A Perilous Progress

by Bernstein, Michael A.

• ISBN13: 9780691042923
• ISBN10: 0691042926
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

The twentieth-century saga of the economics profession in America is the story of how a humble quest to understand the ''wealth of nations'' became imbued with immense public prestige and, finally, a strangely withered public purpose. Michael Bernstein portrays a profession that has ended up repudiating the state that nurtured it, ignoring distributive justice, and disproportionately privileging private desires in the study of economic life. Intellectual introversion has robbed it, he contends, of the very public influence it coveted and cultivated for so long. With wit and irony he examines how a community of experts now identified with uncritical celebration of ''free market'' virtues was itself shaped, dramatically so, by government and collective action.In arresting and provocative detail Bernstein describes economists' fitful efforts to sway a state apparatus where values and goals could seldom remain separate from means and technique, and how their vocation was ultimately humbled by government itself. Replete with novel research findings, his work also analyzes the historical peculiarities that led the profession to a key role in the contemporary backlash against federal initiatives dating from the 1930s to reform the nation's economic and social life.Interestingly enough, scholars have largely overlooked the history that has shaped this profession. An economist by training, Bernstein brings a historian's sensibilities to his narrative, utilizing extensive archival research to reveal unspoken presumptions that, through the agency of economists themselves, have come to mold and define, and sometimes actually deform, public discourse.This book offers important, even troubling insights to readers interested in the modern economic and political history of the United States and perplexed by recent trends in public policy debate. It also complements a growing literature on the history of the social sciences. Sure to have a lasting impact on its field, A Perilous Progress represents an extraordinary contribution of gritty empirical research and conceptual boldness, of grand narrative breadth and profound analytical depth.

Author Biography

Michael A. Bernstein is Professor of History and Associated Faculty Member in Economics at the University of California, San Diego

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
A Note on the Notes	xi
Prologue. Being Ignored	1	(6)
Introduction. Professional Expertise as a Historical Problem	7	(8)
Shaping an Authoritative Community	15	(25)
Prospects, Puzzles, and Predicaments	40	(33)
The Mobilization of Resources and Vice Versa	73	(18)
On Behalf of the National Security State	91	(24)
Statecraft and Its Retainers	115	(33)
Statecraft and Its Discontents	148	(37)
Epilogue. Being Ignored (Reprise)	185	(10)
Notes	195	(96)
Bibliography and Reference Abbreviations	291	(52)
Acknowledgments	343	(4)
Index	347