A Gathering of the Clans...

Economic historians, historians of economic thought, practitioners of political economy, and others are painting themselves blue with woad and practicing with staves after reading Stanford's David Kennedy's trashing of Paul Krugman.

Here is Gavin Kennedy:

Adam Smith's Lost Legacy: I treat what David Kennedy has written as they stand. That he quotes Francis Amasa Walker (1840 – 1897!) for his criterion of what constitutes and economist in 2007 suggests he is seriously out of touch, and that he associates Adam Smith with laissez faire supports this conclusion. Adam Smith was not the author of what passes today as ‘classical doctrines’ (an impossibly broad tent covering Malthus, Ricardo and Marx, from among which I would snatch Adam Smith).

The sentence including, “Adam Smith, whose fabled “invisible hand”, gives the game away. David Kennedy, a professor of American history, refers to the ‘fable’ of the invisible hand, but it wasn’t a fable of Adam Smith’s making; for Smith it was merely a handy metaphor when explaining why opening a domestic market to foreign goods for consumption would lead to higher domestic investment, partly by the foreign products competing with domestic products and partly by the risk avoidance of local merchants preferring to invest their capital locally. As the arithmetical whole is the sum of its parts, if local merchants invest locally instead of abroad, domestic capital formation will be higher than otherwise.

For 18th-century readers of Wealth Of Nations (Book IV.ii.9: p456), who were not economists – more likely to be legislators and people who influence them – he summed this process after clearly explaining it by using a common 17th-18th-century literary metaphor of the invisible hand (see Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, Defoe’s ‘Moll Flanders’ or ‘Colonel Jack’, or Voltaire’s Oedipe: 'Tremble, unfortunate King, an invisible hand suspends above your head’; and ‘an invisible hand pushed away my presents’, etc.,).

The fable of the invisible hand has passed through the string of tenuous development.... Its origins are located in the environs of 51st Street, Chicago, and which has been propagated all over American academe, via its graduates and the media, until the fable is now regarded as the reality.... I would expect an historian to know this, or at least to be interested in it...

Here is Mark Thoma:

Economist's View: New York Times Review of "The Conscience of a Liberal": where's a decent reviewer when we need him? As Krugman notes in his response, David Kennedy is wrong about the history of prohibition, and the other "error" is a pretty trivial slip of writing 1964 instead of 1965. If those are the best examples of Krugman's errors Kennedy (as an historian himself) can come up with, then you have to conclude that Krugman is on pretty solid ground with the historical story he tells.

The review also ignores a lot of evidence from political scientist Larry Bartels on values voting that supports Krugman's position.... The values voting conclusions aren't things Krugman simply asserts - as you might conclude from the review - Krugman reviews solid evidence before coming to this conclusion.... [Kennedy] does not tell us about nor bother to try to rebut the careful, detailed discussion of right-wing institutions and their common funding sources that comes before this statement. Krugman's statement is a summary of this evidence, and to focus on the summary statement rather than than the evidence that supports it is not much of a rebuttal.

It's too bad that Kennedy chose to argue that, in essence, "Democrats have problems too" -- as though that somehow excuses Republicans for issues like racial politics -- rather than dealing with the evidence Krugman presents concerning the political and economic changes that produced the New Gilded Age...

PGL:

Angry Bear: The NY Times review of The Conscience of a Liberal starts off with a brief resume of its author – Paul Krugman. This is followed by a really stupid statement: "And yet maybe Krugman is not really an economist..." Who is Mr. Kennedy thinking of when he says “most modern economists”? The know-nothing nitwits over at the National Review? They religiously believe in laissez faire. This is followed by attacks not only on the book but also the author...

