Books Read in 2005 and 2006
In the original document I recorded comments on books as I read them,
so that material was presented in chronological order, but I’ve
re-arranged it to bring together comments on related works
Economics
Some of my reading has been directed at finding out a little
more about economics and so to helping me revise that long confused
chapter on politics in the philosophy notes. Economics intrigues me,
partly because I'm not sure how much of it is true or whether there is
an reliable way of finding out, and partly because I know so little.
The following seven volumes reflect the development of what is regarded
as mainstream thought over the last century and a half, as well as
exploring some byways.
Jevons The Theory of Political Economy
which marked the beginning of modern Economics, and was written with
exemplary clarity. It helped greatly with the Philosophy motes, as well
as describing the background of later developments in Economic theory
Thomas C. Taylor The Fundamentals of Austrian Economics
A brief introduction - it is only 68 pages long. The Austrian school
dates from the work of Carl Menger who, together with Jevons and Leon
Walrus, was one the three economists who independently developed the
subjective theory of value, based on the concept of marginal utility.
Other ‘Austrians’ were Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. The Austrians
shared a strong skepticism about attempts to construct mathematical
models of the economy, considering it too complicated for us to make
any precise predictions. The same reasoning led them to mistrust all
attempts to intervene in the economy, considering that any such attempt
would almost certainly have worse effects than leaving market forces to
work things out.
Sir Roy Harrod The Life Of John Maynard Keynes
, I bought my copy
second hand for 3/6d, and therefore before we had decimal currency. It
has awaited my attention ever since. At least it was easier going than
Keynes writings on Economics, though as Harrod was himself a
distinguished Economist it does shed some light on Economics. Harrod
mentions some people I used to see pottering around Cambridge in my
undergraduate days, such as Keynes nephew Maurice Hill who taught me
Physics, Morgan Forster who had rooms in college on the strength of his
honorary fellowship and emeritus Professor Pigou, who was often to be
seen sunning himself in a deck chair in the main court of the College.
Pigou almost always wore plimsolls.
I was only eight years old when Keynes died, so it is not particularly
surprising that I don’t recall ever hearing about him in his lifetime,
but what is odd is that I don’t recall hearing any references to him
either by my parents or my schoolmasters. He was prominent in public
life both nationally and internationally and pioneered a substantial
change in thinking about the relations between government and the
economy. How can so many people have apparently failed to notice him?
Keynes seems never to have learned any science. At E ton he studied
mainly Classics and Mathematics; he read Mathematics at Cambridge, and
out of interest read a good deal of literature, History and Economics,
but never any science. I think that may explain the unsatisfactory
nature of his 'Treatise on Probability', his first book, in which he
asserts that all statements assigning probabilities are logically
determinate - truths of logic if true, and contradictions if false.
Joan Robinson Economic Philosophy I first read this more than thirty
years ago and found the re-reading useful revision. I used to see Joan
Robinson around Cambridge and at meetings of the Cambridge Humanist
Society, though I don’t recollect ever speaking to her. Once she passed
by on here way to the tennis courts as I was sitting with friends in
the Fellows’ garden, and someone said ‘that is the most immoral woman
in Cambridge’ but, tantalizingly, did not enlarge on his remark.
Undergraduates studying Economics were quite in awe of her. Her
approach was said to be very mathematical and therefore alarming to
those who were unsure of their mathematics - though quite what those
students thought they were doing studying Economics I’m not sure. A
friend who read History reported being sent to Robinson for help with
her Economic History and crying all the way back from her first
Supervision after Robinson had said ‘Audrey, your mind is a miasma of
confusion’
J. Pen, Modern Economics
is another book I bought in the days of
pounds, shillings and pence, so its Economics is now longer
particularly modern, especially as it was written before economists
encountered ’stagflation’ . However I’m interested in the history of
ideas and so happy to read something out of date now and again. At last
an inkling as to what the Keynesian multiplier might be and why the
Keynesian reject the seductive simplicity of neo-Classical Economic
theory.
In the hands of Robinson and Pen, Economics was almost a different
subject from that expounded by Jevons. Jevons discussed a world in
which firms decided what to produce and that price to charge for their
products, and individuals decided hat to but with their money.
