shopping cart software, economics, UK manufacturing: a blog with a terrible name
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
Happy winter!
The new Commerce Kickstart installation is OK with a few error messages "right out of the box" as they say on the videos, and seems to work very slowly. Ignoring the error messages, I know from using Drupal Core that there is a heading in the menus called performance for things like cache to turn-on and make it fast. How to turn them on in Kickstart?
Core Drupal 7: I can speed-up the program by turning-on the cache (but I can't follow instructions for adding a product which is tricky, so I'm not using this dashboard for my shop). In Core Drupal, I try menu options until Configuration: my speeding-up options are in a box there marked Performance. Once there, the path reads:
Home » Administration » Configuration » Development
Commerce Kickstart 7.2: I can begin to follow instructions for adding a product, but I can't speed-up the program by finding the cache setting and turning it on. Moreover, the jargon has changed. Core Drupal had nodes and now has content. Commerce Kickstart has - something I still need to get my head around, which uses other terms.
Found the answer! There are two settings menus and the second hides a lot of tekkie stuff away somewhere where I thought I'd looked, but had missed it. It's easy to miss something called Development when you know you're not a great developer. Trying the Kickstart web site it turns-out that I have asked this question before and got an answer, suggesting that cache still does exist so I had another look.
Home> Administration> Site settings> Advanced settings> Configuration> Development> Performance
I was going to post a great picture of a man in Pants to Poverty undies standing next to a decorated cow, but their Shopify site is down today.
Oh. That page doesn't mention disabling the Overlay module [done] and replacing Toolbar with Admin Menu as other googlable pages do. Do I loose the toolbar if I disable the Toolbar Menu? Probably. One thing I did notice is that the module list is most easily searched from the top left index to modules called "All". I used this to disable the Jiraffe module, which eats money.
A note for later is that the Boost module works on cheap shared hosting where Memcached doesn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJcJbKaCZJs is a Lynda.com video that shows pictures of the sites that speed-y-up modules come from, but doesn't say much about which work with which.
There is a new Commerce Kickstart.
Installing it is slow but possible. An option is not to use the special shopkeepers' toolbar. I chose not to, because I have been trying some of the videos on http://nodeone.se/sv/learn-drupal and wanted to use the same default tooblar, but without it I didn't manage to follow the product-adding instructions.
With hindsight, I could have googled "Toolbar_magicmenu" and installed the .gz file by clicking "modules" on the admin menu and using the box where you can paste-in the url of a module to install before pressing "install", and probably something after like "enable". Next, "Commerce_Kickstartmenu".
With a reset option to go back to the default install, I can try to do just that, using a confirmation button which says "Kill Me!", as you do.
Having killed my product-less site, I try again:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function field_attach_load() in C:\commerce_kickstart-7.x-2.0\includes\entity.inc on line 321
Two or three attempts to use control+backarrow, retype second password and click return all fail. Attempt: I cut the question mark and everything after it from the url and pressed return. This takes me back one stage further in the installation process to a page beginning "
Welcome
Installation tasks
Welcome(active)
Verify requirements
Set up database
Install profile
Configure site
Configure store
Finished
Thank you for choosing Commerce Kickstart!
I click the "get started" button and fill-in the usual name for the test site. Result? (from memory) Fatal error: Call to undefined function field_attach_load() in C:\commerce_kickstart-7.x-2.0\includes\entity.inc on line 321
bugger.
On googling the error message I find that Commerce Guys have been producing this syrup-voiced set of videos as though Drupal worked, while some 57 different people in one thread alone out of two or three. Solutions are often highly technical and require knowledge of databases and php files. I am using the most basic installation on an Aquia stack, using a Windows XP computer but it seems that software vendors are unaware of the problem and just use glib meaningless phrases like "right out of the box" instead of addressing problems.
One of the solutions posted was to "clear the database cache". I am using Aquia Drupal Stack Installer as suggested in the Tom Geller Youtube video. There is a button for databases. I found one table in this base for cache and deleted the contents. Some success: I now have a basic drupal default logon screen, but no username and password. Another table in the base - the last on the list I think - had "placeholder" for user 1 and password, so I added that and an email and tried again. Is this the start of a revived Commerce Kickstart? No.
Fatal error: Call to undefined function field_attach_load() in C:\commerce_kickstart-7.x-2.0\includes\entity.inc on line 321
I can find the file on my hard disc and have a look. Line 321 is the third last of this paragraph:
protected function attachLoad(&$queried_entities, $revision_id = FALSE) { // Attach fields. if ($this->entityInfo['fieldable']) { if ($revision_id) { field_attach_load_revision($this->entityType, $queried_entities); } else { field_attach_load($this->entityType, $queried_entities); } }
Commerce Kickstart 2 works on my hard disc now,
very slowly, but seems to speed-up a little bit now the cache is turned-on
Installation was very very slow. It takes a lot of pottering-about and avoiding the computer while blue bars work their way from left to right across the screen over an hour or so.
Installation of the full Kickstart 2 with core Drupal installed a slightly older version of Drupal core.
Discoveries or methods: Drupal Core can be unpacked on the desktop
(with anything except windows unzipping utility which can change file names)
Every drupal standard file can be cut-and-pasted in one go over the top of your old Drupal Core installation.
(non standard files are in the "sites" folder which should not be cut and pasted)
(there are probably other complications, but this method worked for me to replace a new old Drupal with a new new Drupal within a version number)
Experiments that didn't work. Tweaking the auto-installed Aquia Drupal didn't work. I couldn't get rid of all their bits from the control panel, nor cut-and-paste over them in the folder.
After a day trying to change the Drupal version XXXfecking!x core, I decided that maybe someone else will work-out how to do this more simply in future as has been very well done for modules. I am still happy each time I download a module in a lazy way, knowing what a chore it was to move files about and read or amend text files next to them a year or two ago; so much depends on things that vary between individual users, like whether I had put my altered & site-specific files in a folder called "sites" away from the default files, and whether I have read the text tile called readme.txt which tells me to rename the default.settings.txt file to "settings.txt" and change a line in it. All fine if you're used to it and good at it but otherwise a bit like trying to fly before there were seats on cheap airlines; the choice is pay or make your own plane and ask strangers online for advice while they can't see what you are building. And if you're selling honest goods made in a democratic welfare state, there isn't the margin to pay, as McDonaldsstill do, to get a good version of Commerce Kickstart going.
Following the Youtube video by Tom Geller that I transcribed before, I'm using Aquia Drupal's stack installer. Can I just adapt the Aquia Drupal that comes with it from scratch? There is a nag message that says I should disable and delete all their chosen extra modules before it goes, and then says that some of the modules cannot be disabled. I ask the sales chat thingey: "How
do I uninstall the Aquia modules? (I want to keep things simple for now
and maybe use Aquia help later, so I want to start with core drupal and
nothing else)"
Upgrading Drupal Core. Why? Because the machine told me to, and because I can't upgrade Kickstarter 1 to Kickstarter 2 and an old Drupal Core might be the reason.
How to upgrade? I've forgotten. It's about moving a bunch of default files to the right directory, which you have to be able to find, and changing "default.settings.php" to "settings.php" with a line changed to "TRUE" instead of "FALSE" if you are locked out of your site. I can't keep track of what I've done or explain it, but after a day searching for any files with "TRUE" or "FALSE" in them on my hard disc and changing about all of them, I was still locked out until finding this post:
Happiness!
It only works on one of my sites.
The site is still using the old version of Drupal core which I thought I had deleted.
But something has happened, anyway.
http://www.meetup.com/Learning-Drupal-Meetup/events/83426292/ was free to anyone sober, organised enough to remember the date, and book a day or so in advance so this time I was able to go! Surprisingly, it's quite easy to sit at the back and be relaxed, and the other 62 attenders looked relaxed too.
John Kennedy of Commerce Guys showed Kickstart 2 which looked good enough to use as it is for shopkeeping, specially now that there are instructions with annotated screenshots. The default site has sized goods in stock and sections to show different types of goods. In the UK they only deal with the biggest customers but "coaching deals" might be affordable and help Commerce Guys get established too.
Asked if there are any rules of thumb about the servers it works on, he says that a security certificate - "SSL Layer" and user authentication add strain beyond the basic Drupal 7. His firm mainly deals with orders over dozens of thousands of pounds, but for people like me the reply meant "use off-site processing to save server costs". Search is a strain on the server too.
Asked if there is an upgrade path from Kickstart 1, he says that there need not be. I'm having trouble though. Today my hard disc server from Aquia Drupal says it would like a new Drupal Core, so maybe that's the hitch. Someone posted suggestions below as well, and I'm sure there's a lecture at a Drupal show somewhere about how to reduce server load. It said that external search helped and that caches help - something called Varnish for anonymous users.
John (?) gave an introductory grammer lesson in Drupal similar to https://drupal.org/documentation/structure which is a bit I have always skipped because I'm keen to get-on with ecommerce. For my own benefit and probably wrong..
Nodes have urls & titles. They can be part of a page, blog, or other content type. They can be displated in part. The default urls are "node" and a number.
Blocks have content & place. They can be (?) pretty much freehand html in a wrapper, or they can be generated by Views.
Themes are an abstracted layer where hypertext mark-up, style sheets and javascript go into one code file called .info . If the theme is called pants, the file is called pants.info .
In are theme, blocks are allocated to Regions along the usual classic lines like header, footer, content, and less classically "sidebar one" and "sidebar two". This new jargon is because users with left-to-write languages like Hebrew use them differently, so they're not labelled "sidebar left" and "sidebar right" any more. This and countless other tweaks and updates like compatibility with mobile browsers are good to get from a base theme, of which there are several, if you want to make your own design on top. Regions for example are fairly easy to create once you have a working base theme.
Taxonomies beg the question: "why the big word for 'categories'?" which is what they are. The answer is that they allow lots of detail. Vocabularies can be part of a Taxonomy. Terms can be part of a Vocabulary. And Terms themselves can have multiple levels. Alongside some of the other bits of Drupal, taxonomies can be looked at on the User Interface (UI) screen linked under the Taxonomies module in the admin section. It looks like a grid at first site. Oh, Tagging by users is also allowed, with the possibility of a "Folksonomy" such as camel and camels being tagged as two different animals by different zoo-keepers. To reduce this, there is a suggestion and auto-complete function in the tag form. Content Construction Kit (now part of Drupal Core) can filter by taxonomy, but without the heirachies and free-tagging. Views can filter by tag. Hierachical Selectors is sometimes a helpful module here. I had never seen the stark version of a taxonomy item displayed before and should have a go - it's a bit like a blog post with links to items further down the hierachy.
Menus: two are created by default called "primary" and "secondary" - rather vague words because they're flexible; from the Menus user interface you can choose whether the secondary menu is a part of the primary menu or separate for example.
Panels and Context are two different ways to achieving what you want on a certain part of a certain page. Panels is more of a package deal that you can use from the panels user interface or some rapidly evolving add-ons: the mini-panels alternative, the Paneliser add-on, and the Panopoly profile which is now part of Open Publish and one of the academic profiles. Context is lighter wieght and niftier.
Talking of Panels, Adrian Webb presented much more than I understand in rather nice husky american accent and leaves this link to his presentation notes about the Panopoly theme.
"...his political commitment wrecked any chances he had of reaching academic stardom in the United States once McCarthyism took root so he quit America to bring his family to Britain after winning a Ford Foundation fellowship to work in the economics department of Cambridge, where his mentor colleague was Professor Nicholas Kaldor. Later Fishman moved on to Keele University where he was appointed the first Chair in Economics. It was under his umbrella of inspiration..."
Ten reasons for interest in this man who...
...wrote the syllabus for my awful economics course mid recession, 84-7.
For those who don't know, that's when a UK government policy closed a
fifth of manufacturing in five years leaving a quarter of the workforce
un-occupied and an eighth of them on the official dole figures. Fishman
pretended not to know. Why? That's a question that's relevant to the banking crisis or development studies or any other looming crisis.
...is beyond taking offence at statement one.
...started
teaching at the same time as Samuelson's 1948 textbook and a growth in
economics teaching; his instincts and working style grew-up with the
subject and the generation of cold-war US economists who are quoted in
economics textbooks
...shared a funny name with a lot of other
people who have changed it to something less funny; the surname gets
rarer. As a consequence, someone like an academic who leaves a lot of
clues about their life through the post war years is possible to find on
search engines in a way that a Fisher or a Friedman probably wouldn't
be. Anyone who just picks-up a hobby of googling a subject and writing
what seems interesting will end-up with a lot of stuff to put together.
...started
at university aged 16 alongside with free-thinking experiments at a US
university that are recorded in the odd debate topic, followed by 15
years avoiding a tightening grip of conformity on US university staff,
by the end of which they don't talk to students but lecture; they don't
allow political activity on campus, and they expect "recitations" of
conventional wisdom from students in order to compete for marks.
Anything else risks getting a report to the FBI or a summons to a Senate
Committee. Students appear as bored as teachers and morale is low.
...seemed
pleasant enough with obvious talents and social concerns; he can't be
accused of being boring, right wing, and dishonest like Professer Piercy
of Swansea University for example. But he had the faults attributed to
such people - of talking out of his arse. On the same theme, he wasn't
an algebra junkie like the people who managed to get articles published
in the plump post-war years when ever-increasing numbers of american
professors competed for space in a few economics journals to boost their
careers. Talking of which, even american economics lecturers had
talants. There was pressure on them to atteract crowds of students who
could easily switch subjects. Fishman's style was quite engaging, with a
touch of irony and self-interruption. (6) The Fishman Bursary makes it
likely that Les Fishman will be searched-for online and remembered. I
hope the remembering will force Keele University students and staff to
learn from Fishman's mistakes and run a good course together, even
though his syllabus and the kind of constraints put on Keele syllabuses -
maybe even the kinds of students - have changed massively since he
retired.
Fishman junior seem pleasant enough with social
concerns and extraordinary patience for meetings and people. She wrote a
rather nice paper about encouraging firms like John Lewis as a policy
document for some obscure political group. She survived life as a
teacher in mundane colleges. She made the best of being very ill when
her father died by thinking of the bursary idea and writing obituaries
for him. (8) Strange to suffer an awful college course, then read "his
political commitment wrecked any chances he had of reaching academic
stardom in the United States once McCarthyism took root so he quit
America to bring his family to Britain after winning a Ford Foundation
fellowship to work in the economics department of Cambridge, where his
mentor colleague was Professor Nicholas Kaldor. Later Fishman moved on
to Keele University where he was appointed the first Chair in Economics.
It was under his umbrella of inspiration..." As someone who
suffered Fishman's umbrella of inspiration alongside much more qualified
published authors who had to teach his awful syllabus, I'd like to
write this note.
There was a peer-review system for university
courses; other economics courses were bad too. That's why Fishman's
awful course survived peer reviews. Short courses were rare in the UK
when Keele began offering them as an experiment with compulsory mixing
of science and arts and social science, so there was a bit of leeway
while external examiners got used to the idea, but on the other hand PPE
courses were common. The problems of a short economics course causing
cynecism about economists and/or over-confidence among MPs are the same
for a Keele short course as for the E-part of a PPE course.
There
is a Keele List of economics journal rankings, probably set-up in an
attempt to avoid hiring the next Fishman. So even if Keele doesn't
set-up a better economics course as a result of this, then other people
will find that this Keele list influences other university careers and
maybe department funding.
If there is a conclusion, it will say
that something about economics makes it traditionally a subject that
avoids the unspoken awkward subjects, like the Draft and the Vietnam
war, or the social insurance role of european governments, or mad
over-confident economic policies that close factories, all outside the
window on the bus journey home from the university
"hisfather, Isaac, had escaped from Siberia, where he had been exiled following his involvement as a Menshevik in the 1905 Russian revolution ... he and his elder sister Grace grew up speaking Yiddish and being sent to Socialist party meetings on the tram"- Obituary by Nina Fishman OAKLAND TRIBUNE, TUESDAY. APRIL 5th.: 1933 Ohio Student Wins U. C. Debate Medal BERKELEY, April 5. His outline of a plan by which "the learning we get would be the learning which we would set for ourselves." won' for Tames Keene. sophomore student from Alliance, O,, the annual Sproul medal debate last night "All emphasis on grades and competition. would be eliminated," he said. "Comprehenselve examinations would be instituted - instead, to be taken whenever the student feels that he is ready." Keene's talk on "My Ideal Plan For Academic Reorganization" took the unanimous decision of the judges over three other finalists, lis treat- day morning, .Was in. line with the college reorganization plan advoceated - by Pres. Robert , Gordon Sproul, donor of the debate medal, and that of Dr. Alexander Grant Ruth.ven, president, of the University of Michigan, who spoke similarly before a university meeting yesterday. Other finalists Included Miss Silvia Jacoby, senior, 939 Central Avenue, Alameda; Al Hamilton, junior, Sacramento, and Leslie Fishman, freshman, Berkeley. Judges of the debate were John F. Ross, Instructor in English;, Howard M. Smyth, instructor in history, and Clinton C, Conrad, lecturer in education.. The same page of the newspaper reads "Communist bag held for study".
1940
...last of a series of faculty student symposiums... Two student speakers, Llewellin Evans and Leslie Fishman discussed United States foreign policy. Evans favoured intervention in foreign wars, while Fishman favoured strict isolation and concentration on domestic policy. Berkley Daily Gazette, October 4th, page 40, headed "Conscription Plan Defended"
1941
Graduated 1941. No writings on Jstor or Google Books.http://www.ancestry.com/1940-census/usa/California/Isaac-Fishman_2mlkyf A 1940 record might give a clue to the trace the family furniture factory run by Isaac and Leah Fishman which briefly employs Leslie after 1950. 1 year part-time lecturing experience in business administration at Berkley or Hass Business School Extension Program Leslie’s family moved to California, where he graduated as an economist during the 1930s, when Franklin D Roosevelt was President, and joined the American Communist Party. He began teaching at Berkeley University in California, but was dismissed for his political views – despite having established a reputation as an outstanding, if unorthodox, academic economist. - Obituary of Nina Fishman in Tribune CV typed ten years later as part of a thesis available in Google Books snippit view
1942-6
"A talented economist on the US academic circuit, he joined the American Communist Party in 1939 and when America came into the war enlisted in the US army. He was involved in the D-Day landings but refused officer training to remain in the ranks as an outspoken Communist". - Obituary of Nina Fishman in The Independent“Yes, I do recall Dad talking about this, although he was very reticent and I had to ask him specific questions before stories were forthcoming. It was in the final throes of the European theatre and his unit had a German unit pinned down in a factory, somewhere in Western Czechoslovakia territory (Sudetenland at that time I suppose…); Dad went and negotiated with the German commander (white flag and all) and communicated with a mixture of his academic German (learnt in order to be able to read Das Kapital) and his boyhood Yiddish! He did manage to get them to surrender, thus saving a firefight and associated fatalities/injuries, etc." - Mary K Englestein, about Les Fishman . "He landed in Normandy a few weeks after D-day, moved through to Germany, where he distinguished himself by persuading a company of soldiers to surrender in Yiddish, and later fought in Bavaria, Czechoslovakia and on the eastern front." - Obituary of Les Fishman by Nina Fishman in The Guardian
1948
After the war, he spent 18 months in the CIO research department in Washington before returning to Berkeley to teach in late 1948 - Obituary by Nina Fishman in The Guardian Fishman accompanies Emil Rieve, of the CIO, who does the talking to United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency. (1948). National stabilization: Hearings before the Committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate, Eightieth Congress, second session, on S. 1873 [and others] ... Washington: U. S. Govt. Print. Off.. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015028195041
There's a description of what people did for the CIO from Mary K Englstein's web page The same blog says "Ellie had the Almanac Singers record with Pete Seeger. This genre was new to me and I soaked it all in." Fishman also writes replies to letters to another of his bosses "I had a letter back from this office signed by Leslie Fishman, research associate, which said, "I will be happy to meet you in open debate if you can guarantee an audience of more than one thousand. Hoping to hoar from you, I am very sincerely yours. . ." It's an unusual row about macro-economics, written in the Pampa Daily News of March 19th, 1948, page 8, but the free optical character recognition isn't good enough to make much out. The year that Fishman started as a teaching assistant, a new economics book came-out that would become standard for US college courses. Better still, there were two textbooks and the students only got to read one of them because the other was Canadian and thought to be Communist by american donors to universities.
The first textbook is now available free online - The Elements of Economics by Laurie Tarshis doesn't look scary. It begins by advocating economics as a way of solving real problems, and it mentions the US 1937 Social Security tax four times.
.... being preceded by the 1947 The Elements of Economics, by Lorie Tarshis. Tarshis's book, the first American textbook to discuss Keynesian ideas, was initially widely adopted, but was subsequently attacked by American conservatives (as part of the Second Red Scare, or McCarthyism), donors to universities withheld donations, and subsequently the text was largely withdrawn.[28]....Samuelson's Economics was also subject to "conservative business pressuring" and accusations of Communism, but the attacks were less "virulen[t]" and Economics became established.[29] The success of Samuelson's book is attributed to various factors, notably Samuelson's dispassionate, scientific style, in contrast to Tarshis's more engaged style. Subsequent texts have followed Samuelson's style.
If the job was to help younger students understand their lectures, meet for revision, or compete for comformity-grades at recitations then he would have had to learn this chapter index almost by heart - "absorb a textbook" in Fishman's own words, as every future professor would do if working as a teaching assistant along the way. It's more important than Fishman's own work because it shows how economics could seem to be a subject for a few decades. People could sign-up at age 18 or 16 in Fishman's case, learn from one book with one author writing about one country, and have a tool kit for discussing the rest of life in a particularly economic, technical way that's meant not to be party-political. That was how it was seen from outside, but inside university departments, economics teachers taught mathmatics to hold-down their jobs and avoid political criticism. They published maths about anything - it didn't matter what; nobody read it. For their undergraduate teaching they taught little diagrams that didn't make sense, over and over, to be learned by heart.