Alex Tabarrok:

Marginal Revolution: Krugman Badly Reviewed: It will not surprise readers to know that I'd enjoy a good smash of Paul Krugman's book Conscience of a Liberal but historian David Kennedy's negative review in the NYtimes is more trash than smash.  First, there is a bizarre attempt to argue that Krugman is not an economist because he is not laissez-faire!... At this point I was willing to forgive. Unfortunately, the rest of Kennedy's review has very little meat.  If the best that historian Kennedy can say against Krugman's "factually shaky" history is that "Kansas, whatever its other crimes and misdemeanors, is not customarily regarded as the birthplace of Prohibition; the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, not 1964." then maybe Krugman is on to something.  (For the record, the first point is arguable the second point is a trivial error.)

Worse yet, Kennedy agrees with Krugman when Krugman is wrong.... I don't understand the divisions within the liberal fold which explain Kennedy's review (he is no right-winger) but I know something is up when Tyler says "The Conscience of a Liberal is um... not that polemic.  It's not that shrill."  While liberal Kennedy says "Like the rants of Rush Limbaugh or the films of Michael Moore, Krugman’s shrill polemic may hearten the faithful, but it will do little to persuade the unconvinced or to advance the national discussion of the important issues it addresses."

My ultimate response to Kennedy's review?  I bought the book.

If David Kennedy had any arrows, I would suggest that he start practicing the longbow...

Comments

[malcolm]

My favorite bit in the review was when he described Paul Krugman as "shrill." Maybe
Kennedy will change his mind about Krugman
as Andrew Sullivan did.

[andres]

Brad: "Economic historians, historians of economic thought, practitioners of political economy, and others are painting themselves blue with woad and practicing with staves after reading Stanford's David Kennedy's trashing of Paul Krugman."

Er, wrong metaphor, if Braveheart is what you had in mind. Most British historians know that there are some serious mistakes in Mel Gibson's mythologizing of William Wallace. Oh well, but it's a nice thought.

Kennedy looks to me more like one of those naive archeologists trying to use Latin to read the Necronomicon, and getting eaten by a Shoggoth before realizing where he is screwing up. The Ancient Order of the Shrill will not be overcome by such as these...

[piotr]

My understanding stopped at the last sentence "If David Kennedy had any arrows, I would suggest that he start practicing the longbow...".

In PA, bows are the weapon of choice of hard core deer hunters. Needless to say, arrowheads that are good for deer are fully sufficient to bleed a human very quickly to death. So one should ask Mr. Kennedy not to put blades oh his arrowheads, otherwise he will be a menace to fellow hunters, livestock and anything else in the vicinity of the forest, with the possible exception of deer.

Assuming of course that he would avoid injury while putting the arrowheads together.

[wood turtle]

The crossbow might be a more accurate weapon.

Off topic, but 1953 was a very good year, regardless.

[rea]

The woad business was entirely Mel Gibson's invention. Julius Caesar said the ancient Britons painted themselves with woad for battle, and so Gibson thinks that's how a Scotsman would act 1300 years or so later. It would have been less anachronistic if Gibson had worn a space helmet . . .

[Mark Paul]

I don't know how often Krugman comes into the office at the Times, but the Book Review editor should make him/herself scarce the next time he drops by.

Let's make a list of the reviewers who can be called on to review Brooks' next tissue-thin tome of pop sociology.

[prostratedragon]

"Its origins are located in the environs of 51st Street, Chicago"

Probably a few blocks south of there, actually, unless Mr. Gavin Kennedy is being, um, rather specific.

But it makes me gospel-shout to hear it pointed out that Adam Smith and "Adam Smith" are two very different thinkers.

And maybe instead of woad, economists can don their blue do bok (Korean martial arts unis) and flex their up chagi (side kick)-yup joomuk chigi (side fist strike) combinations. These things are not in keeping with the Scottish heritage of American economics perhaps, but they are not mythological.

It is a wonderful challenge in training to learn to avoid thinking of anyone in particular when practicing them on weighted bags.

It is partly because of Mr. Donald Kennedy's review that I picked up a copy of the book Monday and have begun reading it.

[pgl]

I first learned about this from AB reader Dan who learned about this from the comments over at Mark Thoma's place. Gotta love our readers who provide such useful comments!

Thanks for this and thanks for including my humble contribution in the Gathering of the Clans.