Robinson and Pen, on the other hand, discussed global quantities, like
total supply and total demand - not supply and demand of anything in
particular, but the aggregates of all supply and all demand. It didn’t
seem to matter what people got for their money, provided they spent it
on something or other.
Oliver Smedley: Land Privately Appropriated Public Property
Oliver Smedley used to be well know as one of the backers of the pirate
radio station Radio Caroline, who once shot dead one of the sponsors of
a rival station. He was for some time a vice president of the Liberal
Party, from which he reigned in opposition to that party’s support for
membership of the European common Market. This book was written to
defend the traditional Liberal policy of Land Value Taxation. Liberal
Party conferences were at one time enlivened by the singing of The Land
Song, that proclaims the virtues of that tax. I think it could fairly
be described as one of the interesting byways of economic thought.
I once met Oliver Smedley at a conference in Manchester, when he sold
me a copy of this pamphlet, signing it for me. That was in 1987 when he
was in his mid 70‘s, by which time his shooting days were in the
distant past.
He was extremely entertaining company. He believed that one should eat
the same food every day to save the effort of choosing the menu. I’ve
forgotten much of what he told me, but remember that he had a large mug
of Bovril for elevenses, and always had smoked salmon for lunch, on the
grounds that fish is very good for the brain.
Richard G. Lipsey Positive Economics
Is an introductory text book that
seems to be intended for students beginning the subject at first year
undergraduate level. So far I’ve found it quite easy going. I bought
the seventh (1989) edition second hand, so it is a little out of date,
but I hope it will still give me a better idea of what economists do
than the odd assortment of material I‘ve read before
The term ‘Positive’ seems to be used in a similar sense to that adopted
by the Positivists of old, to indicate an attempt to base the subject
on evidence instead of just speculation and deduction from supposedly
self evident principles.
I think I now have a fair idea of what economists think, or at least
what they thought in 1990. The wilder excesses of Keynes, that saving
is a bad thing, interest rates have no effect, and the government can
just spend whatever it likes without bothering where the money come
from, seem now to be generally discredited. Of course Keynes didn't
quite say any of those things, but his rhetoric pointed many dim and
suggestible folk in that direction. I even have a rough idea why they
consider the money supply important, even though they have no
completely satisfactory definition of it. The micro-economic questions
that the earlier Keynesians ignored seem now to have been
rehabilitated.
Caroline Moorehead Bertrand Russell
confirms my fears that one of the
heroes of my youth had feet of clay. Russell was extremely unkind to
his lady friends, of whom he sometimes had two or three at the same
time, allowing each to believe that she was the special one, and the
others were merely experiments or diversions.
When he was seventeen, Russell, as the only male in his grandmother’s
household, once had to entertain Mr. Gladstone to post prandial port;
yet he was still going strong when I was a young man. What we sometimes
think of as the remote past, is not really as remote as it seems
Reading this quite soon after finishing Harrod’s life of Keynes, and
noticing how many of the same people were mentioned I thought it was
remarkable how many well known people knew each other quite well. Then
I realized that it was really that the tentacles of the Bloomsbury
group spread wider than I’d previously realized. Russell, T.S. Eliot
and Aldous Huxley were only peripheral to the group, but did both visit
Lady Ottoline and Sir Philip Morrell where they met each other as well
as the Bloomsbury stalwarts. Russell even had an affair with Lady
Ottoline. For a while he shared a house with T. S. Elliott and his wife
and there are even unsubstantiated rumours that Russell had a brief
affair with Mrs. Eliot.
A Biography of Lytton Strachey by Michael Holroyd.
