Comments (17)

• Keith

  I've read it. I thought at places there was probably too much detail and a lot of talk about the quirks and idiosyncracies of the historical figures. But complaining about the "essential role of the historian" simply reminds me of the main impression I got from the book, that most of these people were self-righteous prima-donnas. You can talk about the need for critical discussion and weighing the accuracy of sources, but when does that become omitting facts or inserting bias? I'm not a schooled historian, but I've never had much patience with the nuances of the social sciences. Maybe the reader should be allowed to decide what is or isn't important.

  If you can stand a 600 page non-fiction book (especially if you're a capitalist or libertarian), I'd recommend it.

  Published: September 25, 2007 11:12 AM

• Rodney King

  Joe,

  This is simply a hit piece. What could you or LvMI possibly gain from writing a piece with such a vitriolic tone? Issuing corrections is one thing. But attacking Pete and Brian is another. Maybe Pete said some inaccurate stuff and Brian just cut and pasted it, but they're great guys and have done a lot for the movement. They don't deserve this kind of treatment.

  The last thing we need in the libertarian movement is more pieces like this. It divides us and gains us almost nothing. I think you should rewrite the article, bearing in mind that Brian and Pete are worthy of your respect. Disagreement is one thing, being a jerk is quite another.

  Why would LvMI or the Quarterly Journal want to publish this kind of nasty attack anyway? I thought that was one of the reasons why LvMI made Roderick Long the editor of the JLS, to signal that LvMI was ready to get along with everyone else.

  Oh well, score 1 for Salerno, and -10 for the libertarian movement.

  C'mon, Joe, can't we all just get along?

  Published: September 25, 2007 12:23 PM

• Laurence Vance

  Joe, please don't rewrite the article. I hear the same type of argument whenever I write against libertarian support for vouchers. And I don't think you are a jerk.

  Published: September 25, 2007 2:58 PM

• Anthony

  I must agree with Rodney. Does the author have some sort of issue with GMU or Boettke, or is he simply trying to correct Doherty? If the latter, the harsh tone is largely unnecessary, especially considering how contributive Boettke has been to Austrian Economics and what a wonderful venue GMU is for young Austrians. However, I will say that Doherty's writing reminds me a bit of Skousen's "Vienna & Chicago". Skousen has many valuable insights in the book, but fails horribly when dealing with areas outside his realm of expertise.

  Published: September 25, 2007 8:46 PM

• James

  It is quite clear that a book on the austrian revival needs to be written by someone with more knowledge of its intricacies.

  Any takers?

  Published: September 25, 2007 8:46 PM

• James

  I thought the explanation of Boettke I and Boettke II quite interesting as tied to the changing strategy of the "Kochtopus."

  Probably a lot more correct than Dr. Boettke would like to admit or perhaps even realizes.

  And, for what it is worth, I didn't find the tone harsh, but more passionate and amazed at the false claims Boettke made to Doherty while apparently speaking for all austrian economists.

  Published: September 25, 2007 8:54 PM

• Samuel

  Dr. Boettke responds:

  Joe Salerno in a review essay on Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism. There are so many interesting parts of Brian's story, but Joe focuses on one aspect of that story and one that happened to rely on some interviews over the years that Brian conducted with me when I was teaching at NYU and at GMU. Joe criticizes my interpretation of the Austrian movement.

  I am sure I am guilty of loose lips and also of stating things in an interview less thoughtfully than I hopefully would in an written article, but the context of the discussion between Brian and myself was always one of "how is it that such a powerful set of ideas from Mises and Hayek could have such little impact within the economics profession at large?" I tried to provide arguments which self-reflect on the behavior of Austrian economists themselves, rather to blame others for our failures. I don't deny that there are formidable forces to overcome, but I also think this is a very competitive business and "we" have not competed very well. And I think the evidence is around for us to consider who is competing well or not --- you either publish in professional journals or not; you either get tenure track appointments or not; you either get promoted or not; you either place PhD students or not; you either publish with top publishing houses or not.