The idea of economics as a guide, like Samualson's textbook was unuasual in UK in 1984-7, with college courses repeating A-level in a more abstract way, textbooks repeating the basics that people expect to read like the Hicks ISLM model in a closed economy, but publishing other chapters which were more true and showed the basics to be wrong and - Oh: Professor Les Fishman was still teaching. The textbooks were also written to cover more than one country, so "Economics British Edition" by Begg (1984) doesn't have much about social insurance, even though it is the main thing that UK government does. Skip-down to the next bit of black type for more about Fishman PART ONE: BASIC ECONOMIC CONCEPT AND NATIONAL INCOME Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION 3 For Whom the Bell Tolls; Poverty Midst Plenty; Economic Description and Analysis; Economic Policy; Common Sense and Nonsense; Theory versus Practice; The Whole and the Part; Through the Looking Glass.Chapter 2. CENTRAL PROBLEMS OF EVERY ECONOMIC SOCIETY. 12 A. Problems of Economic Organization 12 Boundaries and Limits to Economics; The Law of Scarcity. B. The Technological Chokes Open to Any Society 17 The Production-possibility or Transformation Curve: Increasing Costs; Economies of Mass Production: Decreasing Costs; The Famous Law of Diminishing Returns. C. The Underlying Population Basis of Any Economy: Past and Future Popu-lation Trends 24 The Malthus Theory of Population; America and Europe Face Depopulation; The Net Reproduction Rate. Summty 31Chapter 3. FUNCTIONING OF A "MIXED" CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE SYSTEM 34 A. How A Free-enterprise System Solves the Basic Economic Problems . . 35 Not Chaos but Economic Order; The Price System; Imperfections of competition; Economic Role of Government. ixB. The Capitalistic Character of Modem Society Capital and Time; Fixed and Circulating Capital; Capital and Income; In-terest and the Real Net Productivity of Capital; Capital and Private Property. C. Exchange, Division of Labor, and Money Barter versus the Use of Money; Commodity Money, Paper Money, and Bank Money; Price Ratios and Money Prices; Money as a Medium of Exchange or as a Unit of Account; Money and Time * Chapter 4. INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY INCOME 61 Distribution of Income in the United States; The Inequality of Income; The Decline of Poverty; War Prosperity and Incomes; The So-called "Class Struggle"; Income from Work and from Property; The Render Class in a Decade of Falling Interest Rates; Incomes of Farmers; Wage Incomes from Work; The Position of Minorities. Summary 84Chapter 5. INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY INCOME: EARNINGS IN DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS 86 The Labor Market's Basement; The Unskilled and Semiskilled Workers; The Skilled Craftsmen; The White-collar Class; Professional Incomes; Is College Worth While?; Economic Stratification and Opportunity. Summary 107Chapter 6. BUSINESS ORGANIZATION AND INCOME 108 A. The Forms of Business Organization 108 The Population of Business Enterprises; Big, Small, and Infinitesimal Business; The Single Proprietorship; Business Growth and the Need for Short-term Capital; The Partnership; Causes of Business Growth; New Needs and Sources of Capital; Disadvantages of the Partnership Form. B. The Modern Corporation 118 Advantages and Disadvantages of the Corporate Form; How a Corporation Can Raise Capital; Bonds; Common Stocks; Preferred Stocks; Advantages of Different Securities; The Giant Corporation; The Evil of Monopoly; Divorce of Ownership and Control in the Large Corporation; Amplification of Control by the Pyramiding of Holding Companies; Leadership and Control of the Large Corporation; The Curse of Bigness? Summary 132 Appendix to Chapter 6: Elements of Accounting 134 The Balance Sheet; The Statement of Profit and Loss; Depreciation; The Relation between the Income Statement and the Balance Sheet; Earnings, Dividends, and Purchasing Power; Summary of Elementary Accounting Relations; Reserves, Funds, and Intangible Assets; Intangible Assets; Good Will and Monopoly Power. Summary to Appendix 149Chapter 7. THE ECONOMIC ROLF. OF GOVERNMENT: EXPENDITURE, REGULATION, AND FINANCE I50 The Growth of Government Expenditure; The Growth of Government Controls and Regulation; Federal, Local, and State Functions; Federal Expenditure; Efficiency and Waste in Government; Socialism and the New Deal; Government Transfer Expenditures; Three 'Ways to Finance Expenditure; Financing Govern-ment Expenditure by New Money; Financing Deficits by Loan Finance or Bor-rowing; War Finance; Fiscal Policy during Boom and Depression. Summary 166Chapter 8. THE ECONOMIC ROLE OF GOVERNMENT: FEDERAL TAXATION AND LOCAL FINANCE 168 Federal Taxation; Sales and Excise Taxes; Social Security, Payroll, and Employ-ment Taxes; Corporation Income Taxes; The Progressive Income Tax; State and }Aral Expenditures; State and Local Taxes; Property Tax; Highway User Taxes; Sales Taxes; Payroll and Business Taxes; Personal Income and Inheritance Taxes; Borrowing and Debt Repayment; Coordinating Different Levels of Government. Summary 184Chapter 9. LABOR ORGANIZATION AND PROBLEMS 185 History of the American Labor Movement; Craft versus Industrial Unions; Structure of the Labor Movement; Case Study of an AFL Carpenter; Case Study of 2 CIO Industrial Unionist; Case Study of a Labor Lawyer; The Case of the Philanthropic Capitalist; A Congressman's View of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947; An Expert Looks at the Labor Problem. Summary 199Chapter 10. PERSONAL FINANCE AND SOCIAL SECURITY . . . 201 Budgetary Expenditure Patterns; Regional Differences in Cost of Living; Family Differences in the Cost of Living; The Backward Art of Spending Money; In-come Patterns of Saving and Consumption; Graphical Depiction of the Propensity to Consume and to Save; The Wartime Accumulation of Saving; How People Borrow Money; Government Bonds as a Form of Saving; Investing in Securities; Economics of Home Ownership; Buying Life Insurance; Term Insurance; Straight Life Insurance; Limited Payment Insurance; Endowment Plan; Social Security and Health; Growth of Social Security. Summary 223Chapter 11. NATIONAL INCOME 225 Two Views: Money Income or Money Output; First View of National Income: Cost and Earnings of Factors of Production; Transfer Payments; Real versus Money Income; Second View of National Income as Net National Product: Final Goods versus Double Counting of Intermediate Goods; Two Problems Introduced by Government; Capital Formation; Gross versus Net Investment; International Aspects of Income; Quantitative Recapitulation of National Income and Product Summary 243 PART TWO: DETERMINATION OF NATIONAL INCOME AND ITS FLUCTUATIONS Chapter 12. SAVING AND INVESTMENT 253 A. The Theory of Income Determination 253 The Cleavage between Saving and Investment; The Variability of Investment; The Community's Propensity to Consume and to Save Schedules; How In-come is Determined at Level Where Saving and Investment Schedules Inter-sect; Income Determination by Consumption and Investment; Arithmetical Demonstration of Income Determination. A Third Restatement; The Theory of Income Determination Restated. 8. Applications and Limitations of Income Analysis 265 The "Multiplier"; A Digression on the Identity between Measurable Saving and Measurable Investment; Induced Investment and the Paradox of Thrift; Deflationary and Inflatory Gaps; Taxation and Government Expenditure in Income Analysis; Qualifications to Saving and Investment Analysis. Summary 277Chapter 13. PRICES, MONEY, AND INTEREST RATES 280 A. Prices Inflation, Deflation, and Redistribution of Income between Economic Classes; Effects of Changing Prices on Output and Employment; Galloping Inflation; Goals of Long-term Price Behavior. B. Money and Prices The Three Kinds of Money: Small Coins, Paper Currency, and Bank De-posits; Why Checking Deposits Are Considered to Be Money; The Meaning of the Value of Money as the Reciprocal of the Price Level; How the limita-tion of the Quantity of Money Preserves Its Value and Affects the Price 1evel; The Quantity Theory of Money; Inadequacies of the Quantity Theory : Prices Not Proportional to Total Spending; Inadequacies of the Quantity Theory: Total Spending Not Proportional to the Stock of Money; Relation of Money and Spending to Saving, Investment, and Prices; Conclusion to Money and Prices. C. Money and Interest Rates Three Demands for Money; Transaction Demand for Money; Precautionary Motive; Investment Demand for Money; Money as a Temporary Form of Holding Wealth; Short-term Investments as Near Substitutes for Cash; Money as a Long-term Asset; Money and the Determination of Interest Rates; His-tory of the Capital Markets since 1932; Money and Interest Rate during and after World War II. Summary 306Chapter 14. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE BANKING SYSTEM AND DEPOSIT CREATION 310 A. Nature and Functioning of the Modern Banking System The Present Status of Banking; Creation of the Federal Reserve System; Banking as a Business; How Banks Developed Out of Goldsmith Establish-ments; Modem Fractional Reserve Banking; The Difference between a Bank and Any Corporation; Paradoxes of Fractional Reserve Banking; Making Banks Safe. B. The Creation of Bank Deposits Can Banks Really Create Money?; How Deposits Arc Crated; A "Monopoly Bank"; Simultaneous Expansion or Contraction by All Banks; Three Qualifications; Leakage into Hand-to-hand Circulation; Leakage into Bank Vault Cash; Possible Excess Reserves. Summary 333Chapter 15. FEDERAL RESERVE AND CENTRAL BANK MONETARY POLICY 337 Controlling the Business Cycle by Controlling the Quantity of Money; Brief Preview of How the Reserve Banks Can Affect the Supply of Money; The Federal Reserve Banks' Balance Sheet; Gold Certificates; "Reserve Bank Credit"; Federal Reserve "Open-market" Operations; Loan and Rediscount Policy; Changing Reserve Requirements as a Weapon of Monetary Control; The Problem of "Excess Reserves"; Summary of Reserve Banks' Control over Money; The Pyramid of Credit; War Finance and the Banks; The Inadequacies of Monetary Control of the Business Cycle; Public Debt Management and Monetary Control. Summary 355 B. The Public Debt and Postwar Fiscal Policy 424 Retiring Nonbank Debt; Retiring Bank Debt; The Debt and the Propensity to Consume; Debt Retirement and Interest; The Public Debt and Its Limita-tions; External versus Internal Debt; Borrowing and Shining Economic Bur-dens through Tune; "We All Owe It to Ourselves"; Debt Management and Monetary Policy; The True Indirect Burden of Interest Charges; The Quantitative Problem of the Debt; Useful versus Wasteful Fiscal Policy; A Fundamental Difficulty with full Employment; The Employment Act of 1946 Summary 437 Appendix to Chapter IS: Four Quantitative Paths to Full Employment . 440 Model I: Private Enterprise, Full Employment; Model II: Deficit-spending Path to Full Employment; Model III: Tax-reduction Path to Full Employ-ment; Model IV: Balanced-budget Path to Full Employment. PART THREE: THE COMPOSITION AND PRICING OF NATIONAL OUTPUT Chapter 19. DETERMINATION OF PRICE BY SUPPLY AND DEMAND 447 A. Determination of Market Price 447 The Demand Schedule and the Demand Curve; Elastic and Inelastic Demands; The Supply Schedule; Equilibrium of Supply and Demand. B. Applications of Supply and Demand 457 Effects of Changes in Supply or Demand; A common Fallacy; Is the Law of Supply and Demand Immutable? Prices Fixed by Law. Summary 466 Appendix to Chapter 19: Questions and Problems on Supply and Demand 469 Case I : Constant Cost; Case 2: Increasing Costs and Diminishing Returns; Case 3: Completely Inelastic Supply and Economic Rent; Case 4: A Backward Rising Supply Curve; Case 5: A Possible Exception: Decreasing Cost; Case 6. Shifts in Supply.Chapter 20. THE THEORY OF CONSUMPTION AND DEMAND . . 477 Theory of Consumer's Choice; Price and Income Changes in Demand; Cross Relations of Demand; Response of Quantity to Own Price; A Fundamental Law of Diminishing Substitution; The Paradox of Value; Consumer's Surplus. Summary 485 Appendix to Chapter 20: Geometrical Analysis of Consumer Equilibrium 487Chapter 21. COST AND THE EQUILIBRIUM OF THE FIRM UNDER PERFECT AND IMPERFECT COMPETITION 491 A. The Maximum Profit Equilibrium Position within the Firm 491 Monopolistic Competition; The Finn's Demand under Perfect and Monopolist Competition; Price, Quantity, and Total Revenue; Total and Marginal Costs; Fixed Costs; Variable Costs; Total Cost; Average Cost: Marginal Cost; Marginal Revenue and Price; Maximizing Profits; Graphical Depiction of Firm's Optimum Position. B. Applications of the Profit Maximizing Principles to Perfect Competition and Patterns of Monopolistic Competition Price and Supply under Perfect Competition; Decreasing Costs and the Break-down of Perfect Competition; Minimizing Losses and Deciding When to Shur Down; Firm and Industry; Price and Cost under Monopolistic Competi-tion; Illustrative Patterns of Price; Chronically Overcrowded Sick Industries; The Case of Few Sellers of Identical Products; Monopolies Maintained by Constant Research and Advertising; Publicly Regulated Monopolies. 503 Sumnury 516Chapter 22. PRODUCTION EQUILIBRIUM OF THE FIRM AND THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION 518 A. Production Equilibrium of the Firm 519 Final Production Equilibrium: Direct Approach; The Indirect Approach to the Production Equilibrium; The "Production Function"; The Law of Di-minishing Returns Once Again; Combining Inputs Optimally in Order to Produce a Given Output; Final Production Equilibrium: indirect Approach. B. The Marginal Productivity Theory and the "Problem of Distribution" . . 526 Checkal Theories of Rent; The So-called "Marginal Productivity Theory of Distribution"; Can Trade-unions Raise Wages? Keeping Down the Total Number of Laborers; Pushing Up Money Wages in Particular Occupations. Summary 532 Appendix to Chapter 22: Graphical Depiction of Production Equilibrium 534Chapter 23. INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND THE THEORY OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE 558 Diversity of Conditions between Regions or Countries: A Simple Case: Europe and America; America without Trade; Europe without Trade; The Opening Up of Trade; Exact Determination of the Final Price Ratio. Summary Appendix to Chapter 23. Some Qualifications to the Discussion of Comparative Advantage Many Commodities and Countries; Increasing Costs; International Commodity Movements as a Partial Substitute for Labor and Factor Movements; Decreasing Costs and International Trade; Differences in Tastes or Demand as a Reason for Trade; Transportation Costs.Chapter 24. THE ECONOMICS OF TARIFF PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE 559 Noneconomic Goals; Grossly Fallacious Arguments for Tariff; Keeping Money in the Country; A Tariff for Higher Money Wages; Tariffs for Special-interest Groups; Some Less Obvious Fallacies; A Tariff for Revenue; Tariffs and the Home Market; Competition from Chap Foreign Labor; A Tariff for Retaliation; The "Scientific" Tariff; Arguments for Protection under Dynamic Conditions; Tariffs and Unemployment; Tariffs for "Infant Industries"; The "Young Economy" Argument. Summary 569Chapter 25. THE DYNAMICS OF SPECULATION AND RISK 570 Speculation and Price Behavior over Time; The Great Stock-market Crash; Gambling and Diminishing Utility; Economics of Insurance; What Can be in-sured?; Joint Public and Private Responsibilities. Summary 582Chapter 26. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND ECONOMIC WELFARE. 584 A. Fascism, Communism, and Socialism 584 The Crisis-of Capitalism; A Bouquet of Isms; Fascism; Marxian Communism and Soviet Russia; Socialism; Political Freedom and Economic Control. B. The Use of An Over-all Pricing System under Socialism and Capitalism . 590 Review of Free Competitive Pricing; The Concept of General Equilibrium; Pricing in a Socialist State: Consumption Goods Prices; The Distribution of In-come; Pricing of Nonhuman Productive Resources; The Example of Land Rent; The Role of the Interest Rate in a Socialist State; Wage Rates and Incentive Pricing; Su ry of Socialist Pricing; Welfare Economics in a Free-enterprise Economy. Summary 603Chapter 27. EPILOGUE 606 Index 609 SUGGESTED OUTLINE FOR A ONE-SEMESTER COURSE Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION Chapter 2. THE CENTRAL PROBLEMS OF EVERY ECONOMIC SOCIETY A. Problems of Economic Organization B. The Technological Choices Open to Any Society C. The Underlying Population Basis of Any Economy: Past and Future Population Trends Chapter 3. FUNCTIONING OF A "MIXED" CAPITALISTIC ENTERPRISE SYSTEM A. How a Free Enterprise System Solves the Basic Economic Problems B. The Capitalistic Character of Modern Society C. Exchange, Division of Labor, and Money Chapter 4. INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY INCOME Chapter 5. INDIVIDUAL AND FAMILY INCOME, CONTINUED: EARNINGS IN DIFFERENT OCCUPATIONS Chapter 6. BUSINESS ORGANIZATION AND INCOME A. The Forms of Business Organization B. The Modern Corporation Appendix: Elements of Accounting: Chapter 19. DETERMINATION OF PRICE BY SUPPLY AND DEMAND A. Determination of Market Price B. Applications of Supply and Demand Chapter 21. COST AND EQUILIBRIUM OF THE FIRM UNDER PERFECT AND IMPERFECT COMPETITION A. The Maximum Profit Equilibrium Position within the Firm B. Applications of the Profit Maximizing Principles to Perfect Competition and Pat-terns of Monopolistic Competition. Chapter 7. THE ECONOMIC ROLE OF GOVERNMENT: EXPENDITURE, REGULATION, AND FINANCE Chapter 8. THE ECONOMIC ROLE OF GOVERNMENT, CONTINUED: FEDERAL TAXATION AND LOCAL FINANCE Chapter 9. LABOR ORGANIZATION AND PROBLEMS Chapter 10. PERSONAL FINANCE AND SOCIAL SECURITY Chapter 11. NATIONAL INCOME Chapter 12. SAVING AND INVESTMENT A. The Theory of Income Determination B. Applications and Limitations of Income Analysis Chapter 13. PRICES, MONEY, AND INTEREST RATES A. Prices B. Money and Prices C. Money and Interest Rates Chapter 14. FUNDAMENTALS OF THE BANKING SYSTEM AND DEPOSIT CREATION A. Nature and Functioning of the Modern Banking System B. The Creation of Bank Deposits Chapter 15. FEDERAL RESERVE AND CENTRAL BANK MONETARY POLICY (OPTIONAL) Chapter 16. INTERNATIONAL FINANCE AND DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT A. International Trade and Capital Movements B. Postwar International Trade and Full Employment Chapter 18. FISCAL POLICY AND FULL EMPLOYMENT WITHOUT IN FLATION A. Short-run and Long-run Fiscal Policy B. The Public Debt and Postwar Fiscal Policy.
1950
Oath assailed at protest rally: Faculty position cheered
By Jeannie Hamilton - Issue No. 44, April 11, 1950: news article, front page
The sunlit Greek Theatre resounded with cheers and applause yesterday as four members of the faculty voiced their opposition to the Regents' loyalty oath and "sign or resign" ultimatum. The ASUC protest meeting was frequently interrupted by the estimated 4,500 students, who listened attentively to the speakers' explanations of their stands in the oath controversy. The most prolonged accolade was given a faculty member who said he had not signed the oath. When Arthur H. Brodeur, professor of English and German philology, stated, "I will never sign the special oath under any circumstances," the audience rose and applauded for several minutes. Brodeur, in presenting the views of the non-signers, was interrupted again when he said he had voted against the second resolution passed by the Academic senate. (The resolution states the senate's agreement with the University's anti-Communist employment policy.)
However, Brodeur stated that he would abide by the majority decision and added, "I shall do all in my power to support the 'committee of seven.'" In stating his opposition to the oath, Brodeur said, "We must believe in the freedom of the human mind and spirit . . . no man can do good work when he is under suspicion; a man is better unemployed if he is not trusted . . ." He added that no man "can be a faithful member of the (academic) profession if he is working under the threat of coercion--let there be no doubt that there is coercion behind the Regents' actions." Brodeur then praised President Robert Gordon Sproul and stated that his presidency has been "the period of greatest achievement and understanding." He added, "If at any time in this struggle President Sproul should be forced to leave the University, I shall follow him at once." Joel H. Hildebrand, vice chairman of the senate, also commended President Sproul and added that the president recognizes and regrets the mistake he made by introducing the special oath last spring. Hildebrand, dean of the college of chemistry, said, "No opportunity will be lost by the Regents to blame President Sproul." Hildebrand said that recent events seem to indicate that "it is an offense to criticize the Regents' policy. It looks as if docility will be a criteria for professors." He also asserted that Regent John Francis Neylan had repudiated an agreement with the faculty. The stand taken by the Non-Senate Academic Employes on the oath and ultimatum was explained by Leslie Fishman, lecturer in business administration, whose speech was also punctuated by loud applause. Fishman stated that many of the faculty members who signed the oath "did so last year under the pressure of the October 1 deadline in the belief that checks and contracts would be withheld . . . this impression was not dispelled until after the deadline." "If the ultimatum stands . . . the senate as a governing body will have been completely abolished . . . the University will be fair game for any political hack," Fishman added. He then presented the NSAE proposal: a compact made by both signers and non-signers that they would withdraw their services unless the Regents' oath and ultimatum are rescinded. "To do this, we need every one of you--are you with us?" and to chorus of "Yes!" Fishman returned to his seat. The views of the senate "committee of seven," which has been leading the oath opposition, were presented by Morrough P. O'Brien, dean of the college of engineering. O'Brien said the faculty "is for an oath--the California standard oath of office, which is all-inclusive." The Regents' Feb. 24 ultimatum was characterized by O'Brien as an action which would eliminate the opportunity for "a fair and impartial hearing." He said that "men who stand on principle will not be reappointed . . . action will be taken without hearings." O'Brien stated that the committee believes the University anti-Communist policy can be better implemented by the senate's proposed oath substitution rather than by the loyalty oath itself. He was booed by a small segment of the audience when he said the controversy with the Regents is "only over the means to a common end." After the ASUC meeting another protest meeting, featuring anti-oath musical parodies, was held at Sather Gate by the United Action Committee for Academic Freedom; the meeting lasted until 3:15 p.m. ---------------------------
'Will never sign': 4,500 Berkeley students cheer oath-defying faculty speakers
(The Daily Bruin Issue No. [46], April 17, 1950: news article, p.7)
An estimated 4500 University of California students cheered and applauded four faculty spokesmen in the ASUC protest meeting in the Berkeley Greek theater last Monday as the speakers outlined their opposition to the Regents' special loyalty oath and the "sign or resign" ultimatum, reported the Daily Californian.
Frequently interrupting the speakers with vociferous demonstrations of support, the students went so far as to rise to their feet and applaud for several minutes when English professor Dr. Arthur H. Brodeur defiantly asserted: "I will never sign the special oath under any circumstances."Other speakers were Dr. Joel H. Hildebrand, vice chairman of the northern section of the Academic Senate; Dr. Morrough P. O'Brien, dean of the College of Engineering and member of UC's faculty steering committee; and Leslie Fishman, lecturer in business administration and spokesman for the Non-Senate Academic Employees.
Not Big Enough
Hildebrand, denouncing the Regents for putting pressure on the faculty to sign the oath, said: "The University community is evidently not big enough for both groups (the faculty and the Regents). Will you (the students) and your parents be satisfied if the professors are the ones to go?" The students roared "No."
Explaining the stand taken by the Non-senate group, Fishman said many faculty members who signed the oath "did so last year under the pressure of the October 1 deadline in the belief that checks and contracts would be withheld . . . this impression was not dispelled until after the deadline.""If the ultimatum stands . . . the Senate as a governing body will have been completely abolished," he added.
Withdraw Services
Concluding, Fishman presented a proposal of the NSAE that a compact be made by both signers and non-signers that they withdraw their services unless the Regents rescind the oath and "ultimatum." "To do this, we need every one of you--are you with us?" he asked the students. "Yes," they roared back.
No Mass Movement
But in a press conference that same day faculty spokesman Dr. John D. Hicks, chairman of the Berkeley steering committee, declared:
"We are proceeding just as cautiously and conservatively as possible . . . there will be no mass movement--resignations or otherwise."
He said no action was "contemplated until after the final word of the Regents," and added that the legal committee was prepared to go to court to protect any faculty member, "not a Communist," who may be discharged for failure to sign the oath. Meanwhile, the proposed one day general strike of students and teachers at the Berkeley campus failed to materialize. The plan was proposed by the NSAE and endorsed by the United Action Committee for Academic Freedom, a group comprising many student organizations on the northern campus, and the Berkeley Graduate Students assn.
Strike Plans
Plans for a prolonged general strike are now being considered by the NSAE steering committee. First rebuff to the plans came from Hicks, who said: "We would not contemplate participating in that sort of work cessation. The faculty feels committed to fulfill its contractual obligations, and even more, its moral and professional responsibilities." Last Tuesday the ASUC's executive committee passed two resolutions on the loyalty oath issue.
Competence
The first called for the committee to "go on record as opposing any political oath" and "stating that competence and performance alone shall be the criteria for hiring and firing teachers."
Following this, they passed another resolution opposing the hiring of members of "any party which advocates overthrow of the government by unconstitutional means" and supporting the Senate's resolution against employment of Communists.
