This illustrates the reason why, in my mind, strategizing and planning is so important. Communism will be improvised or it will not happen. But to improvise it, to bump into it serendipitously and/or by sheer brawn, it needs to be thought out in advance in due precision and detail. Only to find in retrospect that the precision was unnecessary, irrelevant, or "useless," that the details (wherein the devil lies) were all "wrong."
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/06/24/130624crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all Don't hate. I cannot stand this fellow, Gladwell, either. And I don't even care whether he gets things right. I haven't read Hirschman's book, the subject of the piece. Hirschman though was one of those fellows with the mental subtlety to make even the economists understand the need for a mushier branch of the discipline labelled "development" (not to be confused with "growth macro," although I don't know why not confuse them). The book in question is the Principle of the Hiding Hand (out in print). I read this Gladwell piece as I'd read a piece of fiction. Still, if it stirs up your neurons, it is good. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
