My Amazon Review of J. Bradford DeLong's "Slouching Toward Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century"

The Long Twentieth Century 

U.C. Berkeley economics professor and former Clinton treasury official Brad DeLong has written a narrative economic history of the long twentieth century which he argues began in 1870 and ended in 2010 with the great financial crisis. It was during this time that economic growth exploded and humanity, for the most part, escaped the Malthusian trap. Along with rising living standards the long twentieth century brought with it industrial strength destruction and environmental degradation. He attributes this to the rise of the giant corporation, the industrial research laboratory and globalization. However this book differs from Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” (Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of Robert J. Gordon's "The Rise and Fall of American Growth") in that DeLong covers far more than technological developments.

 

DeLong frames his argument over the differences between the views of Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Polanyi. DeLong characterizes Hayek as believing “the market giveth and the market taketh away, blessed be the name of the market” and Polanyi’s view that the market is made for man, not the other way around. A long time ago I had an economics professor who would open each class by invoking the blessing of the market and he was a liberal Democrat.  DeLong’s utopia represents a merger between Hayek and Polanyi that ends up with a social democratic version of Keynesian economics.  What he is vague about is that when he discusses the notion of Polanyian rights, which amount to the belief that citizens are entitled to a host of economic benefits, earned and unearned with no real limiting factors. DeLong is a fan the European entitlement state, but he fails to mention that most of the entitlements are funded by regressive payroll and value added taxes that would be a very rough sale in America.

 

Where the book is good, he has excellent vignettes on the lives of real people who were making history such as Nikola Tesla and Leon Trotsky. He also goes into the horrors of “really existing socialism” in both its Russian and Chinese forms. In that sense DeLong is a true social democrat. He is also very good in discussing how the 1970’s inflation undid the Keynesian consensus and led to the neo-liberal order which then collapses as deregulated financial markets were consumed by a fire of their own making.

 

What DeLong leaves out is that much scientific progress came outside of the organized industrial laboratories. He gives no credit to governmental and university labs, and he leaves out the garage work of Bill Hewlett and David Packard, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs. These folks were tinkerers in the tradition of the early Thomas Edison. Further for some reason he leaves out of his discussion the role of the oil industry whose products fueled the mobility of his long twentieth century. Without the oil industry little of what he discussed would have occurred.

 

DeLong has written an excellent narrative history of our era; just take his politics with a few grains of salt.

For the full Amazon URL see: The Long Twentieth Century (amazon.com)