He was blacklisted because of his refusal to sign a loyalty oath. He worked briefly as a docker... "- one of the obituaries of Leslie or daughter Nina: "her mother Ellie who had been a labour organiser in the militant longshoreman’s union in the San Francisco area during World War II and who continued to agitate in one way or other for the rest of her life".- reminiscence about the daughter, Nina Fishman
1952-5
...then joined my aunt [Leah Fishman] for two years as an accountant at his father's furniture manufacturing firm in Los Angeles, and became active in the American Civil Liberties Union. I remember asking him in 1953 whether he was in the Communist party. His reply silenced me: "I don't think you have the right to ask me that question. It is my right under the Bill of Rights to freedom of association ..."- Obituary by Nina Fishman, aged 12 in 1953. For five years, Fishman had to face the same realities that most of his Keele graduates would suffer thirty years later. The Open University program called The Catch shows a graduate 20-odd trying to do a job on a deep sea trawler, and ends with a note that he got a job at a chrome plating factory. Fishman appears unaffected by the experience. Once he was back on his teaching career, he forgot it. He didn't mention the experience of dock work to his students, or his father's factory, and preferred to present himself as the professor in tweeds who learned everything in life out of journals. The only givaway, apart from his willingness to talk out of his arse, was a kind of earthiness that attaches itself to people with a lot of life experience
1955
State Fair Doors Swing Open, 34 New Teachers Begin ISC Duties, Culver City Asks Probe.
A list of new 30 new staff at ISC invited to a lunch, includes Leslie Fishman, instructor in business administration and economics. The same page quotes a national story about Culver City near Los Angeles requesting FBI and Senate investigation into communist activities, and summer fair where photographs of prize-winning animals were taken, but not published by the newspaper. Idaho State Journal Pocatello, Idaho. Tuesday, September 13, 1955. Page 3, from free optical character recognition https://www.newspapers.com/image/15862295/?terms=Leslie%2BFishman. There was also a remarkably small foam rubber sofa available for $189.88. The awkward headline and attribution of "Culver asks probe" suggest that someone at the top of the newspaper hierarchy asked for the article to be written and that the people who wrote it weren't so keen.
Idaho State College had a tabulating machine; it was one of the first colleges ever to lease these IBM machines, and hosted international conferences of statisticians who tried to expand their statistical uses. Prices at cow fairs, Iowa land values, and every number the lab could measure was crunched through the tabulators. One of the early experimenters was to become President Woodrow Wilson, or someone like that; I'm not sure. Other universities followed, and Boulder, Colorado established a stats lab in 1957, hiring J.N. Srivastava, a mathmetician, from Idaho.
subtitledlectures and essays commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Veblen's birth. Fishman's chapter was called
Veblen, Hoxie, and American labor
..............................................
LESLIE FISHMAN 12
Veblen, Hoxie, and American Labor
It is never easy to understand the work of great economists during their own lifetimes; it is even more difficult both to understand and evaluate their theories after they have died. The late Professor Leo nogin has suggested that we attempt this in two steps: first, that we try to grasp fully the meaning of the man's writings through the eyes of the theorist himself, that is, in terms of the problem as the theorist himself posed it; and second, that we examine, through our own eyes, so to speak, the validity of his theory. But how can an economic theory's validity be tested? We are not permitted controlled experiments. Human history is an ever changing pattern that appears to have no beginning and no end. What is important today may be in-significant tomorrow. What appears as a prime moving force to one person may appear as an insignificant and unusual disturbance to another. Does this mean that no firm estimate of a theory's validity is possible? Not at all. With the benefit of hindsight, we can attempt to under-stand fully Veblen's economic theory—in terms of the problem he set for himself. Then we can take the next step. We can ask whether Veblen foresaw the major historical forces at work, so as to make the problems he posed both significant and operationally solvable; that is, were his problems defined in terms of historically significant variables, and were these variables changing in the way he described them? In Veblen's case, these criteria of validity are easily affirmed—he was so right so many times. The problem of his generation, and of
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ours, remains that of adjusting pecuniary institutions to an industrial world which is astride a matter-of-fact science that is changing technology at an ever increasing pace. The twin horses of science and technology are galloping away with our chariot—even into the upper reaches of the ionosphere and space; but our socioeconomic and political institutions remain earth-bound to the extreme. Moreover, growing disparity between scientific progress and social institutions is taking place, according to Veblen, against a backdrop of national dynastic states and empires, and inherited property relationships of use and wont. In what specific ills does this over-all and all-pervasive conflict result? A myriad of problems, the most important of which are war, poverty, depressions, and, most significant of all, the difficulties attending the rate of progress of science and technology, and side effects of that progress. But even when a theorist's problem is valid, the big question still remains unanswered: Is the solution realizable? Will the institutions that the theorist believes to be abnormal actually undergo change in the manner predicted by the theory? Will these changes bring about the desired results—without important side effects? This makes economic theory stand muster against the flow and pattern of history. This makes economics a science of history; a science of change, of development. It makes economics evolutionary, to use the term Veblen and Hoxie insisted upon. What were the abnormal institutions for Veblen? The pecuniary institutions of natural rights and property. How were these going to be changed and made consistent with the industrial technology of science and the machine? By those whose outlook and psychology was molded by the industrial discipline—the workers, the engineers, the scientists. What was going to be the operative force at work? It is at this point that the chain of Veblen's theory broke. And it is here that Robert Franklin Hoxie was to step in. Veblen defined the problem. Veblen supplied the over-all framework. Veblen delineated the major historical forces. But Veblen was most uncertain about the key step—the operative force that would impel those under the industrial discipline to change the pecuniary institutions. Interestingly enough, this is precisely Veblen's criticism of Marx's schema. As Veblen himself described it, "It is nowhere pointed out what is the operative force at work in the process." By process, Veblen
referred to the process of history. The Marxist deterministic class struggle was far too oversimplified for Veblen to accept. Moreover, the key motive force—impoverishment of the working class, whether absolute or relative—certainly did not apply, according to Veblen. In his very first publication Veblen underlined this basic weakness in the Marxian case:
The system of industrial competition, based on private property, has brought about .. . the most rapid advance in average wealth and industrial efficiency that the world has seen. . . . The result . . . has been to increase greatly the creature comforts within the reach of the average human being.1
Veblen attempted to fill this crucial void in his own theory in several different ways. In his earliest work he stressed the role of emulation in goading those under the industrial discipline to action. The imitative consumption patterns of our society, with the enormous element of competition, can lead to increased dissatisfaction as living standards rise. Thus, as creature comforts are met, increased rivalry with one another can lead to increased displeasure and disaffection, particularly if the fruits of progress and production are inequitably distributed. Dorfman believes that by the time Veblen wrote The Theory of Business Enterprise this emulation concept gave way to a more orthodox view—the social psychology engendered by the industrial discipline gives rise to attitudes, on the part primarily of industrial workers, that will impel them to challenge existing pecuniary institutions. And challenge them they will. Business unionism is only the outward surface expression of the trade-union movement. Veblen wrote that beneath the surface trade unions directly attack the pecuniary institutions:
"The classes who move in trade-unions are, how-ever crudely and blindly, endeavouring, under the compulsion of the machine process, to construct an institutional scheme on the lines imposed by the new exigencies given by the machine process." 2
Veblen described unions that held these views as the "maturest expressions" of trade unionism. An even more laudatory phrase was reserved for the individuals who took this position; Veblen called them "the more wide-awake body of unionist workmen." "Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism," Annals of the American Academy, 11 (1891), p. 348. "Theory of Business Enterprise (New York: Scribner, 1904), p. 336.
Although Veblen did not spell out in specifics the exact manner in which those subject to the industrial discipline arrive at their beliefs, the general forces at work are clear. On the production line, in the scientific laboratory, in front of the engineering drafting boards, those employed in industry work with the materials of the real, matter-of-fact world and their outlook and opinions are shaped accordingly. In a mine thousands of feet below the surface, each man is evaluated by the way he handles his tools and the machinery, how he works with his fellow miners, how he gets the ore out. His "net worth," his credit rating, or the shrewdness with which he purchases real estate—all these count for very little in a mine shaft. Similarly, a scientist conditioned by the laboratory and perhaps interested in the state of the economy, is more likely to turn to an objective measure of total production than to the elusive profit and loss statements of business. Or take the case of an engineer planning a new suburban housing development. Would he be most concerned about the extent and placement of a new shopping centre, to maximise the profit return of the project, or would he be more inclined to deal in terms of the needs of the new dwellers and the physical characteristics of the terrain? Eugene O'Neill in his play The Hairy Ape focused on this contrast—the life, the values, the outlook of a stoker in the hold of a ship compared with the values of the first-class passengers on deck. These represent the two employments Veblen refers to in the phrases, "the industrial discipline" and "the pecuniary discipline." The first two decades of the twentieth century in America saw the machine revolutionising production, transportation, and distribution and the corporate form of business triumphant across the land. Trade-union membership grew slowly and declined rapidly. The Socialist party reached its peak in membership and votes and then was torn to shreds by factionalism and the rising patriotic fervour attendant on World War I. Reform liberalism also reached its zenith, and under Wilson's leadership a series of basic reforms were passed in the varied fields of the tariff, the banking system, trade unions, trusts and trade, farming, suffrage, and the income tax. The industrial giant took shape, but Veblen's vision of those shaped under the industrial discipline be-came more blurred and somewhat obscure. He still held out the hope that "among workmen . . . uncritical habitual faith in this institutional scheme is beginning to crumble." 8 But he was forced to admit that with this crumbling "no constructive deviation from the received principles" is to be found. By 1917 Veblen still anticipated the awakening of the common man —a realization that "these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to his material detriment." Veblen predicted that, if ever this day comes, the common man will not trifle with details. Rather, it will be "something in the nature of the stand once taken by recalcitrant Englishmen in protest against the irresponsible rule of the Stuart sovereign." 4 The post–World War I picture was apparently even more depressing. By 1923 Veblen wrote that the American workingmen "are still tangled in personalities, not realising that their common adversary is a state of affairs rather than a conspiracy of sinners." 5 In this brief recital of several passages of Veblen's views on American labour there is great danger of oversimplification and distortion. We should not think that this brilliant and incisive mind did not at any time appreciate the problems and difficulties that confronted American labour. He was only too well aware of them. His studies of the Industrial Workers of the World during World War I are classic, among the best work done on American labour. His generalisations about the nature of business unionism show how painfully aware he was of the limitations of American unions. His was a case of too much knowledge, rather than not enough. This caused him to retreat in later years to the engineers and scientists for hope of an operative force in American society along the lines of his earlier analysis. Our primary concern, however, is with American labour as the potential operative force in Veblen's schema—operative force, not in the sense of blind historical necessity moving through an un-reacting mass, but quite the reverse. Veblen's operative force results from human beings reacting with and through their environment—reacting at all levels of consciousness and concern. But they are reacting within the historical milieu dominated by an industrial society governed by pecuniary institutions. Just who is going to "disestablish" these pecuniary Instinct of Workmanship (New York: Macmillan, 1914), p. 343. `The Nature of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1917), p. 364. Absentee Ownership (New York: Huebsch, 1923), p. 295.
institutions, as Veblen liked to refer to the process, remained an unanswered question. Robert Franklin Hoxie attempted to find the answer. In many ways Hoxie was the least likely candidate for this important role. He came from a farm background. His early training in economics emphasised conventional theory. Economic theory, money and banking, government finance were the fields that attracted and challenged young Hoxie. His early articles in these branches of economics are significant works in their own right. Around the turn of the century it became clear that the Veblen outlook took possession of Hoxie, and he would never again be free of it. He could no longer view American society as a group of individuals, or the American economy as a group of homogeneous households and businesses. Everywhere he turned, Veblen's basic distinction between the industrial and pecuniary employments haunted him. A market place was no longer the arena where buyers and sellers meet and come to terms. Now it became another place where the basic cleavage in society emerged, where those subject to the discipline and values of prices, profits, and accumulation met to come to terms with each other and, even more important, with those who did the actual physical and scientific work of society—those subject to the industrial discipline. Those subject to the industrial discipline are, like all humans, molded and influenced by the conditions under which they work. The industrial conditions, however, are far different from those that surround the pecuniary markets. The industrial conditions arise from man grappling with machines, with raw materials, and with natural forces. The pecuniary conditions reflect a shrewd purchase, a hard sell, or a protective blocking patent. The one is oriented to the production of commodities and to the exploration of the mysteries of the universe; the other is oriented to the maximisation of profits and the exploration of the mysteries of building and protecting corporate empires. Production and plenty guide the first; scarcity and profitability guide the second. Where was Hoxie to focus this searching spotlight? Not on the pricing problem. In this realm Hoxie was willing to accept the theory of the neoclassical Marshallians, to whom he referred as the "modernised economists." With the tools of modern economics Hoxie was fully familiar. He could dissect a market in terms of supply and demand as neatly as an experienced surgeon completes an appendectomy. Hoxie saw no contradiction between marginal-ism as a guide to price analysis and Veblenism as a guide to evolutionary economics. But in Veblenism a giant loophole remained to be plugged—the operative force. Hoxie set to work with unlimited energy and zeal. The vast Veblenian framework was enlisted in an attempt to dissect and understand the labor movement. It soon became evident that his inquiry must extend far beyond the confines of trade unions. It would have to include the political expressions of the workers, the counterparts of the unions in the pecuniary sphere, the employer associations, also the courts and the law, and most certainly the ever changing technology that was forever weaving new patterns of custom, use, and organization. Hoxie applied a scientific matter-of-factness that was guided and directed by the Veblenian schema. To achieve the crucial understanding of trade unions, Hoxie buried himself within the unlimited detail of union organisation. Professor Hamilton recounts the story that proves how Hoxie penetrated even into the sacrosanct union field of membership figures. At the time when the I.W.W. was being publicised as the organisation that threatened the stability of our basic institutions, Hoxie stormed into Vincent St. John's office in Chicago and claimed "to have the goods on him." Hoxie stated that the highly vaunted I.W.W. had a membership of only 14,300. "You're a liar," St. John cried back, "we have 14,310." ° Details did not overwhelm Hoxie. With the Veblenian framework as a guide, a beautifully conceived apparatus for the analysis emerged. Every phase and every aspect of the industrial discipline was subjected to minute inspection and finally fitted into its proper place. The elaborate latticework starts with an understanding of the aims of unions, proceeds to the policies and principles consistent with and necessary to fulfil those aims, and then to the methods and demands and attitudes which emerge in the day-to-day actions of officials and members. But even this intricate pattern of categories is much too simple to analyse the complex institution we term "unionism." Hoxie found that American unionism did not conform to a single type, as many of his academic colleagues maintained, but to four entirely different types—each with its own set of aims, principles, policies, methods, demands, ° Walton H. Hamilton, "The Development of Hoxie's Economics," _lour. Pol. Econ., XXIV (1916), p. 875.
and attitudes. Each type has its own remedial program, as Hoxie termed it, its own solution to the industrial-pecuniary conflict. And each type is a legitimate expression of the American worker and the American scene. Some labour economists, particularly those of the view that there is only one legitimate son of the American economy to claim the title "American unionism," have hurled at Hoxie the epithet Veblen made famous: "taxonomist." Certainly Hoxie was a classifier, but he never aimed simply to classify. Hoxie's categories were the product of years of study, and they reveal the true nature of American labor in terms of the Veblen-ian outlook. Proof of the accuracy of these four basic categories is seen in their application to the present labour picture. None of the proponents of a unitary interpretation of the American labor movement would lump together the Weltanschauung of a George Meany, a Walter Reuther, a Harry Bridges, and a Dave Beck. These four examples offer present confirmation of Hoxie's four categories, conceived two generations ago: Meany the business unionist, Reuther the uplift unionist, Bridges the revolutionary unionist, Beck the predatory unionist. Hoxie classified and categorised, not to make complex something which was simple, but rather to make the complex understandable and manageable. The only way he could do this was in terms of the Veblenian framework. To grasp the meaning and importance of the categories it is necessary to interpret each type of unionism in terms of the basic industrial and pecuniary conflict in the context of our machine age. Business unionism accepts as inevitable the pecuniary institutions of capitalism. Its remedial program, arising out of the industrial environment, is directed entirely toward its own immediate economic ends. In pursuit of these limited ends it generally uses business methods of limiting supply. However, if it becomes obvious that other methods are needed to gain immediate economic improvements, these other methods will be adopted. Two important examples are political action and the support of the pecuniary institutions. If it is obvious that immediate gains are obtainable through political activity, or dependent upon such activity, the business union will enter politics. And if it is obvious that immediate economic gains are to be obtained only through change in the pecuniary institutions, then consideration of such change is likely, although the exact remedial program that would emerge cannot be predicted. Business unionism, then, is the unionism whose remedy is more here-and-now. Under "normal" conditions this leads to an autocratic and conservative union whose program will not deal directly with the larger issues posed by the basic pecuniary-industrial conflict in society. Friendly or uplift unionism is "characteristically idealistic in view-point." Its remedies for the basic conflict in society run in terms of co-operative enterprises, profit sharing, or other idealistic plans. There is no serious questioning of the pecuniary mores of society or an at-tempt to change the basic institutions. Instead, there is often the claim that the union is acting in the interest of society as a whole. Thus, there is not a basic, irreconcilable conflict in society. Uplift unionism often claims to discover a middle ground that permits a just solution. Emphasis is on elevating the moral, intellectual, and social life of the worker, while accepting the pecuniary institutions. This reflects the idealistic view of the labour-capital conflict in society. It emphasises immediate uplift reforms. Working with the assumption that personal security and dignity are obtainable for the worker under existing institutions, it is likely to accept programs that do not seriously jeopardise these institutions. Revolutionary unionism, on the other hand, repudiates the existing pecuniary institutions. It completely embraces the industrial discipline and wishes to make dominant those institutions that reflect the industrial values. The socialist variant of revolutionary unionism pursues immediate economic and social reforms, but only as temporary expedients while man continues to live under existing institutions. Socialists emphasise the solidarity of the workingmen as a class and their productive orientation. Their ultimate answer is collective ownership of the means of production, an answer that would supposedly free man and the machine from the inhibiting forces of the profit mechanism. Other variants of revolutionary unionism are likely to eschew all short-run, immediate gains; the anarchist, for example, opposes all outside imposed discipline. His weapons are likely to be those most expressive of this revolt against industrial discipline—violence and sabotage. Predatory unionism is the complete acceptance of pecuniary ends as applied to the labour movement. Gangsters or pecuniary-minded labour leaders might gain control of unions and use them to maximise their own personal gain. This unionism accepts the pecuniary institutions and attempts to capitalise upon control over the industrial discipline. From the point of view of the union, this involves an autocratic, boss rule which delivers enough "goods" to remain in complete control. From the point of view of the pecuniary environment, this involves application of sound business practices to a given market place,s that is, monopoly control to maximise personal gain in return for the sale of a service. This would call for disciplining the workers and probably also disciplining competing producers. A corresponding case in business would be a corporate management group whose guiding principle was personal gain rather than the welfare of the stock-holders. In summary, Hoxie viewed trade unionism as an institution that has grown out of the matter-of-fact recognition by workers of the need for collective action to express their needs and aspirations for improvement of their standard of life. This movement is a response to an industrial environment in a society organised by pecuniary institutions. Since various workers and unions are differently circumstanced, they view the industrial-pecuniary conflict from different perspectives and have different programs. One must analyse and understand each of these four remedial programs for a true understanding of American unionism. The brief recital of Hoxie's incisive categories of trade unionism illustrates how successful he was in establishing a classification that "was true to the modern economic situation." He had accomplished his immediate goal—a framework for evolutionary economics. But it still did not permit Hoxie to answer what he considered the ultimate question, "What, if anything, of a remedial nature can be accomplished?" His quest for an answer proved futile. It proved futile because he was unable to resolve the schizophrenia he found in the American labour movement. The schizophrenia stemmed from the conflict between labor's short-run goals of business unionism and labour's long-run sympathies for basic institutional change. In some ways this split personality is similar to the split Veblen and Hoxie found in capitalism itself—between the pecuniary and the industrial employments. The trade union is brought into being to fulfil the immediate, basic economic needs of the worker. Unless these needs are met by the union, the organisation will fail. But to be successful in this endeavour, the union must play by the rules of the pecuniary game. It cannot be successful if it uses its own rules—rules that are a natural outgrowth of the industrial discipline. Thus, in the pursuit of essential short-run demands, unions often set forces in motion which will smother and even destroy effective expression of their long-run aims. This is, of course, another example of the dilemma Veblen used in his criticism of Marx. As immediate economic reforms are effectuated, the operative force for basic, institutional change is dulled or made nonoperative. Hoxie encountered the same dilemma in his thorough and intensive study of the American Socialist party. Hoxie viewed the Socialists as the natural political arm for the remedial programs of the more mature wing of American unionism. However, the successes of the Socialists in 1910 to 1912 were based almost entirely upon their short-run reform programs. Hoxie warned that, if the revolutionary faction ever obtained control of the Socialist party and deemphasized short-run reform, the socialist movement was doomed to become a small sect removed entirely from the main stream of American life. On the other hand, if the Socialists remained pure middle-class reformers, they would become indistinguishable from the other two parties and would lose the idealistic, class-conscious halo from which they derived their true strength and basic appeal. Either or both of the two political parties could outreform the Socialists on such issues as honest government, efficient administration, prison reform, factory legislation, and so on. The old-line parties had the experience, resources, and, above all, the respectability to effectuate short-run reform programs far more successfully than did the Socialists. What gave the Socialist party its unique character, its only hope for long-term growth and power, was its socialist character. But this was precisely the characteristic that was placed in jeopardy in the exact proportion to its success at the polls. To be successful, it had to emphasise short-run reforms. To the extent that it did, it created the very conditions which could potentially lead to its own destruction. In other words, how can either trade unions or their political parties operate successfully within the pecuniary institutions and at the same time preserve their integrity as organizations of the industrial employments? How can an operative force serve two masters? Hoxie posed this question in a most insistent and timeless fashion just a year before his death. In 1915 he was given a leave of absence from the University of Chicago to conduct an intensive inquiry into scientific management for the United States Industrial Commission. The investigation was a magnificent effort—the questionnaire itself comprised over five hundred detailed questions and reads even today as a complete, guided tour through our industrial establishment. Those interested in studying the implications of automation would do well to give Hoxie's inquiry a careful examination. In the final report to the Commission, Hoxie spelled out two major forces that permeate scientific management, or automation, if you will. The first is man's perpetual desire to advance in science, knowl-edge, and efficiency. Unfortunately, often this advance is a "Franken-stein, temporarily destructive of human rights." But these human rights "are unquenchable, for in the long run they contain the very life of true efficiency itself." Conflict between these two forces, wrote Hoxie, is simply "marking time against the inevitable. It is inherent in the nature of things that they both live and fructify." 7 Today, more than forty years later, it appears that we are still mark-ing time against the inevitable. Despite enormous changes that have taken place in both the pecuniary and the industrial realms, the major problem, as defined by Veblen and Hoxie, remains unresolved. The instinct of workmanship, idle curiosity, scientific matter-of-factness-- all manifestations of the industrial discipline—continue to be con-strained and restrained by the pecuniary institutions. In 1957 this is-sue was raised in dramatic fashion by the successes of Russian science in the field of space satellites. In the re-examination of American science and education that has followed the first two sputniks, the Veblenian approach is everywhere in evidence. The market place, the pecuniary institutions are questioned as appropriate guides to stimu-late and further science. For example, the popular magazine Life, in a recent editorial, analyzed the problem: "When they grew older, the Euphorians [Americans] gave up learning for earning. Earning was a sure path to happiness. . . . Most appalling of all were two major failings which the modern Euphorians atavistically called heresies—
' Robert F. Hoxie, Scientific Management and Labor (New York: Appleton, 1915), pp. 138-139. discontent and curiosity." The editorial goes on to offer two alternatives, both of which contain striking Veblenian overtones. The first [alternative was]—to do business as usual, but a little faster. . . . The second alternative was far less happy. . . . To train their children for the newer age involved a drastic remodeling of the happiness schools and a reinstatement of the heresies, discontent and curiosity, as honored virtues. . . . The second alternative demanded, further, that the teacher, the critic and the discoverer be permanently released from their imprisonment in Euphoria's moated ivy towers and allowed to sit down with the earners at dinner and given money enough to buy a new suit occasionally.[8] Incidentally, lest anyone be under the illusion that similar problems, albeit in different forms, do not plague Russians living under different institutions, he should refer to the Russian novel Not by Bread Alone. The author, Vladimir Dudintsev, raises the same issue, in exactly the same form as did Veblen and Hoxie.[9] Under what kind of institutions can that strange individual, the discoverer, the critic, the idly curious, be permitted to develop and contribute to a standardized, bureaucratized, machine civilization? But to return to Hoxie's original question, can American labor still be considered a potential operative force in the Veblenian sense of the term? Although the basic Veblenian framework is unquestionably ap-plicable to the current scene, it is doubtful whether American labor will be an important operative force in bringing our institutions into greater congruence with scientific and industrial progress. What Hoxie has provided is the basic understanding of American labor which, when applied to the current setting, supplies the necessary and suffi-cient conditions under which labor would be an operative force. Unless these conditions are fulfilled, and it is not likely that they will be, labor in the United States will continue to justify Veblen's pessimism. To explain this apparent contradiction (that the Veblen-Hoxie framework is applicable but that American labor is not a probable operative force) it is first necessary to characterize the present-day labor movement in Hoxian terms. American labor in 1957 is funda-mentally different from the movement described by Hoxie fifty years Life, December 16,1957, p. 39. ° Vladimir Dudintsev, Not by Bread Alone, translated from the Russian by Edith Bone (New York: Dutton, 1957).
