On 7/12/10, Keith Hudson <[email protected]> wrote: > He specifically said a few days before his death -- as I've already quoted > -- that the 'hidden hand' of Smith was the way that the market worked (and, > by implication that any other demand input would not by itself restore an > under-performing economy).
Which "hidden hand,"? The theory of moral sentiments one or the wealth of nations one? They're not the same. I've read several critiques of the standard interpretation of the hidden hand and the sense I take from them is that Smith saw social custom and "sympathy" as important components of that so-called hidden hand. In other words, it was not an abstract mechanism but, to use a Freudian term, a sort of subconscious "superego". Death bed confessions and conversions have an unmistakable appeal, but logically they are just another version of appeal to authority, in this case the ultimate "authority" -- death. Well before his death Keynes already maintained that stimulating demand by deficit spending was "only one particular application of an intellectual theorem" and that it was limited in scope. "Bastard" Keynesianism (it should really be called Keyserlingism, after Leon Keyserling) completely ignores the limitations that Keynes himself acknowledged. Yes, I do indeed mean Fred Hirsch (not Hirsh). The record for misattribution of quotes (at least on the internet) probably goes to Mark Twain. > >>Adam Smith said a lot of things, some of them brilliant, some wacky >>and not all of them consistent. One can BOTH agree and disagree with >>Smith. One can also agree with Say, provided one picks the occasion. >>Say, too changed his mind. Both Smith and Say (like Marx, Keynes, >>Hayek and Freud) were victims of posthumous cults that took trivial >>sound bites from their works, twisted them and elevated them to holy >>scripture. Did Keynes reject the cant of the vulgar classical >>political economists of the 19th century and mistakenly attribute it >>to Say or Smith and then later retract the unkind attribution? >> >>This is not to say that Keynes wasn't wrong in some respects, but >>possibly these were not the things that he admitted were wrong. By the >>way, for a critique of Keynes, I would go to Fred Hirsh rather than >>Fred Hayek. > > If you mean Fred Hirsch, yes I agree. His "Social Limits to Growth" is, > like Veblen's "The Theory of Business Enterprise", one of those 'sleeper' > books that have yet to have their day. Both of them are saying extremely > important things about the modern economy and are the only ones (I would > maintain) who have lifted the discussion above that of the classical > economists (and Ricardo's 'comparative advantage' of the 19th century). (I > frequently mention Schumpeter in the modern pantheon but I don't think he > has added anything really new, only his observation from history that > economic systems change in great destructive lurches and that today's > industrial-consumerist model is ripe for change.) > >>It is so hard, when people's names become an ism, to separate what >>they were about from some wholly amorphous and mostly incorrect image >>of what they proposed. Even most of the popular quotations attributed >>to famous people were actually said by somebody else. > > Agreed, and the more famous the original utterer the more unlikely that > he/she ever said it. I doubt whether Einstein or Churchill said 10% of what > they were supposed to. I included "she" because the best known wrongly > attributed statement of all was "Let them eat cake" by Mary Antoinette. She > didn't even say; "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche' -- being invented by > Rousseau of an unknown "grande princesse". > > Keith > > > > > > >>-- >>Sandwichman > > Keith Hudson, Saltford, England -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
