Originality is a key feature for books and articles that address a specialized audience. In the history of thought, assuring originality is not an easy task when a well-known, much-investigated subject, author, or school of thought is involved. Being original depends on detecting a flaw in the literature, bringing to light a new point of view, and establishing new theoretical connections, which frequently demand scrutinizing archival sources that are still unexplored.
Michele Alacevich’s book overcomes this challenge, in spite of the great number of academic texts that have been published about Albert Hirschman, during the period that precedes and follows his passing in 2012. The author defines his book as an “intellectual biography.” Born as a modest manuscript, the research gained momentum and evolved into a detailed investigation of important episodes of Hirschman’s life history and intellectual context, based on archival documents collected in different institutions. Alacevich starts from Hirschman’s student years in Berlin, Paris, and London, and proceeds with different phases of his career as professional economist and university teacher.
In one outstanding part of this historical reconstitution, the focus is on Hirschman’s stay at the University of California, Berkeley, just after he arrived in the United States, escaping from Nazi Fascism. In this extended passage the author writes about the friends and acquaintances whom Hirschman made, “a very interesting cohort of scholars” (page numbers not given in the draft copy available at the time of this review; quoted passage is between notes 126 and 127), and how they influenced the building of his intellectual perspective. The same applies to the sections where Alacevich recalls the period when Hirschman worked for the Federal Reserve Board, by appointment of his former teacher Alexander Gerschenkron, with whom he established a permanent intellectual bond.
Which were the “more troubling aspects” of Hirschman’s life and career that Alacevich does not refrain from telling, as he promises in the preface? The book brings to light settings where the pioneer in development economics expressed his strong ideas and a polemical style of writing. These personal traits persisted throughout his works, leading Hirschman to define himself as a “dissenter,” referring to traditional economics. They earned him intellectual adversaries but produced positive effects as well, by nourishing the scholarly and political debate.
Three outstanding episodes are worth mentioning. The first concerns Hirschman’s dissension with the Canadian economist Lauchlin Currie, with whom he worked in the World Bank mission to Colombia, during the 1950s. Whereas Currie was in favor of comprehensive and balanced policies of intervention in poor countries, Hirschman backed investments in specific projects. These investments would set off mechanisms that he later called “backward and forward linkages.”
Along similar lines, a second episode placed Hirschman at the center of a long-standing and passionate intellectual dispute, in which he confronted another pioneer, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan. The latter favored a balanced approach to development, and sustained the need to fund comprehensive national plans, encompassing all economic sectors. Hirschman, instead, was very skeptical of “grandiose” plans, and praised investment-inducing mechanisms. These linkages would trigger a chain of disequilibria and set in motion development processes. Alacevich tells the reader about the World Bank advisor David Ellerman, who joined this debate during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Ellerman examined the cognitive assumptions behind the theory of unbalanced growth, associated with the type of learning that preponderates in situations where uncertainty and asymmetrical information prevail.
Alacevich adopts a Mertonian sociological approach to characterize these early debates, claiming that polarized groups often build stereotyped versions of the ideas held by their opponents. While external observers (including Alacevich himself) were able to identify a considerable common ground in the analytical positions and policy recommendations coming from each of the contending groups, contenders tended to adopt radicalized positions.
The author further discusses the monograph that Hirschman wrote during his stay in Berkeley. In National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade, published in Reference Hirschman1945, Hirschman examines the ways by which foreign trade can be turned into an instrument of national power. Dealing extensively with statistical data, he diverged from other pioneers, namely, Raul Prebisch and Hans Singer. Differently from both, he did not find a systematic pattern of deterioration of the terms of trade between “core” and “peripheral” countries. Hirschman blamed the group that Alacevich calls “dependency theorists” (a somewhat heterogeneous group, joining together structuralists and dependentists) for being too gloomy and deterministic (quoted term follows note 167). He claimed that they had the wrong numbers on international trade, and that there were ways in which the weaker actors, i.e., less developed countries, were able to defend their interests.
The first chapters of Alacevich’s book mainly portray Hirschman as a development economist. However, his later writings, by means of which he definitely crosses the line to political science, philosophy, sociology, and other intellectual domains, are not left out of the picture. From Chapter 5 on Alacevich analyzes a major change in Hirschman’s career and writings. Although he continued to be a political economist, development per se “was no longer at the forefront of his reflections” (quoted passage follows note 527). He turned to a variety of new themes, thus demonstrating “the potentialities and power of truly interdisciplinary scholarship” (quoted passage follows note 481).
Hirschman’s most famous books, starting from Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, published in Reference Hirschman1970, belong to this second phase of his career. Alacevich points out that they were responsible for the author’s increasing popularity but were, at the same time, the target of much criticism. Hirschman’s writings thus continued to nourish the intellectual debate, earning him followers and antagonists. Sociologist Arthur Stinchcombe, for example, questioned the general applicability of Hirschman’s scheme in Shifting Involvements, published in Reference Hirschman1982. Against Hirschman, he stressed that social movements should be interpreted by changes in the availability of resources (“possibilities”), rather than by changes in individual preferences. Reviewers such as historian Charles Maier questioned the explanatory force that Hirschman ascribed to the public-private cycle.
The political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell, born in Argentina, has a strong presence in Alacevich’s book. His intellectual collaboration with Hirschman was mutually beneficial, as they discussed if and how economic problems could lead to an authoritarian turn in Latin America; and as they tried to understand the role that the bureaucratic-authoritarian state could play in promoting development. O’Donnell did not agree that human passions were the source of modern authoritarianism, as claimed by Hirschman. In turn, Hirschman refused to admit a causal link between economic crisis and authoritarian regimes, although he conceded that in some concrete cases an authoritarian policy actually led to the dismissal of import-substitution industrialization policies. In the analysis of this controversy Alacevich was once again able to reunite Hirschman’s biography, his social context, and the intellectual debate that his writings provoked.
The book is finely illustrated by photographs that Alacevich could access, thanks to Katia Salomon, Hirschman’s daughter. On the other hand, the fact of having its reference notes exhibited as endnotes can make reading a bit more difficult and a little less pleasant.