  It is not that the evidence is murky on this, nor it is really murky that this is the criteria to use in determining whether you are making an impact as a scientific movement in political economy.

  Anyway, Joe Salerno --- who I respect tremendously for both the quality of his mind and his deep commitment to Austrian economics --- finds my statements objectionable. There should be a fair hearing of views within Austrian circles, so for those of you who haven't read them check them out. I could indeed be wildly off-the-mark, and if so, perhaps Joe will have a better answer to Brian's question as to why Austrian's have found it so difficult to advance their ideas when in fact on both an empirical (collapse of Keynesianism and collapse of real existing socialism) and theoretical (collapse of macroeconomics, and the development of new institutionalism and resurgency of political economy) level the world of academic economics has moved in such a positive direction.

  http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/09/joe-salerno-on-.html

  Published: September 25, 2007 8:58 PM

• jeffrey

  Larry White responds here

  Published: September 25, 2007 9:26 PM

• Anthony

  Dr White's response more or less sums up my thoughts on the article.

  Published: September 25, 2007 10:09 PM

• Sam

  Dr. White's response is good except for the last point. Cui bono is always a good question to ask and even more so in academia where it is never even suggested. The exchange of money for professorships and the agenda behind the contribution and the professors ideology would make a fascinating study.

  Published: September 25, 2007 10:12 PM

• Axel Riemer

  I made it through perhaps half the book before I had to return it to the library (moving to a different city), and I do remember some of Boettke's interview- really just enough to recognize the quotes in the article above.

  Whenever I read history, I am reminded of the fault I find with Barbara Tuckman; in the introduction of her collection of writings "Practicing History" she mentions something her mentor told her. Since I don't have the book with me, I'll have to guess at what it was.. Something about how the historian is a participant in history, and not just an observer of it. I forget.

  At any rate, since I knew none of the people personally, and few enough of the names, I am the person this book is written for, and I appreciate it.

  On the other hand, I also enjoyed Salerno's critique. I recall not being very happy with the (I thought) overly small section on Austrian economics, and I'm glad to see him tackle the subject.

  But Doherty is a freewheeling historian, and I am glad to get a taste of some of the people and perspectives that done brought us here. I enjoy reading now, and applying my own brain to critique them. The Wall Street Journal gives me an aneurysm every morning, and even Milton Friedman can give me a pain. Thanks Brian for the book that gives such a great overarching look at the libertarian movement for those of us who weren't there, and thanks Joe for a swell critique.

  Published: September 25, 2007 10:56 PM

• Arend

  @ Rodney King who says "Oh well, score 1 for Salerno, and -10 for the libertarian movement."

  Where does the -11 come from (+1-11=-10)? How did you come to the conclusion that the (positive) subjective value of Boettke and Doherty to the libertarian movement is eleven times higher than Salerno's (when the former two are refuted)?

  Published: September 26, 2007 6:46 AM

• flix

  Well Arend, if value is subjective, it is quite clear that this is only Rodney King's own vauation...

  Published: September 26, 2007 1:07 PM

• Joe Salerno

  I am delighted that Larry White took notice of my review on his blog and appreciate his thoughtful comments. I am in profound agree with his statement, "There is no one dominant point of view among current Austrians about how best to go about doing economics, or about where others may have pursued the wrong approach." He believes that the failure to recognize this point is one of the most important shortcomings of the Doherty book. Indeed I echoed this point in an exchange of emails with Pete Boettke yesterday. Quoting from my own email:

  "Note that I acknowledged that your points were
  probably made in the context of an informal oral interview and that you likely had no idea how they would be used. Still since you were the only person whose views on the development of the Austrian movement Brian decided to present--and to do so as established fact with absolutely no critical analysis--I naturally focused on a
  point by point rebuttal of your position. Had Brian consulted a number of other Austrian economists and given an even-handed presentation of conflicting views, I would not have proceeded in this way and probably would never have even written the review. I realize that there are possibly as many interpretations of the development of the modern Austrian movement as there are Austrian economists, so I was not singling you out just because your view
  differed from mine. But Brian never gave his readers even a hint of the diversity of opinion on this important question among Austrian economists."

