic theorists Friedrich von Hayek, who anathematized state interference in free markets, and Karl Polanyi, who insisted that state intervention is needed to protect society from the disruptions of profit-maximizing market economies. (DeLong blames Hayekian market fundamentalism for dissuading the U.S. government from undertaking enough deficit spending to spur recovery from the Great Recession of 2008.) The author conveys a wealth of information in elegant, accessible prose, combining grand, epochal perspectives with fascinating discursions on everything from alternating-current electricity to the gender wage gap. The result is a cogent interpretation of economic modernity that illuminates both its nigh-miraculous achievements and its seething discontents. (Sept.)…
LINK: <https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780465019595>
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Kirkus Reviews: SLOUCHING TOWARDS UTOPIA: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century; Author: J. Bradford DeLong: A survey of the monumental transformations—and failed promises—brought about by an extraordinary rise in prosperity.
DeLong, a Berkeley professor of economics, offers a sweeping account of economic history over the “long twentieth century”—1870 to 2010. Those years, he argues, were “the most consequential years of all humanity’s centuries,” in which “the most important historical thread was what anyone would call the economic one, for it was the century that saw us end our near-universal dire material poverty.”
The book’s “grand narrative” charts how, in response to increased globalization and the development of modern research facilities and corporate business structures, wealth increased remarkably for a large proportion of the world’s population, prompting radical changes to long-standing social and political configurations. As the author’s mix of close economic analyses and illustrative “vignettes” demonstrates, this upsurge in prosperity incited utopian dreams but repeatedly failed—sometimes spectacularly—to realize them. At the end of the period in question, DeLong concludes, optimism about progress in eliminating extreme poverty and more equitably distributing wealth was at a low ebb, and faith in America as a leader in such efforts is in marked decline.
This is a lengthy text, and some of the chapters meander unnecessarily, but overall, the author ably anatomizes his subject with admirable clarity, offering accessible and illuminating explanations of key historical shifts and the socio-economic forces driving them. Among the most gripping and persuasive chapters are those that explain the acceleration of globalization in the late 19th century, the causes of the Great Depression (and what might have mitigated it), and the origins and implications of the rise of neoliberalism at the end of the 20th century.
A sprawling but carefully argued, edifying account of modern economic history and its impact on global well-being.
LINK: <https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/j-bradford-delong/slouching-towards-utopia/>
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UK EDITION BLURBS:
‘An intellectually exciting and entertaining gallop along the arc of twentieth-century economic history. DeLong puts together the puzzle of the past to tell a story of remarkable achievements as well as setbacks. A great way to understand the forces that have shaped the world today’—MINOUCHE SHAFIK, Director, London School of Economics and Political Science
‘The period 1870-2010 - what DeLong calls the "long twentieth century”- saw the world break decisively free of its Malthusian chains, with levels of per capita economic growth without any parallel in human history. This wonderfully researched and written book explains the roots of this vertiginous ascent towards utopia, while also exposing the causes of the subsequent flat-lining in our economic fortunes and what action is now needed to ensure the long century is viewed by future historians as the historical rule, not the exception’—ANDREW G. HALDANE, Chief Executive of the RSA, and former Chief Economist at the Bank of England
‘Brad DeLong manages brilliantly to combine detailed analysis of a huge sweep of global history with an accessible and engaging narrative. The result is a book full of well founded and penetrating insights that will appeal to anyone interested in the causes and consequences of modern economic growth’—ROBERT C ALLEN, Distinguished Professor of Economic History at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and a Senior Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford
Many Audios:
Tarik Abou-Chadi: The Transformation of European Politics Podcast <https://www.tarikabouchadi.net/podcast.html>
One Image:
Very Briefly Noted:
Ann Gibbons: Neandertals & Modern Humans Started Mating Early: ‘Ancient encounter completely replaced Neandertal mitochondrial DNA, German bone suggests…. A female member of the lineage that gave rise to Homo sapiens in Africa mated with a Neandertal male more than 220,000 years ago… <https://www.science.org/content/article/neandertals-and-modern-humans-started-mating-early>
Matthew A. Winkler: Inflation Alarm Bells Are Actually Getting Softer : ‘The activity of consumers, economists and investors predicts that US economic stability is not so far in the future… <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-13/inflation-alarm-bells-are-actually-getting-softer?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-markets#xj4y7vzkg>
Lant Pritchett: Development Work Versus Charity Work : ‘I anticipate the response of “why not do both?” Of course, I am all for that…. It is optimal to do both, [but] we development economists should keep in mind that sustained economic growth is empirically necessary and empirically sufficient for reducing poverty… <https://lantpritchett.org/development-work-versus-charity-work/>
Ian Beacock: _Yascha Mounk’s Misguided War on Wokeness: ‘The fatal flaw of Mounk’s book… is… it[s] ungenerous and false depiction…. Woke leftists… Mounk explains… want… a “dystopian” future… in which we “are condemned, whatever we do, to remain forever defined by racism and exclusion.” Left-leaning citizens, he believes, want basically illiberal multicultural societies… <https://newrepublic.com/article/167037/yascha-mounks-misguided-war-wokeness-great-experiment-review>
Micah Sifry: Messaging Won’t Save Democrats; Community Might <https://micahsifry.medium.com/messaging-wont-save-democrats-community-might-7d802154b433>
Matt Levine: I Was Told There’d Be a Cake Merger <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-12/i-was-told-there-d-be-a-cake-merger#xj4y7vzkg>
Cosma Shalizi: Review of Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science <http://bactra.org/reviews/collins-evans.html>
Dani Rodrik: The New Productivism Paradigm? <https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/new-productivism-economic-policy-paradigm-by-dani-rodrik-2022-07>
Eric Hobsbawm (1978): The Forward March of Labour Halted? <https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/september-1978/the-forward-march-of-labour-halted/>
Twitter & ‘Stack:
Xpostfactoid: ‘There’s a simple way to “slow Iran’s nuclear program,” and it has nothing to do with Israel (except to resist its malign influence): Restore the deal the U.S. abrogated.… <
Justin Wolfers: ‘The big surprise this month is that goods inflation remained so strong. The good news is that services inflation isn’t really pointing upward…
Invictus: ‘FWIW — and I honestly have no idea — the spread between headline and core CPI has reached extremes…. For them to normalize, obviously, either food & energy must fall, core components must rise, or some combination of the two. The former is already happening, but too late to be captured in today’s print…
Timothy Burke: We Can See Clearly Now: ‘Robotic probes and telescopes… give us knowledge and vision that isn’t just scientifically transformative, but spiritually meaningful. They’re worth whatever they cost…. If you want to hold on to the idea that we are still on the road to progress, to something better, then the Webb is as fine a sign of moving down that road as you’ll ever find…
Addison del Mastro: No Housing Please, We’re a Community:
Duck of Minerva: Strategies of Unusual Size
Branko Milanovic: The Rule of Nihilists
Director’s Cut PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY Content Below:
¶s:
Confer Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation, on how the market economy transforms land into a “fictitious commodity”, and how that then powers a societal reaction against that idea. Nobody believes that the best use of land is the one that passes the maximum profitability test in the eyes of distant rootless cosmopolites. This does not mean that NIMBYism is a sensible reaction. It is not. But it is a guide to where NIMBYism gets its energy:
Addison del Mastro: No Housing Please, We’re a Community: ‘“Part of what people on the right are reacting to… is the apparent tendency on the left to try and eliminate the layers of society between the individual and the federal government… local institution…. As they have declined so to, I feel, has our sense of community…. NIMBYs sense [this] at a fundamental, almost subconscious level. And so, recognizing a problem but not its underlying cause, they lash out at new development projects in the (in my opinion) misguided belief that they are arresting a further loss of that sense of community.”… This supposition rings very true to me…
LINK:
Why is there no democratic party infrastructure? Why is there only a network of semi-grifter consultants sending me panicked fundraising emails of which they get an excessive cut?