ago in one basic respect—its size. Today over one-third of the actually employed working force is represented by a union. It is now easier to enumerate the unorganized areas than the organised. The nonunion industries are found primarily in white-collar fields (finance, insurance, sales, service, and the like), in those located in the South, and in those who have been sufficiently profitable and expansive to stay ahead of unionism (electronics, oil, instruments ). Thus, unionism is a powerful force in almost all basic American industry. A qualification is in order. Even in those industries where unionism is considered strong (building trades, trucking, needle trades, and so on), there persists a sizable fringe of workers who are unorganized, and who are likely to remain so ( workers in runaway shops or in substandard operations, the self-employed, union members on second jobs, and so on). These unorganized continue to exert a significant pull on the American industrial scene, particularly since a substantial segment of American management refuses to accept unionism as a permanent, legitimate American institution. On the surface it appears that the new, powerful American labour movement can be characterized as entirely business unionist in nature. Almost a decade ago the national organizations of labour joined with governmental agencies to clean their respective houses of the most important present-day variety of revolutionary unionism, the Communists. In recent months this same kind of teamwork has turned on another of Hoxie's categories, predatory unionism. And there is growing agitation, particularly in business journals, to apply the same deft scalpel work against the outstanding practitioner of idealistic union-ism, Walter Reuther. But, superficial appearances and governmental intervention notwithstanding, all categories of trade unionism are per-sisting in the United States, and some of the less popular categories are gaining strength. What is misleading and confusing is the failure to recognize that all types of unions have the same general immediate economic demands. The chapter in Hoxie's book entitled "The Economic Program of Trade Unionism" does not detail different economic programs for different types of unions because in general terms the immediate economic demands of business, predatory, idealistic, and revolutionary unions do not differ significantly. In large measure this accounts for the ability of these unions to want to work together, to affiliate to the same over-all body—as long as the national body adheres to the common denominator of all unions, the basic economic program. However, if one goes behind the immediate economic veil of the unions to inquire, for example, into the methods used to obtain their demands, then the heterogeneity of the different union types is obvious. For example, Reuther will insist on large committee collective bargaining sessions. Beck always preferred the "sweetheart contract" approach. Bridges leans toward job-action and compulsory member-ship meetings. John L. Lewis, or any other business unionist, tends to favor top-man negotiation sessions. The disparities between the differ-ent types of unionism are equally evident in the vast other areas of unionism, from aims, policies, principles, and methods to attitudes and theories. What are the conditions under which this diverse group of organi-zations could possibly become an operative force in the Veblenian sense? If to obtain immediate economic demands, or to survive, it became necessary to question the existing pecuniary institutions, then question them they would. The results of such objections are unpre-dictable, and each type of unionist would approach the problem in a different way. But the joint supremacy of union survival and union economic programs ( which are certainly not unrelated) cannot be doubted. Some indication of union attitudes, if ever this quandary were to present itself, can be found in their response to the need for political activity. When it became obvious that considerable political activity on the part of unions was required if they were to preserve and extend their economic program, almost all unions responded. Business unions tra-ditionally are autocratic; they generally discourage membership par-ticipation except on a limited and carefully defined basis. Effective political organisation requires a different approach, one that business unions are slowly and painfully learning. Similarly, our example of predatory unionism, the teamsters union, has become by necessity one of the most effective political organizations in America. Their cam-paigns against the so-called "right-to-work" bills and against proposed transportation legislation ( e.g., the Weeks proposal) were exception-ally successful. In the case of both the automobile workers (Reuther ) and the longshoremen ( Bridges ), political action has long been an integral part of their union activities. The increased participation in our democratic procedures by unions
has not been greeted in all quarters with enthusiastic praise. Major concern has been the response in business circles to the political or-ganization of the one interest group whose members, families, and friends could control most national and many local elections. This concern does not arise because labour is hostile to the basic pecuniary institutions. The support of these institutions by labour has been un-qualified. In fact, even on such issues that have contradicted their own self-interest, union leaders have sacrificed economic demands ( only possible in a full-employment, prosperity economy) for what they considered the patriotic general good. An important case in point is union support of lower tariffs in the face of rising competition from low-wage areas, such as Japan. Moreover, union representatives in legislative bodies have shown remarkable restraint in pursuit of union economic demands—far more restraint than representatives from the business community or from farm areas. Union leaders have repeatedly asked for minimum recognition at the council tables of the government. Recognition would imply that representatives of the business community are not the sole repositories of the important and essential attribute to a democracy—the ability to represent the interests of the entire community in an able, effective, and responsible manner. Management's insistence that labour not be granted that recognition can lead only to increased determination on the part of labour to become more effective in its political organisation. Capable political organisation on the part of unions, if it were to become a reality, is still a far cry from Veblen's operative force. These organizations would seriously question the pecuniary institutions only under severe and unlikely conditions, where their very survival was at stake or where their minimum economic needs and demands were not met and could not be met. Under these incredible and hopeless circumstances the business and revolutionary unionist would certainly consider changing basic institutions. The idealistic and predatory unionist would probably be less willing to do so. However, it appears that impetus to change our institutions to make them more compatible with the scientific and industrial world of twentieth-century America is not likely to come from American labour in, as Veblen would say, the calculable future.
University of Boulder, Colorado runs a debates and lectures on everything weird and wonderful for United Nations Week. The first talk is about Ethiopia, the second on the effect of space research on theories of the origin of life, and later in the week Fishman chairs a talk and debate about Communism. They didn't get him to chair debates after that; he was on the organising committee instead, in which role he inveted Nicholas Kaldor over in 1960, who crops-up later. Somehow, Fishman worked-out a way to go to Cambridge. Someone remembers him inviting another heterodox economist called Joan Robinson to talk at a similar event in 1964, although he didn't quite persuade her to speak. They probably talked about her diet of vegetarian food and whisky; he mentions in his research on unemployment that Corfam might take-over from leather and synthetic meat take-over from stake as examples of unknown variables. During the 1960s, John Peel the DJ got a job in Texas by implying, without ever actually saying it, that he'd met The Beatles. He was from Merseyside, like The Beatles, but he had spent ten years in boarding school on Merseyside while the The Beatles had toured night clubs. During the 1960s, Leslie Fishman built-up a back-story. I doubt he actually said it. But people would have assumed an association with teach-ins and free economics classes, and the phrases in Nina Fishman's obituraries above: "A talented economist on the US academic circuit", "dismissed for his political views – despite having established a reputation as an outstanding, if unorthodox, academic economist".
1960
This journal includes "is higher education a hoax?", which is suggests more problems than solutions. It presumes that students are not interested in their study, that there is some kind of Butlins life that attracts them to college, and that basic training always needs to be taught and re-taught before anything interesting. It names the problem of colleges teaching each course as an introduction to some imagined next stage like post-graduate or post-post-graduate for ever. Fishman's article was published as plain text in four sections; I've added formatting. Here is the context: Table of Contents Front Matter Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737629 // CONTRIBUTORS (p. ii): http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737630 // THE PAST IN CHINA'S PRESENT: A Cultural, Social, and Philosophical Background for Contemporary China (pp. 281-308) Joseph Needham : http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737631 // THE CRYSTALLISATION OF MODERN ART (pp. 309-330) Paul Love: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737632 // LIBERALISM: HUMAN RIGHTS AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE (pp. 331-353) Christian Bay: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737633 // IS HIGHER EDUCATION A HOAX? (pp. 354-370) Robert Vincent Daniels: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737634 // WHITHER ECONOMIC GROWTH? (pp. 371-390) Leslie Fishman: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737635 // THE END OF THE "LONG RUN" (pp. 391-408) Richard E. Sullivan: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23737636
Growth . . . is . . . the substitution of the worthwhile and lasting in our national life for the shoddy and the ephemeral.- Allen Sproul
WHITHER ECONOMIC GROWTH?
Leslie Fishman THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES the future economic growth of the United States. The debate now raging on this topic revolves primarily around comparisons of rates of growth in the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Western Europe, and around the general issue of whether rapid growth and full employment can be achieved without a price inflation.I believe, however, that a proper analysis requires larger boundaries than those offered by employment and rates of growth, especially as these are now defined by Keynesian economists. We need a much broader concept of growth, a new unit of value for measuring that growth, and a realisation that these may require as to forgo future luxuries for the sake of larger rewards that will accrue to society.Since the solutions I suggest stem partly from classical economic theories, a review of these will be useful for relating our problems in growth to the problems France and England faced in the 18th and 19th centuries, and to see how the classical theories differed from the modern Keynesian theory.Classical economists took as their point of departure the distinction between market price and value. Market price is the product of the supply and demand forces in the market place. True value is the product of a theoretical construct which reflects what an economist believes to be the necessary [p372] elements for growth. Although each classical economist had his own definition of value, each drew the basic distinction between the market price, which actually allocated resources and capital, and true value, which is the way resources and capital should be ideally allocated for the proper growth of society. By the middle of the 18th century it became apparent to many Frenchmen, who were concerned over the future of their nation, that the much smaller, less populated upstart across the English channel was easily forging ahead of the great and potentially all-powerful France. The rates of growth clearly favoured the British. But why? From the myriad of economic, social, political, and geographic factors at work, the French school of economists known as the
Physiocrats
chose one key variable. Unless a tax base is prosperous and thriving, heavier duties are self-defeating. The more taxes that are demanded, the less capital is available to increase productivity. The French attempts to collect the monstrous feudal tithes were literally squeezing the blood out of the French farmer—the base upon which rested the Crown, the Church, and the Nobility. The Physiocrats theorised that if sufficient capital could be invested in the French farms, then the agricultural revolution, which had provided the base for the English leap forward, could be transplanted to French soil. Larger farms, properly tilled, drained, irrigated, and managed, would yield a surplus that would satisfy even Louis Quatorze's grandiose spending habits. Lavoisier, the eminent French chemist and a confirmed Physiocrat, proved how profitable a rationalised French farming venture could ac-tually become. He purchased contiguous small farms, pro-ceeded to apply the latest English scientific farming tech-niques, and doubled and tripled the yield in a few years. Thus, the Physiocrats, the first "scientific" economists, argued for a public policy that would favour giant flows of capital into agriculture; the consequent development of agriculture [p373] would provide France with the economic growth she required for prosperity and progress. A tax moratorium and tax re-form, followed by the crown's abrogation of monopoly grants to manufacturing and trading companies, would permit the "natural" channelling of capital into its most profitable uses. The Physiocrats believed that under competitive conditions the channelling would be away from trading and manufacturing and into agriculture. Without monopoly grants from the king, the profit rates in trading and manufacturing would plummet, and with massive capital investment in agriculture, the profit rates for farm investment would soar. The old market place mechanism, with monopoly grants and oppressive feudal taxes, distorted the flow of capital. Price and true value were not the same. It was the duty and responsibility of the monarchy, interested in France's growth and future, to change the tax and price structure to permit proper allo-cation of capital and to accelerate the development of France.
Adam Smith,
following close on the heels of the Physiocrats, chose for his main problem the economic growth of England. He too saw the market place, with its monopoly distortions, misallocating capital. The trading companies, as in France, made enormous profits because of the monopoly Crown grants. Capital and profits were ploughed back into the pursuits where the return was the greatest—trading. But economic resources devoted to speculative shipping and co-lonial ventures were clearly not contributing to England's basic economic strength. Capital should have rightfully gone into basic improvements in agriculture, home manufacturing, and internal trade before it was syphoned off into operations of questionable value, such as long-distance trading and free-booting. England's strength lay in the excellence of her farms and the efficiency of her manufacturing—not on the amount of gold specie collected from a favourable balance of trade. Smith saw the Mercantilists succeed in bribing a needy throne to renew and expand colonial, domestic, and trading [p374] monopolies, and thus to mis-allocate capital. If the free winds of competition mild only prevail, if the Crown would only keep its hands off the market place, then prices and profits would allocate capital into its truly best uses, argued Adam Smith. But as it existed in 1776, the monopoly ridden market misdirected resources. Price and true economic value were distinguishable and separate. Until the markets were made competitive, prices and values would not be the same, and prices would not properly channel capital into its most productive uses. By the time
David Ricardo
appeared upon the scene in the early 19th century, the most perceptive began to realise that a basic shift had taken place: industry, the infant spawned by science and technological advance, was rapidly growing to manhood. Agriculture was no longer the strategic element. The glory and greatness of England, her true economic growth, would best be fulfilled by stimulating and accelerating this adolescent's development as rapidly as possible. Ricardo argued that the funds flowing into the coffers of the English gentry, the landlords and agricultural interests, were being wasted. The lands and resources of the colonies and the Americas could satisfy the expanding agricultural needs of England far more efficiently than could the English farms. The high tariffs on food (the Corn Laws) had to be abolished. The unnaturally high prices of agricultural produce would decline, wages would decline, industrial profits would rise, and agricultural rents would decline. Then, capital would flow into industry, now the proper channel for the growth and development of England.
The Reverend Malthus
argued just the reverse. The high price of corn did keep rents high, but this was desirable for England. It minimised the threat of gluts and led to further advances in English agricultural science and development. The Ricardo-Malthus arguments are unmistakably relevant today to the farm problem in the United States. And just es the political tide is turning against [p575] the farmer in America, to did it turn in the mid-19th century against the landlords and in favour of the Birmingham free traders. The economic theories offered by Ricardo, Smith, and the Physiocrats were all built on the distinction between prevailing prices of the market place, which misalocated capital into the most profitable uses, and true value, which would allocate capital into channels most beneficial to economic growth and development. In each case the theorist had to perceive the area of the economy which, in the near future, would make the maximum contribution to economic growth. He then devised a measure of true value which reflected the historical judgement about growth. When applied to the economy, the measure of true value "proved" that the market mechanism was misalocating capital and resources. The less productive employments were favoured over the most productive. If the key reform of the theorist would be instituted (tax reform, laissez-faire, repeal of the Corn Laws), price would be aligned with true value and rapid growth would ensue. Specifically, for example, Ricardo argued that market prices of agricultural goods were unduly high; they drove up the subsistence wages for labour and caused the low profits for industry. Ricardo used a labour theory of value to prove that the most productive area of the English economy—industry—was being starved for capital. His strategic reform, repeal of the Corn Laws, would result in lower food prices, lower wages, and increased industrial profits; thus his reform would properly allocate capital for rapid economic growth of England. Since the mid 19th century, economists have been loath to question the dispensations of the market place; value and price have become synonymous. For Smith, Ricardo, the Physiocrats, and their followers, value reflected, in Allen Sproul's words, "the worthwhile and lasting" in economic [p376] life; price often reflected "the shoddy and ephemeral." But, since roughly 1850, orthodox economists have taken price and value to be the same. Perhaps the neo-classicists (Jevons, Menger, Walras, Marshall, Keynes, etc.) could assume an identity between value and price because history was relatively kind. Perhaps the market place allocation of capital for the past century has conformed, in the overall, with the needs of economic growth. The giant capital needs of the iron and steel industry, the railroads, and the chemical, petroleum, electrical, and other manufacturing industries were met largely through the private market, with key government assists. Thus, instead of having to worry about capital needs and growth, neo-classical economists could, with some exceptions, enjoy the luxury of becoming preoccupied with problems of price stability and depressions.
II When the problem of the economic growth of the United States arose in our present decade, economists attempted to use familiar theories—largely Keynesian. The classical theories, specifically concerned with the problem of growth, have been ignored.
Keynesian theory,
an outgrowth of the Great Depression, is an integral part of the conceptual framework of most modern economists. It has provided a meaningful matrix within which to view recent economic problems of the business cycle, and war and postwar transitions. However, a review of the application of Keynesian theory to the current problem of growth indicates that a return to the
Classical theory,
with its basic distinction between value and price, might be in order.
The "facts" on growth appear to be well established.
For the 120 years between 1839 and 1959, the average yearly increase in our Gross National Product (GNP) was nearly 5 percent. Correcting this for price inflation, the real average rate of growth was about 3½ percent. Further, if population increases are taken into account, there has been an average rate of increase in real GNP per head of between 1⅝ percent and 1¾ percent per year. The rate of growth has been lowest in New England and highest in the Southeastern sta.. Specific sectors in the economy compare as follows with the overall 3½ percent increase per year of real GNP: agriculture, 1¾%; transportation, 2¾%; services and construction, 3½: trade, 4; manufacturing and mining, 4½; and government, 5 percent.The overall 3½ percent increase in real product is an enormous rate to sustain for over a century, but present estimates of Russian growth for the short post-war period are between 6 and 7 percent per year. Since their population growth is about 1½ percent, this leaves a real GNP increase per head of about 5 percent per year, as compared with ours of just under 2 percent. The estimates for the Chinese economy are much higher. The rates of growth of West European nations, particularly West Germany and Austria, are also spectacular when contrasted with our own rates, though not nearly so disturbing as those of Russia and China. [p378]The recent Rockefeller Report, rounding upward our own recent rate of growth of real GNP to 4 percent, admonishes us to strive to increase this to 5 percent.The question is, how can this be done? Many Keynesians even question our ability to sustain a 4 percent rate. Others spur us on to aspire to rates even higher than 5 percent.Economists offering testimony to the Joint Economic Committee can be classified into two main groups—
those who emphasised employment (Keynesians), and
those who emphasised prices (money theorists).
The Keynesian theory focuses primarily upon the balance between effective demand and production. If demand exceeds production, then output will expand. Demand is broken down into two major components: consumer spending by households, which has a stable relationship to income, and investment spending by business, which undergoes severe fluctuations, depending upon the profit outlook. If total effective demand falls short of that required for "full" employment, then government spending can be increased (or tax. reduced). In the 1953-54 recession, taxes were reduced; in the recent recession, federal spending was increased. The opposite also holds true. If total spending is too great—if it exceeds the outflow of goods and services with the economy working at full employment—then government retards spending by overbalancing the budget.When applied to a dynamic growth problem, the Keynesian model has occupied itself with the continuing balance of effective demand and capacity. Total private demand is simply the sum of consumption spending and investment spending. As investment spending increases, demand increases, but capacity to produce also increases. If this capacity increases faster than demand, then a recession will overtake the economy. But if the growth in demand keeps pace with or out-distances the growth in capacity to produce goods and services, then optimism and expansion will follow.Most Keynesians in the Congressional Hearings focused [p379] their attention upon this vital rate of increase in demand. Labour economists urged that we emphasise consumer purchasing power to bolster effective demand. Business econo-mists urged that the tax structure and cost-price relationship be modified to stimulate investment spending in order to sustain effective demand (e.g., rapid depreciation of new facilities). Many economists urged a blending of both kinds of policies.However, neither type of Keynesian policy can be pursued without risking rising prices and inflation. Either course, if effective, involves keeping total demand in advance of total production and output. To do so keeps the economy under pressure; it will then run at full speed.
Many money and banking theorists remain fearful of such a course, especially since we have inherited from World War II a huge increase in the national debt.
More than $200 billion of federal debt is now held in private hands, and it can be turned into money at any time. A flood of purchasing could conceivably be unleashed that would jeopardise the entire economy. Some of these theorists argue for a rapid repayment of the debt, come what may. Others argue that too do not yet truly know the workings of our economy; until we have more reliable information, we should minimise government intervention. Perhaps the best course, they say, is to have the money supply increased by a fixed percent each year —and do no more! In general, these monetary theorists are most concerned about the warping and distension of our money system that results from a government policy oriented to promoting full employment.
The Keynesians reply that growth and avoidance of the wastes and hardships of depressions are more vital than the ill effects of an inflation—
which, up to this point, have been remarkably mild, and which might be kept in bounds through effective anti-trust action. The ill effects of an inflation to those on fixed incomes can be offset in other ways than by [p380] risking another Great Depression. On the other hand, the monetary theorists point with pride to the twelve years of relatively continuous prosperity our economy has enjoyed, despite the cries of "wolf" the Keynesian have been quick to use in each of the three post-war recessions.And so the debate rages. Which shall it be, full employment or price stability? The joint Economic Committee is earnestly and assiduously searching for a way to attain all three: full employment, price stability, and growth.
However, do full employment and price stability really indicate maximum growth?
To measure growth, all economists use the GNP, or variations of it; however, this system of accounting was devised to provide data for the Keynesian model: it cannot distinguish between true value and price. Market prices rule supreme. For an analysis of spending and production, GNP is ideal; but for an analysis of growth it is inadequate. III
A transaction is included in GNP if it is a final purchase, but many final purchases obviously do not enhance true growth.
For example, a consumer buys a harmful patent medicine: production of the medicine then increases, GNP increases, and, supposedly, growth increases. Again, increased consumer debt results in higher interest charges, which are included by economic accountants in GNP and economic growth. Therefore, if we all buy on credit rather than pay cash, we help the economy grow. Similarly, a $1,000 fee for an unsuccessful medical operation would increase GNP as much as $1,000 paid for development of the Salk Vaccine. We cannot pick and choose, say the national economic accountants. Our job is to measure purchases and production and income, not to moralise about the value of different transactions. If a consumer makes a legal purchase, then the amount of that purchase must be included in GNP. [p381]
But perhaps the Keynesian accounts, important as they are for short run employment and income theory, are simply not applicable to growth theory.
For example, the major increase in the labour force in recent years has been the increase in the employment of women—especially older married women. Because the time that a wife spends taking care of a house and children is not bought and sold on the market, GNP does not include it. When these same women enter the labour force and take jobs, their salaries then increase GNP. However, they in turn often hire someone to perform their household chores; and since the hired house-keeping service is in the market, this too is included as an addition to GNP. Income undoubtedly increases when women enter the labour force, but the amount is inflated because their previous services were not included in GNP. An exceptionally large proportion of the GNP increase in recent years is traceable to the increased supply of women in the labour force. Has true economic growth increased by a similar amount? What do we mean in mid-20th century by growth? What in today's world is "worthwhile and lasting"? I submit that
scientific exploration of the universe is clearly the mainstay of our growth.