  I do however have two objections to White's second comment, regarding my alleged suggestion "that a change in Boettke’s perspective has been driven by the changing agenda of his department’s chief soft-money source."

  White completely misses the point of the second part of my review. I never suggested such a thing. I only used the information presented by Doherty himself to demonstrate that this was a reasonable inference from the facts and statements he presented but failed to analyze. As I wrote in an email to Pete yesterday, performing this exercise of rational reconstruction of the development of the GMU program "was part of an immanent criticism trying to exemplify Doherty's complete lack of interpretive analysis. Doherty himself presented all the info in the text that was needed to allow a reasonably informed reader to infer that this was indeed the case [that pecuniary incentives strongly shaped the research agenda at GMU] My interpretation is not based on any info from outside the text." Since I previously had criticized Doherty's investigative skills and ability to connect and assimilate his facts, I clearly remained agnostic on the accuracy of this interpretation.

  I might also note that before I prsented this immanent critique, I carefully engaged every one of Boettke's arguments in greater detail than he stated them. So I am truly baffled by White's rhetorical question: "Does Salerno want a reader of his review to judge the argument on its merits, or does he want the reader to feel compelled to ask: who’s supporting Salerno, and what’s their agenda?"
  
  My second objection to White's negative comment is his contention that any suggestion that an academic opponent's labor supply curve is upward-sloping is beyond the pale ("That’s a low blow for an academic journal review.") The denial that "filthy lucre" enters the value scales of economists in making their research decisions is indeed a strange position for White or any economist to take and has long nettled me. In the mid 1990s, I refereed an edited volume of articles on how individual economists went about their research, how they worked and what advice they had for aspiring research economists. The articles were written by rising stars in the profession. In one of the papers I refereed the author, a now very famous ecionomist, advised other economists to "spend the time to make every article as perfect as possible." I suggested that he revise his statement because it was inconsistent with the doctrine of opportunity cost. What if spending the extra time to perfect one article that was already publishable cost the author an opportunity to write and publish a second article in an equal or higher ranked journal, I asked. The editor told me that the author bristled at my suggestion and refused to make the revision.

  Lastly, White refers to Boettke's response to me as a "model of scholarly decorum," and I readily admit it was temperate in tone and respectful. Unfortunately it did not engage any of the substantive points I made in my review, which is also an important attribute of scholarship and the very rationale of academic discourse.
  

  Published: September 26, 2007 8:13 PM

• Guido Hülsmann

  If a "low blow" of the sort we find in Joe Salerno's paper were unsuitable for academic journals, then we could just as well abandon any in-depth discussion of intellectual history. I only ask myself what to think of very enlightening papers such as this one:
  http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/WhiteInvestigatingAugust2005.pdf

  Or is this no low blow because the author names no names, but rather seems to indict an entire profession?
  

  Published: September 27, 2007 6:52 AM

• Joe Salerno

  See my latest exchange on this topic with Larry White on the Austrian Economists blog at http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2007/09/joe-salerno-on-.html?cid=84295686#comment-84295686

  Published: September 27, 2007 5:02 PM

• Mark Sunwall

  As someone who studied Austrian economics at GMU in the '80s, I found this retrospective facinating. However I think the divergence between Rothbardians and George Masonites has passed the point of moralization. It is really a matter of apples and oranges. The GMUs best and brightest have gone into the area of how to use the market process to improve one's personal quality of life. This is "libertarianism" in the tradition of Harry Brown when he wrote "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World." The Rothbardian Austrians at Auburn and elsewhere are more like Harry Brown running for President on the LP ticket. If that good man could , at different times espouse the "Masonian" and the "Auburnian" philosophies without the stigma of schitzophrenia...then there should be room enough for these two different projects under the methodological tent of Austrianism. Their differences are compliments, not contradictions.

  Published: September 27, 2007 10:40 PM