Micah Sifry: Messaging Won’t Save Democrats; Community Might: ‘Populist economics: tax the rich, hammer corporations for price gouging and profiteering, bring jobs home, help small businesses against corporate monopolies are all themes that resonate…. Politics as it is practiced today, in the form of messaging wars on television and online, is just too far from most people’s lives…. Candidates and party committees should be spending time doing things like sponsoring community events like [Ohio Senator] Sherrod Brown’s ‘movie nights’… where the theme is to build community spirit and togetherness. Or they could set up events that were community health clinics where people come in and get health care assistance that they couldn’t otherwise afford. Or Chautauqua style events…. I don’t think Democrats are likely to shift the tens of millions of dollars they now have slotted for expensive ad campaigns this fall into community fairs or mutual aid programs. They’re going to keep doing what they’ve always done and pray for a different result…
LINK: <https://micahsifry.medium.com/messaging-wont-save-democrats-community-might-7d802154b433>
Most “Grand Strategy” courses would be vastly improved if they were turned over to the computer from the movie “War Games”—the one that says: “a very curious game: the only way to win is not to play”. That should be the threshold question for Grand Strategy:
Duck of Minerva: Strategies of Unusual Size: ‘I’m not a fan of the kind of highly stylized, slightly smug case studies that show up in standard grand-strategy readers. I can never decide what to do with them. I oscillate between “Students should read this material because it functions as background knowledge for some participants in these debates” and “Nope. Absolutely not.”… I asked the students to identify the most important threats to, variously, Washington, Beijing, Moscow, or the governments of other important powers. They overwhelmingly pointed to collective threats: climate change, pandemics, water scarcity, nuclear proliferation, and so on. This is a far cry from the topics that dominate standard grand-strategy syllabuses, including my own. It’s also almost certainly correct…
LINK:
For M. Todd Henderson and J.B. Heaton to write “Delaware courts have rarely ordered specific performance in merger agreements…” when the now-Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ordered specific performance in a merger case just last-year would seem to be the declaration of two morons. But we do remember that M. Todd Henderson, in his younger days, did not understand what marginal tax rates were:
Matt Levine: I Was Told There’d Be a Cake Merger: ‘Money Stuff is going to be off for a few weeks starting tomorrow. I planned this before Elon Musk tried to cancel his Twitter deal, and I am not a monster, so there will be occasional columns as Musk or other news require. But it will not publish every day…. We might talk about an interesting Delaware Chancery Court decision from last April…. Kohlberg & Co., signed a merger agreement to buy a company called DecoPac…. Then the Covid–19 pandemic got worse… and Kohlberg “lost their appetite for the deal shortly after signing it.”…. They came up with three approaches… said that DecoPac had experienced a “material adverse effect” due to the decline in its business during the pandemic…. had not complied with its covenant to “operate the Business in the Ordinary Course of Business”… took steps to blow up their financing…. This is important because the contract allowed DecoPac to seek specific performance… only if “full proceeds of the Debt Financing have been funded to Buyer.”… So Kohlberg canceled the deal and DecoPac sued. The vice chancellor was not amused by Kohlberg’s excuses…. Because there is no debt financing in place, the buyers argue that the court may not grant specific performance. The court disagrees…. This decision deems the debt financing condition met because the buyers contributed materially to lack of debt financing by breaching their reasonable-best-efforts obligation…. This post-trial decision resolves all issues in favor of the seller and orders the buyers to close on the purchase agreement. On specific performance in particular, she wrote… “This court has not hesitated to order specific performance in cases of this nature, particularly where sophisticated parties represented by sophisticated counsel stipulate that specific performance would be an appropriate remedy in the event of breach.”… The deal closed in May 2021, a few weeks after her decision; I guess Kohlberg figured out its financing…
LINK: <https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-12/i-was-told-there-d-be-a-cake-merger#xj4y7vzkg>
Scientific induction has worked. So far. That does not mean that scientific induction in the corresponding worldview has any rational justification. But it does mean that it is the kind of thing that tends to evolve, and that if you, personally, deviate from it, you may find yourself, well, taking horse tranquilizer NOV an attempt to cure a dangerous respiratory virus, or participating in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by force and violence:
Cosma Shalizi: Review of Collins and Evans, Why Democracies Need Science: ‘What the late great anthropologist-philosopher Ernest Gellner sometimes called believing that “positivism is right, for Hegelian reasons”. Namely: world-views, and the ways of life which go along with them, have to be taken as more or less total packages.(“Fundamental changes transform identities”: Plough, Sword, and Book, p. 194.) Precisely for this reason, attempts to find neutral criteria which could truly rationally compel someone to accept one such package over another have at best foundered on circularity. But some of those packages are a damn sight more attractive than others. The package which Gellner sometimes abbreviated as “positivism”, where concepts are submitted to empirical control, where description and prescription are carefully separated, etc., etc. — in short, the scientific world-view — has proven to be an immensely attractive one, because it works in the world. It has transformed the ecology of humanity, and is (as he put it somewhere) visibly devouring every other form of society. At this level, we may have no option beyond a total choice without rational justification. It does not follow that we should accord deference to every enterprise which purports to be part of the larger scientific world-view, particularly when it is very shaky about things like whether its concepts actually refer to anything in experience…
Yes. But what ideology does the Chinese communist party believe in these days? It is not anything I would call "Marxism" or "Socialism". Authoritarian state surveillance capitalism, with or without some egalitarian aspirations, is a difficult thing to maintain as an ideology. Or so I would think:
Branko Milanovic: The Rule of Nihilists: ‘Xi Jinping’s January 2013 speech to the members of the Central Committee of CPC…. Xi sees the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the CPSU as the result of “ideological nihilism”: the ruling strata have ceased to believe in the advantages and the value of the system, but lacked any other ideological coordinates…. The lack of belief in the system stemmed from the failure of the Soviet Union in the economic arena, and inability to propose a system of participation in the decision-making that appealed to, or was acceptable to, most of its population…
LINK:
Social democracy thought to reap the von Hayekian benefits of market economic coordination and also to rebalance social power by using redistributive programs to equalize the distribution of wealth. But forgive me if I am suspicious of a technocrat-free campaign to create “good jobs” by flirting with ethno-nationalist currents:
Dani Rodrik: The New Productivism Paradigm?: ‘There are signs of a major reorientation toward an economic policy framework that is rooted in production, work, and localism instead of finance, consumerism, and globalism. It might just turn into a new policy model that captures imaginations across the political spectrum…. “Productivism”… emphasizes the dissemination of productive economic opportunities throughout all regions and all segments of the labor force… departs from the Keynesian welfare state by focusing less on redistribution, social transfers, and macroeconomic management and more on supply-side measures to create good jobs… diverges from both of its antecedents by reflecting greater skepticism toward technocrats and expressing less knee-jerk hostility to economic populism…. Production, work, and localism instead of finance, consumerism, and globalism…
To make Harold Wilson the principal villain responsible for our failure to advance towards utopia is, well, I guess you can call it an "ethos".:
Eric Hobsbawm (1978): The Forward March of Labour Halted?: ‘We now see a growing division of workers into sections and groups, each pursuing its own economic interests irrespective of the rest. What is new here is that… the strength of a group lies… in the inconvenience they can cause to the public, i.e. to other workers (e.g. by power-blackouts or whatever)…. For the first seventy years or so of the last century, Marx and Engels would have been neither very surprised nor very disappointed by the tendencies of development in the British working class. Not very surprised, because the tendencies were such as they predicted… though I think they would have been a bit surprised by the speed with which the tertiary sector developed, though perhaps not so much by the formation of a new conservative white-collar labour aristocracy. They would not have been very disappointed… because they did not expect very much from the British working class…. Like you and me, they would have been pretty contemptuous of the Labour leadership…. It simply won’t do to say that this crisis of the working class and the socialist movement was “inevitable”…. If we are to explain the stagnation or crisis, we have to look at the Labour Party and the labour movement itself. The workers, and growing strata outside the manual workers, were looking to it for a lead and a policy. They didn’t get it. They got the Wilson years—and many of them lost faith and hope in the mass party of the working people…
LINK: <https://banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-today/september-1978/the-forward-march-of-labour-halted/>
Brad,
I ordered the book on Jan. 5. May I express my unhappiness that all these reviewers, blurbists, etc. have copies and I don't?
Yes, I understand that the book business works a certain way, but still, it's annoying.
What I am really waiting for is a review by my neighbor's son, Cosma Shalizi!! His take on the book will make it or break it. :-)
I don't think you will know what the general public feels until the book comes out. Unlike the the distinguished folks who had access to the pre-pub, we have to wait until publication day. I have a pre-order in and will start reading it once it hits my Kindle.