We no longer need much more expansion in our steel making capacity, but we do need an enormous extension of education, research, and pure scientific development. It is becoming generally accepted that the growth race of the present and future is the race in the laboratory and classroom and tinkerer's workshop; it is not the race solely of the market place and industrial capacity. It is gratifying to read in popular business journals statements that a few years ago could only be found in National Science Foundation Reports, or in the Hearings before the Senate Committee on Labour and Public Welfare (on science and education for national defence). For example, the opening celebration of the Seagram's (whiskey) building in New York was built [p382] around the theme The Future of Man," with the keynote being "Frontiers now are intellectual and in outer space." The president of the Minneapolis-Honeywell firm, Paul Wishart, is quoted by the New York Times (January 6, 1960) as predicting that the real success or failure of a company in the 1960's would be determined by "the quality of its business judgement over research and development." And Business Week, the respected "peak" journal of the many McGraw-Hill industrial publications, came to exactly the same conclusion in their special report of January 23, 1960: "THE U.S. INVENTS A NEW WAY TO GROW. Use of research to create steady flow of new product and processes is a new key to economic growth—generally overlooked in current growth debate." All of the foregoing emphasises that the appropriate statistics for growth will be built around measures that reflect the quantity and quality of resources devoted to research and education, as well as the happiness of the consumer and the capacity of our industrial plant. We can now re-cast the question, "Whither Growth?", in old classical economic terms: Is the market place, using traditional profit return as its guide, properly allocating capital according to present needs for growth? An analysis of the most profitable corporations strongly suggests that the tnar-ket is not properly allocating capital. The latest Fortune directory lists the following to companies as the most profitable of the "500 Largest U.S. Industrial Corporations" for 1958: 33.5% American Home Products - return on capital 33.1% Smith, Kline and French Labs 32.4% Gillette 29.3% Revlon 28.9% Avon Products 28.4% Chemstrand 26.6% Champion Spark Plug 24.6% Botany Mills 24.1% Brunswick-Balke-Collender 23.6% Pepsi-Cola [p383] This list shows that capital funds, to maximise their return, should continue to flow in increasing amounts into tranquilisers, TV sports advertising, TV question contests and spectaculars, home cosmetic sales, bowling, and light refreshments. Clearly, with the exception of Chemstrand, and possibly Smith, Kline and French (pharmaceuticals), the high profit rates of the big ten" do not direct capital into basic research. Basic research may pay off for society at large, but not necessarily for the individual enterprise. In this case, what is best for the individual or for the individual company may not necessarily be best for society. Another way to approach this same problem is to examine the one corporation that has been outstanding in its stimulation and sponsorship of basic research, the American Telephone and Telegraph in its Bell Laboratories. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter defended monopoly power and profits largely on the grounds that such profits were necessary to support the huge amounts of capital required for research, development, and innovation (innovation being the practical application of basic research into a commercial product). But one is hard pressed to go much beyond the Bell Labs for private examples of basic research. AT&T is the great exception. It found itself astride the greatest monopoly of our day, and yet one that lent itself to enormous research developed cost savings. The profit returns to even its relatively small competitors have been safe and high. AT&T was in a most enviable position: they had the money, the incentive, and the industry to carry out both pure and applied research. According to expert evaluation, they have done this remarkably well. (An interesting aside here is that [p384] even the competent and astute AT&T—and General Electric—passed over radio as an innovation because it did not appear to have a promising future.) But AT&T's research funds are now in jeopardy. The recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that long-distance rates be cut by $50 million a year, undoubtedly justified by consumer and FCC standards, will have repercussions on AT&T's research efforts, as Frederick Kappel, President of AT&T, was quick to point out at the time of the decision. Thus, even governmental policy, which recently has been most active in its support of research, finds it difficult to reconcile the objectives of the market place and true growth. The U. S. private economy, as a whole, has done remarkably little in pure research, and much that has been achieved was done by European trained scientists. Despite a market structure ridden throughout with monopoly and oligopoly elements, the emphasis of the market place on non-price competition (location, packaging, advertising, salesmanship, etc.) has diverted capital and brains primarily into non-research areas. For example, stockholders of a cigarette corporation would certainly be justified in impeaching a board of directors that decided to use most of their undistributed profits for cancer research instead of consumer surveys, new filter research, new packaging, and new advertising campaigns. What applies to corporations also applies to the individual. The market place allocates labour largely through the the payment of higher or lower wages and salaries. The returns to an Elvis Presley, Dick Clark, an advertising psychologist, a market researcher, or a Mickey Mantle, are for greater than the returns to a research scientist. Although studies have shown that many of our most successful inventors were motivated primarily by an enquiring mind, these same studies indicate that the profit motive is also very significant. Moreover, the values of society, as reflected in [p385] the market place, are reflected in all the key institutions that shape the young. A ten year old today is far more likely to want to emulate Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra than Louis Pasteur, despite Paul Muni's excellent performance. Non-monetary considerations should not be ignored, of course, but who would deny that the high salaries of Madison Avenue draw many fine minds away from the laboratory? The wisdom of the dispensations of the market place can also be questioned in the area of research supplies and publishing. For example, Russia may publish more scientific books than we do, by a considerable margin, but we far out-distance her in the publication of advertising catalogues, both industrial and consumer. We have worshipped long and dutifully at the shrine of consumer choice—and few would question the many benefits that have resulted. Because sufficient numbers of consumers have voted with their dollars for certain products and withheld their votes from other products, the producers of goods and services in the United States have been forced continually to pass the tests imposed by the market place.
But how can a consumer vote for more basic research?
Moreover, even if he could, to do so would be against the consumer's own interest. The results of pure research are obviously made available to all companies. Basic discoveries, like Einstein's law of relativity, or the solution to a classic mathematical problem, are not patentable. Thus the consumer does not get his money's worth if he buys from a company which spends "lavishly" on pure research; he should buy from the company that applies the research results most profitably and let someone else foot the bill for basic research. The most striking example of this rational and completely understandable lack of interest in basic research by the business community is in the exploration of nuclear energy. It has been only in the last year or two that corporations, most of whom are in dominant oligopoly [p386] positions, have shown any interest in using funds of their own for nuclear power research. Therefore, it appears that we are caught in another situation where the needs of society at large may require a modification of the manner in which the market place is allocating capital and resources. As was true for the classical economists, value and price are no longer the same. How then can we properly allocate capital? How can we determine whether spending a billion dollars on research and education gives to more value than spending it on consumer goods? For 1960 it is anticipated that the United States will spend about $10 billion on research and development (loosely defined), out of a GNP of over $500 billion. Of the $10 billion, more than half will come from the Federal Government, and most of the government money will be in the defence area. Only a small fraction of the total $1,3 billion is for truly basic research. For example, one scientific expert estimates that only about one-fiftieth of the Defence Department's expenditures for research and development is allotted to pure research. Another observer, in the cost analysis department of the RAND Corporation, estimates that only one percent of the $lo billion is devoted to "Brave New World" research—his euphemism for basic research. IV
Let us agree, then, that resources for research and education are our strategic factor, just as industry and agricultural investment were the key elements for the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, and Ricardo.
The true future growth of the U. S. economy depends upon the total amount allocated for research and education, the proper distribution and utilisation of these resources, and the proper social environment to encourage this kind of activity. What criteria are available to help us decide to increase the research funds from $10 billion to say $15 billion, or even $20 billion, in the near [p387] future? Ideally, we could erect a theory similar to those of the classical economists. A new unit of value (they used the number of hours required to produce a commodity) would replace market price for a guide to allocation. If such a measure could conceivably be used for pure research, where an hour of a scientist's time would equal 20 hours (or 5, or yo) of average labour time, then comparisons and conclusions could be drawn. But no such common measure exists, although communication theory offers hope of developing just such a basic unit reflecting varying complexities of intellectual work. Moreover, even if we had such a measure, who would apply it for decision making? Clearly, these decisions about funds and resources for pure research are above and beyond the consumer and the individual corporation. (Many historians of inventions have stressed that the fruits of research and invention are, in a very real sense, the products of all past societies. That there is a neat kind of symmetry here where both the allocation and sacrifice decisions are to be made by the total community, which is also the recipient of the benefits.) Thus, they must be community decisions; and yet each of as will be affected in many ways by these decisions. First, the more research money that is made available, the more goods and luxuries we will be forced to forgo. However, we will also reap the benefits of the increase in research; these benefits can now almost be predicted in ad-vance—not in particulars, but in an aggregate sense. We have already had sufficient experience with research expenditures to be able to predict, within certain limits, what various amounts of this "investment" will probably yield in the organised, directed laboratory. But recent surveys of "basic" inventions by Jewkes and Hamberg have concluded that more than half of these inventions have been made by the individual, completely outside organised efforts for research of the corporations or the government. These eccentric tinkerers should also be given maniac aid, in these days when [p388] research training and equipment is so expensive, not only because they are as productive as all the organised laboratories together, but also because they represent in a very genuine way the epitome of the Jeffersonian ideal applied to the industrial civilisation. Pearson, the founder of modern statistics, projected a similar vision for modern society: sufficient training and leisure for every individual to permit everyone to be a researcher, even if the research is extremely limited in scope and depth.But there presently exists no measure of research potential that can be compared to the application of the same effort to commodity production. Until such a guide is developed, three kinds of approach to the problem are available: laissez-faire, reform, and a basic institutional change. The laissez-faire solutions emphasise the flexibility of the market, and propose that the big switch to research that began in 1954 (when the Revenue Act gave corporations liberty to "expense" research and development outlays) will accelerate. There is no question that private expenditures and voluntary institutions have responded to the research challenge, but almost everyone also acknowledges that limitations of personnel, equipment, and practical profitability are severe.The reform approach, without a bask new analysis such as described above, is without a definite perspective. Nevertheless many important reform measures can be explored and would, if implemented, result in major changes in research and education. Our patent system, for example, has long been in need of an overhaul. The crucial independent "tinkerers" are at a distinct disadvantage in our present judicial proceedings, which greatly favour the large corporations with permanent expert staffs that concentrate on protecting the company's patent positions. Another tax reform, comparable to the 1954 Revenue Act's treatment of company's research outlays, would be to make every individual's spending on education and basic research tax deductible. This [p389] would not be an easy deduction to define and administer, but the difficulties are not insurmountable. A society that exempts the ubiquitous "expense" account expenditures should certainly be able to afford tax exemption for individual education and research expenditures. Another conceivable reform would be the matching-of-funds approach for truly pure research. A company or individual or university should perhaps be able to apply to the government for a matching grant for any "Brave New World" outlays. A board of scientific experts could evaluate spending for projects that have absolutely no practical application. Independence of the curious mind would be preserved and some offset to the present directed type of pure research would be possible. Finally, some thought might be given to a tax on manufacturers who insist on making product changes for purely style obsolescent reasons. These funds could then be used to subsidise industry-wide research laboratories for pure research. Thus, the auto manufacturers would not be prohibited from making expensive style retooling; the additional tax would simply make it a little more expensive. The funds collected would then be spent for research and education. A similar tax might be considered on advertising that is not informational.The basic institutional change approach would mean carrying to its ultimate conclusion the generalisation that scientific and technological advance belongs to all society. Thus, some political democratic institution would have to be evolved that would make possible enormous research and educational expenditures, perhaps even in the order of magnitude of our present defence spending. Industry-wide, regional, national, and even international laboratories, histories, and programs would be initiated. Prizes and awards for mathematical and scientific break-throughs could be offered that would be ten times more lucrative than the Nobel prises. (Sweden is, after all, a relatively small and poor [p390] country. The United States is in a far better position to undertake science awards commensurate with present inflation and TV standards.) Moreover, our entire attitude toward work and leisure might similarly undergo some bask modifications. The great American attribute of tinkering can be combined with the limitless challenge of scientific frontiers, and a truly new and modern set of institutions might emerge.
1961
Geographic Variations in Prices
Econometrica reported Fishman at the American Economic Society conference held in Stillwater, Oklahoma: Paper was presented but not published in the report. The title suggests a set of notes on the prices of second-hand cars in different states, probably alongside notes of the cost of going to buy a car, and possibly crunched through a tabulator machine to find any unexpected results. In contrast, another paper that does get published is entirely algebra; entirely tautology and shorthand. It begins "Let ... equal ..." and goes on in greek letters to tease the typesetter.
The Market Basket versus the Utility approaches
to consumer price indexes
Fishman writes to this disarmament magazine to suggest that "each nation of the world would agree to tax itself one percent of its arms budget and pay this tax to the United Nations to be used for health, welfare, and development". "The major difficulties will be in establishing uniform definitions and in checking the amount spent". The letter can be read on Google Books at full width
A note on disarmament and effective demand
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In 1962, the family came to Britain – hounded from America by the McCarthy campaign. Leslie Fishman began lecturing at Cambridge then moved on to Warwick University and finally was appointed first chair of economics at Keele University - Obituary of Nina Fishman in TribuneLESLIE FISHMAN
Fishman made a mistake; he didn't realise that if you ignore religious biggots, they're more likely to go away and stop doing damage. I've made the same mistake in quoting the full text here. MATER E l MAGISTRA* LESLIE FISHMAN University of Colorado
In what may prove to be the most significant political and economic document of the twentieth century, Pope John XXIII commemorated the seventieth anniversary of Rerum Novarim with a revolutionary encyclical whose title, taken from the opening words in the Latin text, is Mater et Magistra. Although careful to cast the arguments in the tradition of the previous great social encyclicals, Pope John finally recognizes and embraces the industrial revolution, material progress, and the concomitant reorganization of society which this has brought about, and attempts to place the Church in the forefront of the forces which are guiding that progress. After a description of the text of the new encyclical, this article will examine its major economic policies - the principle of socialization, the principle of subsidiarity, the new definition of private property, the alienation of the individual in the work situation, and most important of all, the imbalances in a market economy which are not self-corrective. The political and religious implications of “Mother and Teacher” will not be discussed here at length although they are at least as important as the economic. To mention only a few: the internal organization of the Church itself could be profoundly affected;’ the ecumenical congress will be immeasurably strengthened by the encyclical and the positive reaction by leading Protestant churchmen;? the European Economic Community, and similar regional organi-zations are given considerable encouragement; the renewed emphasis on missionary work is given a solid economic and political foundation; population problems and their moral implications receive careful examination in the light of development needs of underdeveloped nations; international cooperation is emphasized, with the I.L.O. and the F.A.O. specifically commended for their excellent work and contributions; and finally the relationship between the laity and the Church hierarchy is reconsidered in order to add effectiveness to the Church’s teachings and to bring about as rapidly as possible that “organized order of social affairs where all nations will at last enjoy prosperity, and happiness, and peace.”
*The quotations and page references are from the Paulist Press translation of the en. cyclical, trans. William J. Gibbons, S.J., assisted by “A Committee of Catholic Scholars” (New York: Paulist Press, 1961). See The Catholic World, July 1961, pp. 225-32, and September 1961, pp. 340-44: America, Augusr 19, 1961, pp. 624-25; August 26, 1961, pp. 654-56; and September 16, 1961, pp. 732-33, Commonweal, July 28, 1961, p. 412; and August 25, 1961, pp. 46061. ’See The Christian Century, September 6, 1961, pp. 1023-5; August 30, 1961, pp. 1M7-50; and August 30, 1961, pp. 110546. ’
Page 80, emphasis added. The major criticism against the encyclical in the United States has come from the National Review, which was outraged hy the failure of the Pontiff to “speak of the greatest of social injustices in the World, the Communist empire, nor of its universally spreading tentacles that reach to the very heart of the City.” The encyclical refers to the Communists and Socialists only in reviewing and reaffirming Rerum Novarum and Quadrage-
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The new encyclical, whose suggested subetitle is “Christianity and Social Progress,” opens with a review of the teachings of Leo XI11 (Rerum Novarum), and Pope John’s immediate predecessors, Pius XI (Quadragesirno Anno) and Pius XI1 (Pentacost Broadcast on the fiftieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum). The selection and emphasis of this review is especially significant for its omissions and inclusions. In his interpretation of the basic Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope John stresses that under the industrial order if wages were “to be determined purely mechanically by the laws of the marketplace” and “left to the play of free and unregulated competition,” the workers, “indignant at their lot,” would turn to “remedies worse than the evil to be cured.” Since labor “is not to be thought of in terms of merchandise, but rather according to the laws of justice and equity,” it was entirely proper and wise for Leo XI11 to encourage trade unions and the growth of labor law to ensure that “the dignity of the human being is not violated either in body or spirit.” Pius XI, 40 years after Rerum Novarum, recognized that historical conditions “had profoundly altered,” and this required reinteipretation and reapplication of the principles of the earlier encyclical. He issued the famous encyclical “Reconstructing the Social Order.” Pope John in his own discussion quotes directly from the Quadragesirno Anno: “Unrestricted competition, because of its own inherent tendencies, had ended by almost destroying itself. It had caused a great accumulation of wealth and a corresponding concentration of power in the hands of a few who ‘are frequently not the owners, but only the trustees and directors of invested funds, who administer them at their good pleasure.”’ The unbridled rule of economic power requires reconstructing the social order at three levels: “orderly reorganization of society with smaller professional and economic groups existing in their own right” (e.g., vocational groups, industry councils, the corporate order, profit-sharing plans). At second level, “civil authority should reassume simo Anno. The new document is exceptionally careful not to add fuel to the threat of war, but is calm and positive throughout. The two references to armaments stress the unfortunate waste that these expenditures involve: “Finally, it happens elsewhere that a disproportionate share of the revenue goes toward the building up of national prestige, and that large sums of money are devoted to armaments” (p. 28); “Consequently, the energies of man and the resources of nature are very widely directed by peoples to destruction rather than to the advantage of the human family, and both individual men and entire peoples become so deeply solicitous that they are prevented from undertaking more important works” (p. 64). Thus, those looking to Rome for leadership in a holy crusade were profoundly disappointed to find the crusade directed against misery, hunger, injustice, and “more important works.” The great task confronting us is to create social organization that permits the “recent discoveries of science, technical advances, and economic productivity” to be directed at fulfilling God’s admonition to “Be fruitful and multiply” and end hunger and misery. The grave danger is that the scientific discoveries and technical advances “are transformed into means whereby the human race is led toward ruin and a horrible death” (pp. 62-63). The political emphasis of the encyclical is. therefore, to undermine completely the military aspects of the cold war and place the conflict in its long run perspective of economic, social, political, and moral competition - with considerable emphasis on international cooperation. See the Nutionul Review, July 29, 1961, p. 38, and August 26, 1961, pp. 114-15; and America, September 30, 1961, letter from Frank S. Meyer, Editor, National Review. ‘Pp. 12-15.
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its function and not overlook any of the community’s interests. Finally, on a worldwide scale, government should seek the economic good of all peoples.” The two fundamental points that especially characterize the Encyclical of Pius XI are these: First, one may not take as the ultimate criteria in economic life the interests of individuals or organized groups, nor unrrgulatsd competition, nor excessive power on the part of the wealthy, nor the vain honor of the nation or its desire for domination, nor anything of this sort. Rather, it is necessary that economic undertakings be governed hy justice and charity as the principal laws of social life. The second point that we consider to be basic to the Letter of Pius XI is that both within individual countries and among nations there be established a juridical order, with appropriate public and private institutions, inspired by social justice, so that those who are involved in economic activities are enabled to carry out their tasks in conformity with the common Pope John emphasizes that Pius XII’s Pentecost Radio Broadcast of 1941 affirms that although private property is a natural law right, the use of the property “ ‘to meet the needs of all men, to all equitably, as justice and charity require,’ [is] prior even to the right of private ownership.” This principle, if wisely and properly applied in the field of immigration, will lead to economic benefits being “equalized and diffused widely among peoples.” But the historical conditions have changed so greatly over the past 20 years, since the Pentecost Broadcast, that significant additions and reintefbretations are again required. These changed circumstances are listed under three headings: (1) science, technology and economics; (2) the social field; (3) political affairs. Since the analysis of new historical conditions lies at the heart of the Pontiff’s analysis, it is important to quote this passage in full, and to read it with great care. In the fields of science, technology, and economics, these developments are especially worthy of note: the discovery of atomic energy, employed first for military purposes and later increasingly for peaceful ends; the almost limitless possibilities opened up by chemistry in synthetic products; the growth of automation in the sectors of industry and services; the modernizae tion of agriculture; the nearly complete conquest, especially through radio and television, of the distance separating peoples; the greatly increased speed of all manner of transportation; the initial conquests of outer space. Turning to the social field, the following contemporary trends are evident: development of systems for social insurance; the introduction of social security systems in some more affluent countries; greater awareness among workers, as members of unions, of the principal issues in economic and social life; increased social mobility and a resulting decline in divisions among the classes; greater interest than heretofore in world affairs on the part of those with average education. Meanwhile, if one considers the social and economic advances made in a growing number of countries, he will quickly ‘Pp. 1S19. ‘Pp. 20-21.
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discern increasingly pronounced imbalances: first, between agriculture on the one hand and industry and the services on the other; between the more and the less developed regions within countries; and, finally, on a worldwide scale, between countries with differing economic resources and development. Turning now to political affairs, it is evident that there, too, a number of innovations have occurred. Today, in many’ communities, citizens from almost all social strata participate in public life. Public authorities intervene more and more in economic and social affairs. The peoples of Asia and Africa, having set aside colonial systems, now govern themselves according to their own laws and institutions. As the mutual relationships of peoples increase, they become daily more dependent one upon the other. Throughout the world, assemblies and councils have become more common, which, being supranational in character, take into account the interests of all peoples. Such bodies are concerned with economic life, or with social affairs, or with culture and education, or, finally, with the mutual relationships of peoples.’ , To meet challenges and problems stemming from these new historical conditions, the encyclical proposes the crucial new balance in institutions between the principle of subsidiarity and the principle of socialization. The principle of subsidiarity is quoted directly from Quudregesimo Anno as a fundamental principle: “one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. [It is] a grave evil . . . to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies.’’ But the requirements of new technology and science make it imperative that public authorities intervene “to a greater extent than heretofore . . . to reduce imbalances between economic sectors, regions, and even between ‘different peoples of the world.’ )) What is required is not the depriving or dampening of private initiative - which leads to political tyranny. What is required is that public authorities “intervene in a wide variety of economic affairs . . . [to] adapt institutions, tasks, means, and procedures . . . to the norms of justice, so that everyone in the community can develop and perfect himself. For this, after all, is the end toward which all economic activity of a community is by nature ordered.” What is required is “an appropriate structuring of the human community” where the rules of the game permit individual initiative wherever possible, within the basic setting of balances. However, the key decision lies with the public authorities and not with the individual enterprise or the individual himself. “To decide what is more helpful to the over-all economic situation is not the prerogative of individual productive enterprises, but pertains to the public authorities and those institutions which, established either nationally or among a number of countries, function in various sectors of economic life.”e ’ Pp. 21-22. “P. 24. P. 36.
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Moreover, the crucial balances to be maintained and responsibilities of the public authorities are extremely broad; the encyclical lists them in two categories, those at a national level and those of an international character. At a national level they include: (3) (4) to provide employment for as many workers as possible. to take care lest privileged groups arise even among the workers thcmselves. to maintain a balance between wages and prices. to make accessible the goods and services for a better life to as many persons as possible. to eliminate or keep within bounds the inequalities between different sectors of the economy - that is, between agriculture, industry and services. to balance properly any increases in output with advances in services provided to citizens, especially by public authority. to adjust, as far as posssible, the means of production to the progress of science and technology. to ensure that the advantages of a more humane way of existence not merely subserve the present generation but have regard for future generations as well. And on a world level: (9) the competitive striving of peoples to increase output be free of bad faith. (10) harmony in economic affairs and a friendly and beneficial cooperation be fostered. (1 1) effective aid be given in developing the economically underdeveloped nations. The encyclical moves in two directions to implement these all important balances. First, wherever possible there should be adaptation by the individual enterprise or firm, in line with the principle of subsidiarity. Thus small and medium sized holdings in agriculture should be safeguarded whenever practical. Similarly artisan enterprises and cooperative associations should be stimulated by both the individuals and by the State - with instruction, special tax provisions, credit facilities, social security, and insurance. In addition, the basic challenge of industrialization is to structure a work situation where the individual worker assumes responsibility for his own work and for the enterprise as a whole, and where true and meaningful participation by all workers in decision making is accomplished. The stewardship aspect of capital and property, underlined in the previous encyclicals, is highlighted by still another economic observation that is epecially important and shows great economic insight. We must here call attention to the fact that in many countries today, the economic system is such that large and medium size productive enterprises achieve rapid growth precisely because they finance replacement and plant
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expansion from their own revenues. Where this is the case, we believe that such companies should grant to workers some share in the enterprise, especially where they are paid no more than the minimum wage.l0 Coupled with the earlier observations regarding the separation of ownership and managerial control, this constitutes an especially strong case for the social nature of private property, and thus the social use of capital and private property for the social good of all peoples. Also, when the encyclical stresses the trend in developed nations to emphasize professional training rather than property ownership as the source of income, the income coming from ownership and heredity is subordinated to income from education and individual initiative. Having raised these basic questions regarding private property, the encyclical goes on to reaffirm the importance and “natural” source from which private property stems. However, at all times the “private ownership should safeguard the rights of the human person, and at the same time make its necessary contribution to the establishment of right order in society.” And this requires that the private property be widespread in its ownership and be used always in conformance with its “social responsibility.” The three new imbalances stressed by the encyclical are each given special attention - the imbalance of agriculture vis-a-vis the rest of society; the imbalance of regions within a nation; and the imbalance of underdeveloped countries. ‘What is strongly suggested in the encyclical is that the market system leads to an optimal allocation of resources, with its proper concomitant distribution and growth patterns, only when the bargaining and production units are fairly evenly balanced. When a serious imbalance occurs, there are often no forces set in motion to correct the imbalance (no necessary countervailing power), and the unstable equilibrium places the disadvantaged party in an ever worsening position. For example, in the case of the underdeveloped nations, they may, if left to the “natural forces of the marketplace,” become relatively more underdeveloped rather than less. Automatic forces are not always brought into play that might lead to a sound and healthy equilibrium; often the equilibrium is far outside any conception of a just and equitable balance. The encyclical makes it clear that Pope John feels it is the public authorities’ responsibility to watch for such imbalances and encourage individual and voluntary groups to cope with such imbalances. But the call to public authorities to fulfill their obligation by intervention where these imbalances persist, raises the principle of socialization and State intervention to a new level of importance. For example, in the case of the agricultural sector, the Pontiff makes it clear that State authorities should take the initiative with reform policies. To achieve orderly progress in various sectors of economic life, it is absolutely necessary that as regards agricultural matters, public authorities give heed and take action in the following matters: taxes and duties, credit, in- ‘OP. 30.
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surance, prices, the fostering of requisite skills, and, finally improved equipment for rural enterprises.” The encyclical then goes on to spell out the needs in each of the specific areas. For taxation, “public authorities [should] bear in mind that income in a rural economy is both delayed and subject to greater risk. Moreover, there is difficulty in finding capital so as to increase returns.” In the credit field since rural dwellers are not “generally able to pay prevailing market rates . . . the general welfare requires that public authorities not merely make special provision for agricultural financing but also for establishment of banks that provide capital to farmers at reasonable rates of interest.” l2 Similar statements cover the role of the State in providing special crop insurance (in addition to the social security benefits that should apply to all citizens), price protection, farm income, supplementary income in rural areas (through stimulating the location of industries in rural areas), and strengthening the family farm. Recommendations to correct the other two major imbalances - those that exist between regions within a single nation, and the imbalances as between nations - are also singled out, but not with the same detail given to agriculture. These policies always keep in mind the principle of subsidiarity and urge that private citizens and private enterprise do as much of any task as possible; but local, national, and international political bodies must be prepared to intervene, if the voluntary groups are incapable of solving the problems. Of special interest to the United States is the admonition that aid to poorer countries be free of any attempt to dominate them. “Should perchance such attempts be made, this clearly would be but another form of colonialism, which, although disguised in name, merely reflects their earlier but outdated dominion, now abandoned by many countries. When international relations are thus obstructed, the orderly progress of all peoples is endangered.” l3 Finally, the encyclical discusses the relationship between population and economic development. After an excellent summary of the usual course of the birth and death rates in a developing nation, Pope John emphasizes that progress in science and technology “give almost limitless promise’’ for expanding the food supply; and that in any particular region where the population problem appears to be oppressive, solutions should be sought that give first place to the dignity of man and the basic laws of life. In general, what is required for the solution of all the major problems discussed in the encyclical is a realization of the world dimensions of these problems that will require international cooperation for the reconstruction of social relationships guided by truth, justice, and love. The major and revolutionary step taken by Muter et Magistra is the full acceptance of the importance of the material basis of the industrial revolution. It
P. 46. “P. 46. P. 56. 64 LESLIE’ FISHMAN
Although it is still placed in a subordinate position to matters of the soul and spirit, the material basis is not viewed as a necessary evil that must be adjusted in order that a balance of institutions can be maintained. In earlier encyclicals the end was to preserve the proper role for the family, the church, and the noneconomic institutions that give life its true meaning and its proper dimensions. In previous letters the Church seemed to be venturing forth into the social realm primarily to preserve institutional arrangements where some semblance of balance could be retained. The economic and political institutions of the corporation and the State clearly threaten to inundate the institutions of the family, the Church, and the role of the individual. In the new encyclical the Pope casts for himself an entirely new role - the role of helping the material advance and thus structuring a society that will permit the full development of the individual. The fact that earlier Church teaching kept aloof from embracing the “aberrant Adam Smith” doctrine that gives the marketplace full and unbridled dominance, now permits the Church to turn gracefully and with little difficulty to the State for intervention to maintain key balances within the economy. Although some fear of statism lurks in the principle of subsidiarity, the positive contribution of State intervention as the only effective agency that can cope with many of the world’s most pressing problems, lends a refreshingly positive outlook toward the economy and the future. Cast in this new light the Church sees a new role for itself and the Christian institutions of the western world - that of the mother and teacher (not ruler) of a11 nations, guiding them along a path of peace and economic well-being. Earlier encyclicals were entirely defensive and precautionary in outlook. Muter et Magistra is positive and forward looking. As a letter to the bishops of all nations considerable freedom and latitude are given to individual interpretation and application depending upon the circumstances in each nation - and the variations from Spain to Chile to Canada to Tanganyika to France are enormous. Nevertheless, at long last the Church recognizes and embraces the world-wide nature of the industrial revolution and foresees a new role for itself in aiding and stimulating the regional and international institutions that science and technology make imperative. However, major contradictions and difficulties that arise from the encyclical stem precisely from its attempts to place the Church in the forefront of the material advances in the world. As an institution that bridges generations and centuries, and that deals primarily with eternal verities, the Church has more frequently emphasized permanence and tradition and existing institutional arrangements as contrasted to change and innovations and novel institutional patterns. Thus, in Latin America most reformers view the Church as a major force opposing development and progress. Development inevitably involves the spread of literacy and education, land reforms, novel political realignments, new family relationships, and a lifting of horizons of all types. The decision by
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the central Church not to hinder these changes and upheavals, but to aid them positively and stimulate them, is indeed a decision of major magnitude. The coupling in the encyclical of the three new imbalances - agriculture, internal regional development problems, and underdeveloped nations - is a particularly farsighted policy. Massive aid to foreign nations must not precede or be prior to the clearing up of major imbalances within a nation. In addition, these three imbalances (agriculture, regions, and nations) are closely related and are generally in the same problem area. The encyclical places greater importance on the principle of subsidiarity as applied to regions within a nation, but even here the reference to State responsibility is very strong. Obviously, the strain on the principle of subsidiarity and the role of private property is disturbing and must be given much more study and attention. What is at issue is the major contradiction bared by the encyclical. The Church calls upon the leaders of the major power institutions of the western world (and to some degree the Soviet bloc too) to permit - even sponsor and stimulate - change that will bring political, social, economic, and religious institutions more into consonance with progress in science and technology. Since such change often threatens the foundations of the existing institutions, the usual role of the Church has been to thwart, deflect, and even destroy reform movements. This is the problem of permanence and change, and no single encyclical or group of encyclicals will resolve this dilemma. It will be solved, or more correctly, be eased, by the re-examination of the role of religious and political institutions in the light of changing needs. Toward this end, the new encyclical has made a giant contribution. Finally, the encyclical poses the moral and practical dilemma of the meaning of work in an industrialized setting. The alienation of the worker, teacher, artist, mother, and even religious leader from the insistent needs of people and society has given man a purposelessness and lack of structure in life that heretofore only meaningful work has been able to provide. The encyclical harkens back to the earlier encyclicals for a solution: give the worker more responsibility and an ownership share in the production process. With leisure commanding an ever larger number of waking hours, the responsibility-sharing emphasis perhaps should be joined with a re-examination of the nonwork areas of life. In this connection the Church is in a position to analyze and take the lead in probing solutions. Thus it may well be that one of the major contributions that the “Mother and Teacher” of all nations will make will be toward urging a structuring of society that will maintain peace among nations, a proper balancing of economic institutions, and the full development of the individual.
1963
Review of Institutional Economics: Veblen, Commons and Mitchell Reconsidered.. The Economic Journal 73 (292). [Royal Economic Society, Wiley]: 759–62. doi:10.2307/2228206.
Institutional Economics: Veblen, Commons and Mitchell Reconsidered. By C. E. AYRES et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Pp. vi + 183. 32s.) DESPITE the absence of a current school of practitioners and a well-defined body of doctrine, institutional economics continues to reassert itself on the American economic scene. The latest contribution is a series of five lectures given under the auspices of the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California at Los Angeles. The first essay provides the historical background; the middle three essays "reconsider" the contributions of Veblen, Commons and Mitchell; the final essay evaluates the contributions of the school to contemporary economics. Professor Joseph Dorfman, whose name has become synonymous with the history of American economic thought, and particularly with institutional economics, once again provides a vivid background summary of the historic roots of institutional economics. This lecture appropriately emphasises the role of the University of California and the western part of the United States in the early development of institutionalism. He highlights the impact made by the early ethnographic studies under the U.S. Geological Survey, through to British and German economic thought and the influence of western women economists. Professor Ayres's essay on the founder of the school, Thorstein Veblen, stresses the reasons for Veblen's rejection of market-place analysis as inadequate for an explanation of the evolution of any society, and particularly our machine civilisation. Although Veblen did not provide a rigorous alternative theory, Professor Ayres argues that history and the direction of current economics have validated Veblen's positive emphases and his major categories: technology, the machine process and the conflict between making things and making money ("industrial and pecuniary institutions"); the "instinct of workmanship", "idle curiosity" and the place of science in our society; comparative economic development, "the merit of borrowing" and our "imbecile institutions." Veblen's rejection of supply and demand analysis certainly did not stem from a lack of familiarity with price theory. His two articles on "The Price of Wheat" (Journal of Political Economy, 1892) still demonstrate that he was a master craftsman in the use of traditional theory. He rejected the theory because, in Professor Ayr.'s words, "To get significant answers one must ask significant questions" Static price theory failed to do so. Although the founder of the institutional school rejected market theory, John R. Commons, in many ways the most successful practitioner of institutional economics, adopted a diametrically different approach. He sought to redefine the market in broader, more relevant, "institutional" terms so that the analysis would address itself to the trouble spots of the economy. Professor Chamberlain concentrates on this lesser-known aspect of Commons's work, and succeeds in presenting a clear and consistent version of his complex market theory. He starts with Commons's three types of transactions (bargaining, rationing and managerial), then considers human motivations and the key categories developed from law and ethics to explain "the transaction" - the categories of futurity and reasonableness. Commons believed that the evolving "rules of the game" of our institutions should be adapted to contain and forestall acute problems (depressions, labour strife) and to keep them from destroying the fabric of society. Commons turned to the common law for his guide, because he believed juridical institutions have successfully dealt with just this kind of problem — resolution of conflict situations (including evaluation conflicts) through the evolution of reasonable rules. Professor Kuznets, appropriately enough, delivered the lecture on Wesley C. Mitchell, for so many years the guiding spirit of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Emphasising Mitchell's statistical contributions, both as an individual and as a group leader of numerous teams, Professor Kuznets also honours his work in cycles, money and banking, prices, but fails to mention his great influence on economic theory through his economic-thought seminar. These lectures on the history of thought finally appeared as "lecture notes" in 1949, and are listed in the selected bibliographies of the three men (Veblen, Commons, Mitchell) at the close of the volume. It is Professor R. A. Gordon's closing essay that provides the surprise end to the series by characterising Schumpeter as the most successful modern institutional economist. Professor Gordon first establishes seven criteria for admittance to membership in the institutional school, and then reviews current economic theory to compare it with institutional requirements. Professor Gordon concludes that institutionalist would find modern theory most lacking in the highly refined mathematical models, in abstract price theory, and in the abstruse growth and Keynesian models. On the other hand, he feels they would applaud the greater institutional content now found in work on economic development, oligopoly theory, theory of the firm, labour economics and the empirical aspects of income and growth theory. However, the underlying criteria, according to Professor Gordon, should be whether current economists are "asking the really big questions about . . . the changing institutional fabric of society." Aside from Galbraith, Professor Gordon feels there is only one modern "American" economist who qualifies — Joseph Schumpeter. When measured against the seven membership criteria, Schumpeter passes with flying colours.
"Schumpeter was an institutionalist in the same sense as was Marx (although, of course, he disagreed with Marx strongly on both economic and political grounds); that is, he took the entire story of capitalist evolution and possible decline as his province. American institu-tionalists . . . have not been willing to go this far."
Professor Gordon calls on contemporary institutionalists to follow Schumpeter and try to answer these basic questions with the best theoretical tools now available. Although the three essays on the work of the specific men are narrow in scope and limited in their analysis, the first and last essays are provocative and of great interest to all economists. In view of the conclusion of Gordon's lecture, it is appropriate to ask several questions. Should the congruence of modern theory to institutional economics be judged by the scope of the questions asked, or by the amount of their descriptive (empirical, "institutional") content, or are these the same? Can one consider institutional economics apart from economic history (and perhaps sociological and anthropological history)? Is the institutional economist a kind of critic-theorist to the orthodox theorist (in all societies), and if so, how can orthodox theorists make better use of today's critics than was made of Veblen? Finally, what is likely to be the impact on economic theory of a technologically tight-knit "one world," but with individual national economies based on vastly different economic institutions?
Fishman is quoted as a source that she accepted an invite to Colorado Uni in 1959. - page 173 - and again page 181 with a quote by letter: "it was a glorious week and the staff and postgraduate students who attended were suitable thrilled. My most vivid recollections involve the enthusiasm she showed for the rockies and surroundings, as well as the frugal but enjoyable and nutricious vegetarian diet that she followed, laced with an appreciation of good whisky".
A glance at the free pages of this google book gives an idea of what the people who wrote 1960s textbooks were like - how they knew of each other and occasionally met other men in the business - not women - before quoting each others' journal articles.
Joan Robinson remarks how many more of them there are than there were in the 1930s.
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Civil Rights: My Participation in the Last Day of the Selma-Montgomery March Rev. Dr. Janet E. Wolfe Montgomery AL,
March 25, 1965 [Original letter: March 29, 1965, revised August 21, 2014]
With the entire nation, we in Boulder, Colorado, were shocked and sickened by the brutal attack on Negro marchers in Selma, Alabama, March 7, 1965. The following Sunday a group of men from Boulder, including the Rev. Wally Toevs, Presbyterian university pastor at the University of Colorado, Roy Mersky, law librarian, Phil Danielson, CU regent, Leslie Fishman, economics professor, and Willard Conrow, active layperson from First Presbyterian Church, Boulder, went to Selma, hoping to participate in a subsequent march. They were present in Montgomery on March 16, and had received permission to observe the demonstration at the municipal buildings. They became involved in the resulting meele when mounted possemen attacked. The possemen were composed largely of "rednecks" hurriedly deputized for the occasion, wearing cowboy hats and wielding canes and clubs on the non-violent demonstrators. The control that Martin Luther King and his aides have over these demonstrations is tenuous, but it is a marvelous example of nonviolent resistance. The student demonstrators either hold hands and sing, or, if the attack is especially vicious, they cover their heads and crouch. They do not move unless the leader so directs. The Boulder men, although they were on the opposite side of the street, became involved in the attack. None was injured. Three horsemen would club a demonstrator to the ground. Other demonstrators would fall on the injured one to prevent more clubbing. A Japanese-American student from Pennsylvania who was injured was standing near Rev. Wally Toevs. He was clubbed down and then dragged unconscious down the sidewalk by the feet with his head bumping on the walk. After this attack, the demonstrators were driven about six blocks back into the Negro section of town. A Montgomery motorcycle policeman charged into the crowd and ran over a number of people. Again, the control of the demonstration was superb. The policeman was not injured in spite of the anger of the crowd. When we received word of this in Boulder, we sent a number of telegrams to congressmen recommending federalization of troops.
CU Professors Answer 'Red - Tinge'
Denver post October 21st - text not available free - with Howard Higman
Fisman's name was top of the list - "project director" - to use University of Chicago's Fortran software on a government contract to predict the labour market, using a database held on punched cards that could be read in different ways by future researchers. Fishman wasn't phsyically in the USA during a lot of the project; there were other researchers and a team Colorado's statistics lab using the mechanical computers, including an old colleague from Idaho.
But Fishman's name was at the top of the list. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED017641.pdf Fishman was lucky with his colleages. Curt Eaton still writes text books on applied microeconomics today, has done several teaching jobs and published a briefcase full of research.
While at Colorado, Fishman invited Joan Robinson, the economist, to speak at World Affairs Week. He had a record of dealing with larger than life characters like trades union leaders. Her point of view is given in a book called Joan Robinson and the Americans by Marjorie Shepherd Turner. Long free snippets of a page or two are available free on Google Books, describing how US academics couldn't get used to a female colleague and tried inviting her to a strip club as a joke, and how she tended to tell-off academics who asked her. The same book mentions an invite from a a student rep at Stamford -
"interested in responding to the complaints of the students that their curriculum needs were not being met by the university itself; that they should have a broader picture of the world than they were getting from the university itself" which seemed "conservative and homogeneous" to students. "Students felt a need for someone to tell them they were not idiots if they questioned received learning".
That's the male students, presumably; the female ones must have had it worse. The source and some of the quote is footnoted to Tobin (1973 p 100-103) but I haven't tracked down the book. Meanwhile, Joan Robinson lived cheaply among the students at Stamford and made friends with one or two of them, preferring their company to the staff.
In post-war America his political commitment wrecked any chances he had of reaching academic stardom in the United States once McCarthyism took root so he quit America to bring his family to Britain after winning a Ford Foundation fellowship to work in the economics department of Cambridge, where his mentor colleague was Professor Nicholas Kaldor. Later Fishman moved on to Keele University where he was appointed the first Chair in Economics. It was under his umbrella of inspiration that his daughter Nina began her economic and history studies at Sussex University. - Obituary of Nina Fishman in The Independant Envelope of letters to and from Nicholas Kaldor of Kings College Cambridge, built-up on a project sponsored by the Ford Foundation during 1966-7. Fishman did not return to work in Colorado, although his name is still top of the list of authors on a 1968 publication there. http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0272%2FPP%2FNK%2F3%2F64http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/rd/ff66186e-f391-455e-8ccd-c10ca5c423de
The family moved to Britain permanently in 1967. Leslie taught at Warwick University and then became a professor at Keele University, in Staffordshire - Obituary of Nina Fishman in The GuardianThe family finally came to Britain in 1967 by which time Nina was already doing an economics degree at Sussex University. Political activism got in the way of examination success and, perhaps, economics proved not to be the one best path to revolutionary enlightenment that many of us thought it was at the time. Nina moved on though she never lost her respect for economics as a discipline. - Obituary of Nina Fishman at the Society for Study of Labour History
Some of the first paragraphs (the ones that work best on online OCR) are transcribed here very roughly for editing later, so you'd do better reading the version on the IanLouis Harris blog. In fact it looks as though the Optical Character Recgonition system isn't working very well just at the moment; I will come back to it.The Economics of Vietnam By Leslie Fishman
War is seldom rational and, from an economic point of view, calculations of costs and, benefits seldom make sense to direct participants. But there are different kinds of wars and some are more open to economic analysis than others.
An all-out war including homeland territory tends to be particularly irrational, from an economic point of view. The burdens are enormous, unevenly distributed, and often appear senseless, in retrospect. At the same time, some individuals and companies may benefit greatly from war. The economic rules of the market generally continue to be followed in war, although in modificed form; with victory (or defeat) all economic rules are temporally suspended, and to the victor go the spoils (or as many of them as he wishes, depending on how he wishes to structure the post-war world),
A brush-fire war, from the point of view of a major power, is a different matter. The domestic economy is only slightly effected; economic calculations are possible and desirable. The personal burdens, of life and limb, will still be unevenly distributed among the total population, although in recent years most major powers have tended to use only professional soldiers and volunteers to police their empires (the United States is the exception).
Under Secretary MacNamara, the Department of Defense has applied the calculus of the marketplace to tbe business of defense and war. Some of the finest market economists (generally from the Chicago School) have adapted profit maximizing techniques (referred to as cost effective or cost/benefit analysis when applied to public works) with considerable success. Generally speaking, these new techniques permit government agencies to try to achieve their objectives with minimum cost.
The war in Vietnam began as a limited Brush-Fire operation, well suited to economic calculation, and has progressed to a point where it verges on an all-out effort. A cost-benefit analysis applied to Vietnam is appropriate before the conflict moves into the economically irrational sphere.
After World War II, the French, attempting to re-assert their colonial rule, (against President Roosavelt's better judgement), quickly found themselves over-committed economically. Secretaries of State Acheson and Dulles, after the Korean experience, supported the French economically, when France indicated that the economic burden was too great to continue fighting. The total United States aid to France in Vietnam grew rapidly from $150 million a year in 1950 to over $1 billion in the fiscal year of 1954, when the United States was underwriting 80% of the cost of the war. The Marshall Plan aid to France just about compensated here for other "Empire" costs, but this meant that France derived little net benefit from other Marshall aid.
Since the time when the United States took over primary responsibility for Vietnam, the economic and military aid has been substantial.
US ECONOMIC AID TO THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT, 1955-1965
(Including Public Law 480 aid, which excludes US uses)
US Fiscal Year 1955 $325.8 million 1956 216.3 1957 281.1 1958 192.1 1959 207.1 1960 180.5 1961 144.6 1962 143.2 1963 197.5 1964 230.3 1965 278.5 $2,397.1 million
(Source: US House of Representatives Supplemental Foreign Assistance Authorisation Fiscal Year 1966, 89th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, 1966) quoted by Kahin and Lewis, The US in Vietnam, New York, p 73)
The effect of economic aid was summed-by an economist on the Michagan State University Programme as follows:
"The most important and controversial part of the economic aid has been the 80% which entered Vietnam through the Commercial Import Program. About two thirds of the commercial imports under American aid in 1955 consisted of consumer goods, a reflection of the strong relief function which the program served. In 1960 consumer goods constituted only a third of the American-aided imports, the rest consisting of industrial equipment and machinery (one half) and raw materials, fuels, and what the American aid mission calls "other essentials".
Although most Vietnamese have benefited from consumer imports, the greatest beneficiaries have been urban dwellers, especially the small middle and upper classes. Thus, American aid has functioned to accentuate the distinction between the well-off and the masses. It has also lead to the Vietnamese Government depending on a foreign power instead of its own people for its own support"
Source: Robert Scigliano South Vietnam, New York, 1963, 1964, pp124-126
In addition to this substantial economic aid, massive military aid has gone to South Vietnam. Scigliano writes "American aid to Vietnam in the past has, to use Senator J.W.Fulbright's words, 'been too heavily weighted on the military side'. Not only has the lion's share been used to support Vietnam's military budget, but most of the rest has gone on projects closely connected to military security, like highway construction". (p.127. The quote from Senator Fulbright is from Congressional Record, June 29th, 1961, p11704)
It does not seem unreasonable to estimate the overall military and economic assitance from the United States to South Vietnam from 1955 to 1965 at roughly $5 billion which, when taken with the $2 billion extended during the French occupation, adds up to a total of $7 billion up until the major build-up of the war in 1965,
The current costs of the Vietnam conflict can be calculated in two main ways. First, the way that the Government has been applying "incremental" costs - just those costs that are additional to the ongoing DOD expenses. Second, the "Total Costs" approach - pro rata costs plus an incremental share of all the other DOD costs. For example the Seventh Fleet would have the usual ongoing costs of salaries and ship maintenance regardless of whether there is any war going-on in Vietnam. The "incremental" cost calculation would add only the additional costs specifically attributable to war - additional ammunition, aircraft losses, special pay allowances, etc. The "incremental" cost calculation is justified only if one assumes that the ships of the Seventh Fleet are not fully occupied in Vietnam, but are also available for duty elsewhere. In contrast the "total cost" approach would attribute the entire Seventh Fleet's cost, plus additional training of personel in the United States, and elsewhere, to the Vietnam conflict. The "Total Cost" approach assumes that the tying-up of those ships of the Seventh Fleet in the Vietnam situation makes them unavailable for use elsewhere. The crisis in the Middle East gave considerable support to the "Full Cost" method. Business Week of May 27th reported in its Economic Outlook:
The United States would be hard put to augment its navel forces in the Middle East by any significant amount. Most vessels are already committed to the Vietnam war, one way of another. (p45)
For Fiscal 1967, total defense spending will run at least $71 billion; for fiscal 1968, it is estimated at over $80 billion. Using the incremental approach, Vietnam's cost to the United States is currently $25 billion; using the total approach, the cost increases to about $40 billion. If the Vietnam build-up is assumed to be a straight line, then the cost for fiscal 1966 is about $10 billion (incremental) and $20 billion (total). Through 1967, the cost of the entire United States involvement in Vietnam since 1950 comes to between $37 billion (incremental) and $67 billion (total).
Vietnam Costs to the United States, 1950-1967 Incremental Total 1950- 1965 7 7 1966 10 20 1967 20 40 $37 $67 billion
These figures considerably under-estimate the true cost of Vietnam to the United States. Reconstruction costs are not included. The Veterain's costs are also ommitted, as are the interest costs on the new Federal debt. Then, too, the costs of those serving in the armed forces is underestimated, since their "cost" is their present salary, and not the civilian salary and future earnings they are foregoing (particularly for those who do not return or return wounded and maimed). In addition, the Great Society program involving poverty, core cities, air and water pollution, education, crime, health and beutification, are all being slowed-down and postponed. The costs of these programs increase the longer they are postponed, because the problems are cumulatively worsening. Still another reason the money costs underestimate the true costs is that the war has become the pre-occupation of many people in science, research and development, in government, on campuses, and among those eligible for military service. Bitter acrimony and hostility has replaced "reasoning together"; the politics of alienation has replaced the politics of "consensus". Productive and constructive preparation for careers, interest, and inspiration to solve scientific and social problems have been generally been replaced by lives punctuated by frustration and disillusionment. Finally, there are two additional costs of Vietnam that require further exploration - our worsening balance of payments situation and distortions and strains on our economy.
After World War II the Dollar replaced the Pound Sterling as the basic currency of world trade and world capital movements. (This transition began as far back as World War 1 when the British were forced to weaken seriously their international position by liquidating a substantial proportion of their overseas investment to help pay for the war. In 1945 the United States opposed Lord Keynes' initiative to establish a world currency. Instead the dollar became the world's central currency, buttressed by the pound, the international monetary fund, and other free market international monetary institutions such as the BIS - Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland). The benefits to the United States of being the Worlds' banker have been considerable, and are growing, but so are the responsibilities. Vietnam has placed unusual strains on this position and has added "costs" that may be incalculable and are indeed most serious
The basis for all world currencies remains gold. Gold fulfills two major functions - it acts as the reserve for national currencies and it can be used to settle international debts and transfers. As the new supplemental international currency - the American dollar - has served these functions, in most instances, because there isn't enough gold in the world to do the job. Total gold reserves for all central banks and governments come to about $44 billion. Gold production throughout the world is estimated at about $1½ billion a year, but in recent years almost all that production has gone into private holdings and has not increased official gold reserves. The United States, with $13 billion in gold, has about 30% of the gold reserves of the world, and has relatively more gold than any other nation. However, the uses of gold (to under-pin national currencies and settle international trade imbalances) have grown so much faster than the gold supply, that the world currency which Keynes tried to promote in 1945 is long overdue.
For example, the United States national money supply now totals around $175 billion, and is increasing each year at roughly 3%. Total United States foreign trade (goods and services) is about $40 billion and is increasing at a rate close to that of the expansion of total world trade - about 7%. All industrialized nation's currencies are expanding rapidly, as is their world trade. Yet the official gold reserves on which all of this us ulitmately based, at present, are barely increasing. This growing disparity between gold reserves, on the one hand, and currencies and world trade, on the other hand, is no cause for alarm as long as things proceed smoothly. The gold is, practically speaking, of no use to anyone. It simply serves as a basis for the many rules which govern international trade and currencies. We have never had sufficient gold to satisfy all claimants, if they had insisited on actual gold payments; however, nobody wants gold for its intrinic use (aside from dentists and jewellers that is) . Gold is symbolic and acts as a guide to "keep us honest", in terms of the rules for international money. It is another example of the bank being sound as long as no one starts a run on the bank. But Vietnam brings into serious question the wisdom, stability, and dependibility of the world's banker - the United States. Needless to say, the position of the World's banker has usually gone to the most powerful nation militarily and economically. Vietnam also calls into question the overwhelmingly powerful United States position on these two counts, an observation which certainly requires expansion.
The main problems likely to confront the world's bankers in the coming decades are:
1) Re-integration of the communist nations into world trade and the world economy
2) Provision of adequate lines of credit (and good relations) to developing nations
3) Provision of adequate and reasonable adjustment room to permit continence of the exceptionally high rates of economic growth enjoyed by the industrialized nations in post World War II .
The actions of the United States in Vietnam did not give convincing evidence that the World's leading banker nation is able to cope with these three major problems, without precipitating a third world war, which would completely destroy the world's economy, if not life itself. Stability and wisdom, the two attributes now required of good bankers, appear to be in short supply in the United States, at least temporarily. Thus, recent moves, which would follow in Lord Keynes' footsteps towards a new world money system, have met with considerable foot-dragging. If the decision-making apparatus of the United States permits (even encourages?) entanglements of the Vietnam type, then the world money machinery requires a new look. Our partners will in insist on (and deserve) more important roles, relative to the United States role.
The immediate occasion for this re-examination is the United States' balance of payments crisis. When a banker lives beyond his means, depositors grow restless. The United States has lived beyond its means for more than a decade. At first this was considered healthy, because our deficits provided the European (and Japanese) economies with surpluses. They gained "reserves" (gold and dollar balances and international financial deposits) at our expense. The United States had far too much reserve and they had far too little. However, by the time President Kennedy was elected, it was generally agreed by the world banking community that the United States' deficit balances required attention and correction. Kennedy drew-up and implemented a comprehensive program to permit the United States to earn more currencies (and use less) without much disturbance of the United States world economic position.
This is near the end of page 7... from here-on it's probably easier to read the scan
w4r iN aeldom rational and from an econocdc point of view, calcu- MUG= of costs end benefits seldom oekc much sense to direct partici-pant!. }Sot there are different kinds of :airs =a some are more open to acenOmitc analysis then others, An all-out war involving homeland territory tends to be particularly irretional,from ell economic point of view. The burdens. are enoreoce, unevenly distributed, and often appear nerveless, in retrospect. At the same time, some individuals and companies may benefit greatly from war. The economic rules of the market generally continue to be followed during war, although in modified farm; with victory (or defeat), all economic rules are temporarily suspended and to the victor go the spoils <or am cony of them ma he wishei. depending on how he wishes to structuv. the /rout-war world). 1 brush-lire war, from the point of view of n major power, In a different matter. The domestic economy in only slightly effected; cconomde calculations era possible and desirable. The personal burdens, of life and limbs will Still be unevenly distributed among the total popnlation. Although in MIMIC yearn mast major powers have tended to une only profeaaional soldiers and volunteers to police their emirea. <The United States in the exception.) Under Secretary MacNamara, the Department of Tiefense hen applied the calculus of the marketplace to the business of defense and war.
2
:sone of tilt finest toiket economists (generally from th. Chicago' lichool) havA Ddsprod profit maximizing t. thniquea (referred to, as coat efinctive ot cost benefit analyses ohen applied to public %forks) with considerable
Generally speaking, those' pew techalques permit govaramant Agencies to try to edam's their objectives through minimum wet. Tile win ta Vietnam began as a limited brush fire OpetitiOft Well Hated to economic coital tion and has progressed to the point sera it verges on an nil-nut effort. A comt-benefit analysis applied to Vietnam is appropriate before the conflict Ilona ins the eamitailly irrational sphere. After Worinhur the French, ntrempti b, to te Assert r Colonial role (against Preside t Root themselves avareemomigned
les bettor judismont quickly ally. Secretariat of State Acheson and Dulles after the Kowa esperipeatcp ppotted the French aconomdke ity *Whim France indicated the finsactst burden mos too great to coati e fighting. MB tett! United States aid to Free is vistas. vow rapidly from, .$150 mina= pet year La 1950 to over n the Mena year of 1954 when the United States was underwriting 80 per cent of the cost of the vats The Hsr*hall Plan Mid to Prance jam at compensated her for her other empire vita* but this meant that franca derived littio net benefit tram the Marshall sid. Since the this to the Halted States took over primary respoosibine,
lity for Vietnam, the ecoconic mind
Mary aid hai beta sthatantitl.
Quoted in Norman Flynn's The economics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Global War on Terror, - lecture given in October 2008 alongside the start of the Leslie and Eleanor Fishman Bursary, with a footnote of thanks to Fishman's son in law - Phil McManus - so presumably Fishman couldn't find anyone mainstream to publish this - none of the journals that are now on Jstor for example.
It would have built on the 1962 article "a note on disarmament and effective demand" In June 1967, Les Fishman wrote a paper called The Economics of Vietnam. He calculated the costs to the federal government of supporting the French in Indochina from 1955-1965 and then of pursuing the war from 1965 to the time of writing. He analysed the economics and impact of the spending on the war: the short-term ‘Cost-benefit’ effects;; the multiplier effects (or lack of them) of military spending; the effect on the balance of payments; the changes in cross-border investment to and from the US and the impact on the US’s reserves and therefore its ability to continue to act as the world’s banker.
It is a wide-ranging paper, connecting the war with the US role in the world economy, as well as the domestic economy. It concludes that the investment in containing communism through the Marshall Plan and post-war military deployments, maintaining ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the Soviet Union had a high return, keeping the Soviet Union at bay for relatively small outlays. The return on the investment in Vietnam, confronting China militarily through South East Asia was likely to be low. On the short-term return, he made the startling point that the total economic investment by US citizens in South East Asia stood at the time at $600 million, equivalent to the cost of 6 days of the Vietnam war. At the same time the distortion of the federal budget towards the war effort reduced spending on social programmes and therefore contributed to reduced social stability at home. ---
quoted asking questions to a US car manufacturer as part of
Personal Author(s) :Fishman, Leslie ; Allen, Jay ; Bunger, Byron ; Eaton, Curt
Report Date :DEC 1968
Pagination or Media Count :311
Abstract :The purpose of the study is to compare, integrate and analyze the results of four surveys of the reemployment experiences of workers laid off at three defense plants. The 14,000 returned questionnaires provide a wealth of empirical information on layoff experiences of defense workers and, more generally, on the labor market. One of the main purposes of the study is to make this information available to those interested in research of the employment process. To this end, a common card was designed to accept information from the surveys and to be used for further research. (Author)
Subject Categories :Personnel Management and Labor Relations
Distribution Statement :APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE One section is quoted the same year "The local adjustments to reductions in defense employment may have an important effect on the national economy. Economist Leslie Fishman goes so far as to say that “micro” market adjustments may be decisive in maintaining employment because the balance-of-payments problem would inhibit fiscal policies that create demand in the national market. Fishman suggested that demobilization would offer an opportunity for “giant strides” in information channeling and employment decision theory that “could lead not only to smooth and successful transitions, but also to a new era in the operation of the labor markets.” He asserted that “Improved operation of the labor market could easily reduce the unemployment rate to levels long familiar to the West German economy, increase efficiency and productivity, and thus become a strong force against inflation.”
1969
Transportation Research, Volume 3, number 4, 1969. Pergamon Press (now Elsevier) Transport article from Warwick University with J Stewart Wabe aka Wabe, J Stewart There is an advert for it in Economic Journal's "back matter" from December that year which shows in searchers of JStor on Google Scholar. Transpn Res. Vol. 3, pp. 429-442. Pergamon Press 1969. Printed in Great Britain update:
d = denarii or old pence, worth a twelfth of a shilling.
p = new pence post 1971, worth a fifth of a shilling or a hundredth of a pound.
d = 0.41666666666 p.
Currency units have not changed in any other way.
This article has been quoted in The Guardian or such on the theme of "who were Fishman and Wabe - so far ahead of their time?". Google citations finds several academic articles too This search finds 151 citations
A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF THE MOTOR CAR IN THE UNITED KINGDOM LESLIE FISHMAN University of Keele and J. STUART WABE University of Warwick (Received 25 January 1969; in revised form 21 July 1969) 1. THE NEED FOR A NEW FORM OF CAR OWNERSHIP
THE PROBLEM of the motor car, especially in urban areas, is becoming more and more serious. The Buchanan Report (Ministry of Transport, 1963, p. 9) summarises the urban traffic problem as "jams, frustrations, parking difficulties, confusion, noise and accidents". The root cause of the United Kingdom difficulties undoubtedly lies in the rapid growth of car ownership; the number of cars in use is growing at a compound rate of some 8 per cent per annum and the current level of car ownership is approximately 0.20 cars per person. What will happen to car ownership in the future has been the subject of some controversy. All writers are agreed that it will increase but nobody, for obvious reasons, can be sure of the saturation level. The general consensus is that we can at least expect to reach the current U.S.A. level of just over 0.40 cars per person by 1990 and Mogridge (1967) has suggested an ultimate saturation level of 0.66 cars per person. However, any prediction must be subject to a considerable amount of uncertainty. For example, it will depend on the policy adopted towards public transport and parking as well as the amount of congestion and the related aspect of the size of the investment programme in road improvements. In fact the main proposal of this paper is a scheme which could keep the saturation level well below 0.40 cars per person, while at the same time extending the use of the motor car. It is not necessarily the increasing car ownership which is causing concern but the associated trend in car use. Passenger mileage by private car is highly correlated with the number of licensed cars and private transport is rapidly becoming the dominant mode of transport. In 1957 private transport accounted for 56.6 per cent of all road passenger miles and 46.6 per cent of road and rail passenger miles. The corresponding figures in 1966 had increased to 80.0 per cent and 76.2 per cent. During the decade public transport experienced considerable problems in remaining profitable. The loss of passengers had been met by increasing fares and reductions in the level of service both of which resulted in further reductions in the level of use. We can also be certain that, as car ownership increases, the use of public transport will continue to decline. A recent study by Schenker and Wilson (1967) on the use of public transport in the U.S.A. has quantified this aspect of increasing car ownership. They showed that, in major metropolitan areas, the level of car ownership exhibited a highly significant negative correlation with the level of public transport use.
430 Lesue Fishman and J Stuart Wabe
The problem posed by increasing car ownership and use has been tackled by increasing investment in new roads and road improvements and by traffic management schemes, while, for the future, it looks as if rationing road space by road pricing will become important. Increased investment has been spent mainly on motorways which only help the urban problem of congestion in so far as they by-pass towns. Traffic management schemes could ... a multitude of ways of increasing traffic flows and are primarily concerned with urban areas. Under this heading must be included one-way street systems, tidal flow schemes, linked traffic lights and parking and unloading restrictions. Traffic management are thought to have had some success in increasing traffic flows, but a recent study by Thomson (1968) has concluded that the true capacity of the central London road network has not increased since the advent of traffic management in 1961. This conclusion has disputed by Ridley and Turner (1968).
How is the future growth of traffic to be met? There is obviously a limit to the' flow of vehicles that can be accommodated on a given road network even with the sophisticated traffic management schemes. It also looks as if investment in urban roads not going to match the increase in the number of cars. A recent report from the M. of Transport (1967) comments:
"We took as the basis for our study the assumption that there was no practical way of providing enough road space to carry a rapidly growing amount of traffic."
The same study then proceeds to consider ways of rationing road space by using variant road-pricing measures. In this respect the study was clearly influenced by the Smolt Report (Ministry of Transport, 1964), which explicitly considered the "economic ail technical possibilities of road pricing". Regulating the usage of road space, especially in peak periods, by making vehicles pay their marginal social cost is an attractive proposition to economists. However, there are several objections to such an approach especially if its done by some form of metering device on cars. Firstly, the scheme is expensive to implement though it must be admitted that approximation to such a scheme can always be made by means of parking charges or having daily licences to take cars into urban areas. Secondly, it will be difficult for the motoring public to understand the concepts underlying any such schemes of road pricing and hence it is likely to arouse a considerable amount of hostility. The third objection is that road pricing is primarily concerned with usage of roads and not the problem of car ownership. Road pricing will slow down the decline in public transport, as will direct subsidies to public transport. However, the advantages of own-car usage in considerable and it may be that the shoring up of public transport will be a losing battle. In addition, the subsidization of public transport is often viewed as an alternative to spending the money on better roads and better parking facilities. As the number of car owners steadily increases the democratic pressure shifts from support of public transport to demand for better roads.
This paper contains a proposal for restructuring the form of car ownership which will reduce the rate of growth of cars in the United Kingdom. This involves a change in the pricing for the use of cars, basically a shift from marginal cost to average cost pricing. As well as reducing the rate of growth of cars, the form of average cost pricing we propose will go a long way to dealing with the problem of traffic congestion at peak periods. Before considering the scheme in detail it is necessary to consider the decision-making situation of the car owner.
Before a consumer becomes a car owner several types of fixed costs must be undertakes, he must first become a driver and this is a process which is expensive, involving a considerable amount of time and money. He must also provide proper parking space for the vehicle, this usually involving the additional expense of a garage. The actual purchase of the vehicle
Restructuring the form of car ownership 431
second type of fixed cost is by far the most expensive. Because the outlay on the car is large, the other fixed costs in this second step are not sufficiently realized. These include car insurance, major repairs and upkeep. Some of these latter expenses, such as repairs can properly be regarded as running costs. However, these costs are irregular and it is difficult for the car owner to regard them as current running costs. It is likely that only petrol and perhaps oil, costs are viewed by the car owner as the actual marginal or running of his car. The following data give the fixed and variable costs for car ownership as updated by the Automobile Association for the early part of 1968. It will be noticed that table includes the cost of garaging but does not make any allowance for the fixed cost in learning to drive.
The table gives a breakdown of costs for three different engine sizes for an annual ge of 10,000. This mileage is higher than the average, the current estimate being approximately 7500 miles per car. Cars less than 1500 c.c. are now the major element of the population, accounting for some 70 per cent of the total. There is also evidence that the range 1001-1500 c.c. is growing the most rapidly and this class will be considered as representative of all car owners.
TABLE 1.
FIXED AND VARIABLE COSTS FOR CAR OWNERSHIP IN 1968
middle column in bold type is for <1500cc
Fixed costs (old pence per mile), assuming annual mileage of 10,000 miles <1000cc<1500cc<2000 CC Engine capacity 0.600 0.600 0.600 Car licence 0.897 0.987 1.419 Insurance
0.006 0.006 0.006 Driving licence 1.707 1.922 2.759 Depreciation 0.615 0.692 0.987 Interest on capital 1.092 1.092 1.092 Garage
0.076 0.076 0.076 Subscription to A.A. (or R.A.C.) 4.993 5.375 6.939FIXED COSTS PER MILE: VARIABLE COSTS (old pence)
1.783 2.184 2.816 Petrol
0.093 0.143 0.156 Oil
0.231 0.234 0.259 Tyres 0.193 0.223 0.233 Servicing 0.967 1.089 1.268 Repairs and replacements 3.267 3.873 4.732VARIABLE COSTS PER MILE
8.260 9.248 11.671Total cost per mile
SOURCE: Automobile Association, Schedule of Estimated Running Costs.
If petrol and oil are the only variable costs considered by the driver then the marginal cost is 2.3d. per mile compared with an average cost of over 9d. per mile. Total annual expenditure for this car amounts to £385. However, a 3-mile trip by car results in an out-of-pocket cost of only 7d. - far less than the public transport charge for the same journey. As good economic maximizer the car owner will opt to use his car for almost all journeys. What we are saying above is that the decision on car use is being made by comparing the marginal cost of car use, the appropriate marginal cost being defined as out-of-pocket
432 Lesue Fishman and J Stuart Wabe
expense for the trip, with the cost of making the same journey by public transport. Quarmby (1967) provides convincing evidence to confirm that motorists behave in this way by demonstrating that in the model choice decision between car and bus the car owners implicitly costing the use of their cars at approximately 25¢ per mile. The public transport cost will almost certainly be some form of average cost and this situation, as Sherman (1967) has pointed out, will lead to a bias in favour of the car in transport choice. Sherman, like all good economists, was attracted by the idea of marginal cost pricing and he argues that resource allocation will be improved if public transport is priced on this basis. However public transport is a decreasing cost industry and marginal cost pricing by itself would lead to deficits. To eliminate the deficit he proposes a “club subscription" where members share the fixed costs of public transport over a contracted period of time. Sherman (1967, p.23?) points out the consequences of such a scheme:
“If members who shared the fixed costs paid only marginal cost for their usage of service, a potential member could evaluate the impact of his usage of public transport the overall cost per mile to him. And he could thereupon choose between car and transport on equal terms, at approximate marginal cost.”
At first sight this seems a fine scheme but it is completely non-operational. The problem is to get car owners to subscribe to the fixed costs of public transport. But, given the very heavy fixed costs of car use, there is absolutely no incentive for a car owner to indulge in further fixed cost expenditure. Few car owners will join the Transport Club; the majority will always use their cars and any marginal cost pricing solution will not be viable. this mean that resource allocation in the field of passenger transport cannot be improved? Our answer to this is an emphatic "No".
Considering public transport (pt) and private cars (pc) as the only two relevant model then, to remove the bias and improve resource allocation, we would like the price ratio to be equal to the ratio of marginal costs, that is to say
P (pt) = MC (pt) P (pc) MC (pc)
It is considered realistic to think of both of these marginal costs as constants, that is to they do not vary greatly with the number of vehicle miles travelled. The current situation is that average cost pricing is appropriate for public transport because of the desire to
- - 3 even and marginal cost for private car transport, that is to say,
P (pt) = AC (pt) P (pc) AC (pc)
.7. and given a decreasing cost public transport sector then MC(pt)<AC(pt) . Therefore desired price ratio is less than the existing price ratio, that is
MC (pt)<AC (pt) MC (pc) MC (pc)
One point of importance is the decline in public transport use. Given that the curve for public transport is shifting to the left then AC (pt) is rising through time and we moving, perhaps rapidly, away from the desired position (this point will be considered . f more detail below). However, suppose we make the price ratio equal to the ratio of a costs, that is
P (pt) = AC (pt) P (pc) AC (pc)
Restructuring the form of car ownership p433
as we have seen in Table l, the average cost of car use is in excess of the marginal cost: AC(pc) > MC(pc). It therefore follows that
AC(pt) = AC (pt) = 3.30 = 1.50
P (pt) MC (pc)
we can say is that if we charge average cost for use of the car and not marginal cost we will move in the right direction and remove some, or perhaps all, of the bias which in favour of the car in making a decision on transport choice.
Some figures may help to get the above discussion in perspective. The figures will be presented on the assumption that one individual is making a decision on the mode of transport for a particular journey, for example the journey to work.
The average 1968 1' .. for buses in Coventry was 3-50d. per passenger mile as opposed to 2-33d. per mile by car. The 1968 situation can be approximated by fa=fi€a=£9=1.5o Ppc MC” 2-33 7 The marginal cost of bus transport is not known but a figure of l-Od. per passenger would seem reasonable. With this estimate the ideal situation is then given by
£11....JMC =I_QQ=O.43 Pp, MC” 233 {thus it can be seen that the bias against public transport and in favour of the private ‘is considerable. on the basis of the above data the observed price ratio is 3-5 times 7 ' - than the desired price ratio. We maintain that it is possible to approximate to this s; ' .. price ratio by average cost pricing. Such a change will tend to decrease the demand car miles and hence raise average cost, and increase the demand for public transport f an associated fall in average cost. With average cost pricing we may end up in the ng situation: 1 3 P AC 3-20 I. .Iig__£‘.=.._.=o.32 Pp, AC” lo°0 j The price ratio under average cost pricing IS much closer to the desired ratio, given by ‘nal costs, than is the current price ratio. In fact the situation with an observed price of 1-50 has been transformed, on these figures, to one that has a slight bias in favour of f , ' transport. It may be that there is a case for having prices biased in favour of public A. port because of the higher social costs per seat mile associated with cars in comparison buses. Social costs will include such items as noise, fumes and accidents. Given that f social costs imposed by a bus and a car are equal then, because 15 or so cars are needed carry the equivalent of a fully loaded bus, social welfare will be increased by conferring a 7 . advantage on public transport at the expense of cars. i. How have the ratios ACP. over M C” and M Cu over MC” been changing through time ratios have been estimated for 1956 and the results are most striking. Information supplied by the Automobile Association gives the petrol and oil cost for cars of 1000-l500 cc. 7 ‘ -26d. per mile. The closeness of this 1956 figure with the current figure is quite remar- Information supplied by Coventry Corporation Transport Department gives the 1956 of bus transport as l-33d. per passenger mile. Thus the 1956 observed price ratio was p“_ACp_."_l-33_ 3:“ MC,,“ 226 059
The [community garage] plan proposed here has been made with the new town in mind, but it is just as applicable to most British towns and, with variation, to most British cities. Where it simply will not do is in the United States. American cities have, with almost no exception, become motor cities – adapted to the owner-driver form of transport. Numerous rivers of motorways disgorge their traffic into oceans of parking areas. At their “headwaters”, the motorway rivers can be traced through a vast stream network of subsidiary roads to their source, the innumerable cemented driveways and garages (with houses attached). It is now not uncommon in Los Angeles to see a private garage with room for five or six vehicles, much as an old stable had room for a half-dozen horses. The American city can no longer be adapted to a community garage scheme. Their path is irreversible, and they have gone beyond the point of no return
1970
"I could have been someone" "Well so could anyone"
- The Pogues, Fairytale of New York. Shane McGowan and Jem Finer, Computer Science & Sociology with Foundation Year, graduate from Keele late 1960s
"Academic Stardom" was a phrase used in The Independent's obiturary to say what Les missed in the USA. At this point I guess that US economics professors at the better-known colleges earn more and more from consultancy, on top of pay for lecturing, and they don't have to bother with tutorials where someone might tell them that their theories are stupid or wrong. Their students have to compete with each other to agree in the most sacharine way with the teacher - that's how it works. Academic starts can choose to work in a department with a lot of choice about which students it selects, and which can select the richest and most precocious ones. The tricky people to please are the ones who want consultancy fees like Boeing or whoever. There was a TV documentary on something like Panorama to show how it works, with the odd surprise interview with a very patronising and uncomfortable bow-tied professor. Professors might get the odd TV interview or free dinner for a speech and generally feel part of the world, unaware of the havoc their stupid theories cause. Keele staff do not have these benefits, even if they start at the top as a professor to open a new department. They do get an above-average wage for an above-specialised job, even if they are too lazy and stupid hold a single tutorial or check facts on computers. Professors who are also department managers do better still. A recent Keele Economics Professor job went for more than double the average wage, and one that managed a small department would have got more on-top, so Fishman just had to keep up appearances and take the money. On the other hand, the Keele list speaks for itself: they have to record every single journal article very carefully, because people who teach the same short core course as thousands of other teachers have trouble making a mark on the world and getting things published. Offspring pick-up the things that are not said. I picked-up the idea that pop music was bad for you from my parents, completely by mistake. Paying guests from places like Idaho and Oragon visited to get points towards a degree. One of them had gone a bit deaf from heavy metal. Fishman's offpring - Nina Fishman - picked-up the idea that this man had done his job after being wronged by circumstance. I don't remember him moping at all, but that's what she picked-up. His colleagues probably noticed the other side of the market: he'd got top jobs when there was a professor shortage and they'd got jobs teaching basics without much chance to shine and apply for anything else.
£14.95 on Amazon. Google books has machine-chosen keywords as a tag cloud, some in larger type than others
ABM system Adam Smith allocate alternative method anti-pollution basic Britain certainly complex congestion cost countryside David Ricardo deteriorates developing nations difficult earth economic institutions economic theory approached economists economy before World especially estimate firms following the rules forced government is called government to sort grants to merchants greatest saving growth historical needs important income individual industrial interdependent economy involved Japan key reform Kistiakowsky lack of alignment long-run longer major market system marketplace military missile gap hoax modifications modify the rules motor car motorist Once output partial equilibrium solution pharmaceutical research planet pollution price mechanism primary products problem area public transport system pure research returning the water right in terms road pricing road space scientific revolution scientific-technological revolution side-effects Smith and David society stop-go cycle subsidy technological Throughout the lecture true affluence Tyneside U.S. economy United University of Keele viewpoint stresses wealthy world monetary arrangements
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1971
Status and Problems of developing countries -
week 15 lecture to Foundation Year students at Keele, mentioned in Keele Boomerang
I'm glad you like warm beer Ciara. My Prof at Keele University was American. Les Fishman. Never taught us any economics but would regale us with cracking yarns at every lecture or tutorial. (He'd have loved this BBS!) Anyway he told us how he had first arrived in the UK and was driving round on a hot Summer's day exploring. Alighting at a pub and dying of thirst he was shocked to be handed a "warm" pint. He complained but was told that was the way to drink it - it had more taste. "And you know" said Fishman, with a gleam of pleasure in his eyes and a glance at his watch to confirm that lunchtime was almost upon us, "She was right - it does taste better - it took me a few pints to work it out - but by golly it does taste good - and now - you British - you're selling out to these lagers and cold beer - aaah!" and he waved his arms hopelessly in front of himself and hurried off to the Sneyd Arms in the centre of Keele. :-)
-- Anonymous, August 10, 2001
[Pioneers] RIP Les Fishman
http://maillists.keele.ac.uk/pipermail/pioneers/2008-January/000863.html
I was saddened to learn from the newsletter of the passing of Prof Les Fishman. He and Ellie were a very kind couple who would always put themselves out help a student or colleague who needed it. I thought he was simply too nice for the sometimes rough world of University politics.
Les used to give us election help in Newcastle in the early 70s. I remember the good burghers of the Cross Heath estate being somewhat bemused by this avuncular American pitching up on their doorstep telling them why they should come out and vote Labour.
When he came to Keele he also "found" football and became a supporter of Stoke City. We used to go to away games at places like Old Trafford and his boyish excitement at the spectacle was a pleasure to behold. In those days Radio Stoke used to convene a panel of supporters for a studio discussion after the game. Les did this a few times because Radio Stoke loved having an American on it, but he didn't always get the language right which caused confusion, such as talking about the number of "penalty kicks" when he meant "free kicks" and referring to the ball hitting the "pole" rather than the post but people loved his enthusiasm for the game and for Stoke as a club and a place. He adopted the potteries and it adopted him. - Malc Clarke
Les should also be remembered for his deeply valued support he gave the new American Studies department back in the mid-60s. When the temptation would have been to focus American Studies upon an existing discipline as so many other new universities did (where an interest in American literature became the basis for subsequent American Studies with the odd historian bolted on for show) Les supported the belief that at Keele at least American Studies
should combine as many disciplines as possible, in fact follow on from the old FY, linking humanities and social sciences. So when David Adams was able to open the department (and it was a department on a par with the others, not a programme as it has become at Keele and elsewhere) Les supported the decision to offer economics to all American Studies students. This of course would never fit in with the more recent insistence on student choice (where
students get to choose to avoid anything that looks different or worse, hard). We were required to read Baron and Sweezy and discuss capitalism, the Great Depression and military-industrial complex, not just from the point of view of historians or political scientists, but with regard to the economics of these topics. At times I was so out of my depth. Indeed I once asked a
friend doing Economics to help me out, but it seemed he hadn't dealt with anything like that in his degree yet. But Les was enthusiastic, and of course to have an American teaching us, and in the first year too, was wonderful. And it was Les who chivvied me into going to see Stoke play (I was still a bit of a Forest fan when I arrived).
So, thanks Les, from those parochial, economically illiterate 18 year olds that you taught back in the 60s.
Steve Mills, American Studies and Geography 1967-71
1972
8 The conference attracted nearly 200 participants, including a large number of students. Although the numbers dwindled in successive sessions, there was an atmosphere of sustained interest and debate. Papers given at the conference included David Yaffe's "The Marxian Theory of Crisis, Capital and the State," Jan Kregel's "Post-Keynesian Economic Theory and the Theory of Capitalist Crisis," Les Fishman's "Inflation," and Barrat Brown's "Capitalism in the Second Half of the 20th Century" (CS Newsletter, February 1973; Conference of Socialist Economists 1972b).
16 page document published by Keele University, now held at Cambridge University Library and the British Library document supply centre. Fishman is joins the committee of the Pedestrians Committee for Road Safety
1974
Transportation Research, Volume 3, number 4, 1969. Pergamon Press Transport article from Warwick University with J Stewart Wabe
An Introduction to Industrial Economics. By P. J. DEVINE et al. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974. Pp. 613. 0.75 hardback, £3.95 Paperback.) The field of industrial economics has been undergoing major change, in part reflecting changes in technique and data and theoretical emphasis on the academic side, in part reflecting the major changes occurring in industry, in the national and international economy, and especially in the relationships between government and industry. The four University of Manchester economists have done the profession a service by attempting to summarise the state of the art at this point in time. They have produced what is arguably the best text presently available, certainly for industrial economics students, but also perhaps for applied economics courses. Its great strength lies in the excellent and exten-sive summaries of the empirical studies that have engulfed the field in the past several decades. Its weakness, which the authors hardly attempt to paper over, is that the theory needed to guide our empirital search, and thus to provide a framework within which to analyse problems, is found wanting. We tend to use a static, competitive, non-interventionist theory of allocation, when the key problems of British and American industry clearly lie in the context of a dynamic, oligopolistic, interventionist, adaptive framework. Nevertheless, because no alternative, unifying theory is available, the authors stress the need to know and apply microeconomic theory, despite its shortcomings. In contrast to the earlier traditional books in this field, which tended to use the historical, descriptive approach, the authors blend theory and practice. Thus the first chapter introduces the " new " industrial economics, with full marks given to P. W. S. Andrews for his pioneer attempts to apply and recon-cile and adapt microeconomic theory to the real world of industry. The intro-duction includes a brief, but welcome, discussion of methodology. The student is made aware of some of the problems, and 4 given a framework and some bibliography on which to build. This characterises the entire volume. Despite its length of over 6oo pages, the authors, probably correctly, decided to "introduce" the student to the most relevant tools and sources and issues, however briefly. They then develop at length the core material of the new industrial economics. Thus the opening chapter has an appendix on data collection and interpretation, including a short section on regression analysis. I thought the regression example poorly chosen, too complex (in log form), and with two of the signs requiring detailed exploration (let alone some of the coefficients). Why not use one of the studies dealt with in some detail in a subsequent chapter? With the earlier discussion of methodology as background, why not draw attention to the parallel between mis-specification and the lack of consonance between theory and data? Finally, despite the excellent list of six cautions in the use of regression analysis, do we not want to stress that relating variables is not the same thing as explaining, or understanding, or providing causal links? Only "Correct" theory applied with "correct" data can truly "explain". Still, all in all, the chapter sets the stage well, and prepares us for the problems ahead. The second chapter, on industrial and market structure, adds more tools (input—output, Lorenz Curve) whilst covering the substantive work on structure. Both of these discussions are at an elementary level, but useful. The material on concentration and on economies of scale is particularly well presented. The chapter ends with a summary that serves to sharpen the underlying issues that have been posed. All but three of the chapters have such a summary or conclusion, or both, and I found them helpful and instructive, not offensive, as they can be when oversimplified. The next four chapters lead to pricing and marketing, by expertly summarising the theory and empirical material presently available in the theory of the firm, corporate growth, diversification, merger, and innovation. The investment-decision chapter stands somewhat apart, but is obviously necessary to introduce the technical tools, uncertainty, the problems of finance, and the role of the interest rate. The concluding four chapters deal with the role of government: an introductory chapter on performance measures; an historical summary of the post-war state intervention (legal and otherwise) in the private sector; the nationalised sector (carefully titled "Government Relations with the Public Industrial Sector ") ; and the location of industry policy. Thus the plan of the book is as follows: the first two-thirds equips the student with the theory and empirical work needed to analyse industry; the final one-third relates this to the role of government. Considering there were four authors, the organisation and writing of the text is clear and reasonably consistent. Given the enormous range of material covered, each reader is bound to feel that some sections are more successful than others. I thought that the chapter on the theory of the firm was particularly useful. Despite the major contribution of Devine and his colleagues, and despite the length of the text, some major weaknesses and omissions remain. One looks in vain through the useful Authors' Index in the back for the names of Rostas, or Frankel, or Paige and Bombach, or Flux — all of whose studies on comparative real productivity are summarised in Phelps Brown's chapter in Britain's Economic Prospects Reconsidered. Do these not highlight the major problem of British industry, which perhaps now faces American industry also, namely, loss of international competitiveness? A summary and discussion of these studies would considerably strengthen chapter 8. The authors certainly did not have room for an historical development of British industry, but even a brief summary of it would have emphasised the growth-maturity thesis into which much of their analysis fits. Another major omission is the work of W. E. G. Salter, relating as it does, at an industry level, rates of growth and efficiency and prices. Then too, although inflation is mentioned in several chapters, and government bodies created to deal with inflation are reviewed, must we not think seriously about incorporating inflation, and prices and incomes policies, into the main stream of industrial economics? Still another " tool " that would add only a dozen pages would be sufficient accounting technique to enable the student to read intelligently a company's balance sheet, which is recommended for raw data in the appendix of chapter 4. It would also enable a better understanding of some of the problems posed by inflation and company finance, as well as the seeming irrationality of higgledy-piggledy growth (which is not mentioned) and the stock exchange. A rich source of data and experience for industrial economics which has hardly been tapped and which is not mentioned in the book, is that of the management consultants. One major role performed by management consultants, previously done on a much lower scale by accountants, and not at all considered by the authors, is to analyse and advise companies about strategies in all areas of industrial economics — investment policies, development and pricing strategies, relationships to governments, and merger and co-operation strategies. The authors review so well the material available on the multi-national company, but it simply serves to whet our appetite for more: for example, EEC company policy; a new theory of giant business in the context of mature industrial nations. Here then is a useful and welcome text, providing the student with much material and theory that is well presented and well organised, and providing the profession with an inventory of important unanswered questions in this field. (There were surprisingly few mistakes that I noted, considering the number of tables and figures, but some of the more important were: equation 7.8, figure 6.1 (slope of the MC), and confusing the horizontal and vertical axes in the footnote reference to log normal distribution on page 93.) L. FISHMAN University of Keele
1977
Acknowledged as a volunteer proof-reader for the 1977 edition of this texbook. Oddly enough the same author did a macro-economics textbook, which might have been a better bet than the mid-atlantic one with all its blind spots that Fishman prescribed for his 1984-7 course.
The book is still in print with a 2011 edition.
1979
http://www.pedestriansafety.org.uk/files/walk_june_1980.pdf - quoted as a committee member at the Pedestrian's Association, which is concerned that people sometimes cycle on pavements. Experiments in Stevenage showed that cycle lanes or just cycling on pavements can work, but the Pedestrian's Association is very much against.
McMillan publishers, 126 pages - acknowledgement by the authors Athar Hussain and Kieth Tribe
1980s
"This article is based on a research project being undertaken in the Department of Economics, University of Keele into ‘Economic Aspects of the Non-Tableware Sectors of the British Pottery Industry ’ which is being financed by the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Professor L. Fishman for reading successive drafts and for suggesting improvements " - the footnote is all that google knows of the non tableware research, so presumably the grant was converted into a grant to study redundant factory workers.
As someone who tried to sell a non tablewear ceramic on ebay. I know that wedgewood took over a factory with an owner who was interested in art and commissioned her to do things like the poppy design on toasters and coffee machines, which were not always on tables. Volunteer proof-reader and commenter on the draft
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ISSUES J Vol. XVI No. I Marchi 1982
The Atrophy of Net Investment and Some Consequences for the U.S. Mixed Economy Harold G. Vatter
In this last half of the twentieth century, the United States is experiencing the continuation of a long-term trend that resembles a modified version of John Stuart Mill's stationary state. In that state of the economy, net tangible business investment approximated zero. The data pertinent to this timely proposition, to be presented to the extent practicable below, reveal that over the long run, from the late nineteenth century to the present (beginning probably in the 1920s), there has been a dramatic drop in the share of net fixed business nonresidential investment in net total product. Indeed, the share of this historically and theoretically strategic private investment category has now become so small that it seems pressingly appropriate for us
(1) to examine whether this share decline helps explain some of the puzzling and controversial phenomena characterizing the post-World War II economic evolution of the U.S. mixed economy, and
(2) to explore the possible implications of a heuristic model in which the share approximates zero.
The Model
There are several prominent features of the closed economy growth
The author is Professor of Economics, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.
He wishes to acknowledge gratefully the comments of
Richard M. Davis, University of Oregon;
Robert Heilbroner, New School for Social Research;
Jack Thorkelson, University of Connecticut; Les Fishman, University of Keele;
John Walker, Portland State University; and
anonymous journal reviewers. 237
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1984
The British Economic Crisis, Keith Smith, Penguin, 1984 I would particularly like to thank Edward Bennet, who encouraged me to write theis book, and Phoebe de Gaye, who asked me questions which I struggled to answer in the following pages. For comments and help I am greatful to Setephen Hannah, of HM Treasury, and to colleagues in the Economics Department at the University of Keele: Sylvia Beech, Jayne Braddick, Pamela Davenport, Shirley Dex, Leslie Fishman, Athar Hussain, Peter Lawrence, Leslie Rosenthal and John Proops. I am greatful also to my students at Keele for heated discussions on some of the ideas presented here. A substandital part of this book was written in Norwaynd I would like to thank Bjorn Christiansen, Gro Fossen, Kunut Vidar Paulsen and Peter and Anne-Karin Cleaverley fro help while I was there. Finallym I would especially like to thank Kristine Bruland, my wife without whom this book could not have been written. Photo from http://www.enlightenmenteconomics.com/blog/index.php/2013/09/uncomfortable-lessons-of-history/
My thanks also for substantial help given me by Professor Leslie Fishman, Professor Martin Harrison, Dr Rick Marshall and Mr Iolo Roberts of the University of Keele, Departments of Economics, Politics, Physics and Education respectively Fishman retires from teaching in 1987 and from the university in 1988 without any acknowledgement that he has done anything wrong.
THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, No. 103 p1111-1112, July 1993 DAVIS (JOHN B.), (Ed). The Economic Surplus in Advanced Economies. Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar, 1992. Pp. vii + 192. £39.95 hardback. ISBN I 85278 555 .•
It is over a quarter of a century since the publication of Paul Baran and Paul Swazy's book Monopoly Capital. This excellent little book under review commemorates that event and brings together a number of important contributions and surveys. Contributors to this present volume indude Keith Cowling, John Davis, Michael Dawson, Amitava Krishna Du, Leslie Fishman, John Bellamy Foster, Victor Lippit, Tracy Mott, Joseph Phillips, James Stanfield, and Paul Sweeny. Monopoly Capital was written in the Mandan tradition, claiming inspiration from the earlier analyses of Michal Kalecki and Joseph Steindl in particular. According to Baran and Sweezy's book, large oligopolistic firms have come to dominate product markets wage regidity. This is contrasted with the New Classical concern with rational expectations and continuous market clearing. Chapter 1 provides an overview which clarifies the author's definition of what constitutes the New Keynesian macroeconomics and justifies the book's subtitle. Chapter 2 and 3 cover the background to the microfoundations debate. Chapter 2 deals with the neoclassical synthesis and the natural rate hypothesis. Chapter 3 focuses on the Keynesian disequilibrium theory of trading at false prices. Chapter 4 sets out the main elements of the New Classical approach the policy irrelevance proposition, the time inconsistency problem, and business cycle theory. Chapter 5 - 7 deal with the New Keynesian approach. Chapter 5 sets out the difficulties with rational expectations with particular emphasis on the possibility of multiple equilibria. The author covers speculative bubbles and sunspot equilibria as well as introducing a simple overlapping generations model. Chapter 6 focuses on New Keynesian accounts of price determination, in particular menu costs and staggered price-setting. Chapter 7 considers various New Keynesian models of wage determination: the monopoly union model, bargaining, hysteresis, and efficiency wages. Each chapter concludes with a useful, if somewhat too brief, guide to the literature. The author writes with clarity and makes extensive use of diagrams. The mathematical content is significant but well within the grasp of the average economics undergraduate. Overall this is an excellent introduction to the subject and should be very useful as a basic reference on final-year undergraduate courses in macroeconomic theory. - BILL GERRARD
1995
Fabian Review, The Quarterly Journal of the Fabian Society vols 107-8 lists Islington Fabian Society AGM on a diary page, with a talk:
Subjects: economics and finance, financial economics and regulation, post-keynesian economics
Extract
I wish to record my thanks to the librarians of the Perry Library of South Bank University, the British Library of Political and Economic Sciences; the libraries of the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Szkola Glówna Handlowa; and the British Library, and Tish Collins of the Marx Memorial Library, for their assistance in my research for this book. The generosity of the Amiel-Melburn Trust, the Leverhulme Foundation, and the European Commission’s research network on Financial Integration and Social Cohesion has helped to defray expenses associated with broader research, of which this · is one outcome. Especial thanks are due to Anita Prazmowska for her unique encouragement of my efforts to overcome the obstacles that academic employment today throws in the path of intellectual endeavour. That employment, however, also brought into the orbit of my discussions some talented and enthusiastic students on whom I was able to try out many of the ideas in this book. When those ideas became serious I was able to discuss them more knowledgeably with David Gowland, Leslie Fishman, Peter Howells, Jesper Jesperson, Julio Lopez-Gallardo, Tracy Mott, Geert Reuten, Zvi Schloss, Nina Shapiro, Geoff Tily, Tadeusz Kowalik and Randy Wray. I am grateful to Mary French-Sokol for advice on Jeremy Bentham and his writings; to Ian King and Claudia Jefferies for their assistance in translating Marek Breit’s 1935 article from German; and to David Cobham, Gary Dymski, Susan Howson, John King, Andy Denis, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Warren Samuels and Geoff Harcourt for comments on...
Interview for a book on Google Books about car sharing. The
The grant in Fishman's name for a longtitudinal study of redundant tyre workers funded data that was used later by ex-colleagues http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-015-8080-9_28
It's nice to see that other people didn't dislike him - they remember him as the person in the V-neck jumper who has to be mentioned because he helped make things happen, even if he didn't do anything himself but survive prejudice and hold down a career. They judge him against other economics professors, and the sad thing is that the lot of them were just as bad and continue to be so.