I think I must have
bought it over thirty years ago, and was put off reading it by its
length - 1144 pages is quite a lot when one is working full time, but
is more manageable in retirement though it was still quite a challenge
It contain a rich collection of fascinating anecdotes, from an amazing
practical joke played on the Royal Navy, to the communal earth closets
of Abbotsholme school. There was some overlap with the biographies of
Bertrand Russell, and especially of Keynes, and also a mention of
Norman Douglas, whom Strachey met a few times. The latter part of the
book explored the remarkable relationship between Strachey, Dora
Carrington, and Ralph Partridge. Carrington loved Strachey, Strachey
loved Partridge and Partridge loved Carrington, so Carrington married
Partridge and they all three lived together, each having more or less
transient affairs with various other people. Shortly after Strachey’s
death from undiagnosed stomach cancer, Carrington shot herself
Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, Pinker shows how genetics and molecular
biology have fatally undermined Locke’s theory of the blank slate, or
tabula rasa to use Locke’s words. Locke held that the mind of a new
born child is like a blank slate, empty until experience writes upon it
everything it eventually comes to contain. Although quite implausible,
because a completely empty mind would have no capacity to learn,
Locke’s doctrine has been very influential, leading to an overemphasis
on the role of the environment in human development, an overemphasis
that is, or course, congenial to those who enjoy exercising power by
trying to control our environment. Pinker goes on to debunk the myth of
the noble savage, innocent and peaceful. Savages are actually...savage.
Norman Douglas, South Wind
one of the many novels I inherited from
Father. I’m working through them gradually reading those that arouse my
interest and donating the rest to the charity shop that supports the
local hospice. First published in 1917 South Wind describes the
expatriate community of an Island in the Eastern Mediterranean where
the prevailing wind blows from the South, off the coast of Africa. I
quite enjoyed reading it slowly; it wasn’t compulsive reading but was
intriguing in a strange way. I won’t say more in case I spoil it for
people who decide to read it.
G. R. Elton: Reformation Europe
went some way to filling a significant
gap in my historical knowledge; I knew a little about the reformation
in England, but hardly anything about it’s origins in Germany. I
thought Elton wrote well, and for me the highlight was the story of
marital affairs of Philip of Hesse.
Isak Dinesen Anecdotes of Destin
is one of the books I inherited from
father. It took me thirteen years to get round to Dinesen, but when I
did I was quite intrigued. Anecdotes of Destiny consists of four short
stories set in nineteenth century Scandinavia. So far as there is a
common theme, it is that things are often not what they seem to be.
Each story takes what at first appears to be a quite straightforward
situation, hints at a cosy ‘all lived happily ever after’ ending, and
then develops it into something quite different. See this website
devoted to her.
Iris Murdoch’s Something Special
is a short story I came across while
browsing through the fiction section in the local Library, a place
which I rarely use these days, as I rarely find anything there that I
want to read. Something Special was originally published in the 1950’s
in an anthology of short stories by various authors, then forgotten
until a copy turned up among her possessions after he death. Set in
Kingstown and Dublin, it describes a young lady’s date with a young man
whose offers of marriage she’d been refusing. The date was an almost
unmitigated disaster, so she decided to marry him after all.
Sean Gabb, The Column of Phocas
A thriller set in the early seventh
century this was published and distributed by the author and advertised
though the Internet. Phocas was Byzantine Emperor from 602 to 610 AD,
and most of the action takes place in and near Rome shortly before he
was deposed.
Sean Gabb is an academic and one of the organizers of the Libertarian
Alliance. It was through the LA email list that I learned of the novel.
It proved to be very entertaining reading. Sean published it himself,
but since its appearance a commercial publisher has offered him a
contract for that novel, and for two more.
Mary Gentle: Ilario
an altered reality novel set in the same not quite
medieval Europe as Ash and about fifty years earlier. Like all Mary's
stories it is very exciting with numerous puzzles and surprises, and
like most of them it is very long - though at 663 pages by no means her
longest. I thought there was a slight softening of touch this time..
Transgressors were more often forgiven and foes reconciled than is
usual in her earlier works.
Basil Willey The Eighteenth Century Background
This is another of the books I inherited from Father.
Willey describes the intellectual climate of the eighteenth century by
examining the way various writers used the slippery concept of nature,
concluding by considering the change in Wordsworth’s attitude to nature
as his youthful admiration of Rousseau and the French revolutionaries
developed into the conservativism of his later years.
Donald Michie (editor) Machine Intelligenc
Although it was published
in 1986, and some of the essays in it were written a decade or more
earlier than that it is not as out of date as I’d feared, and is
eminently readable. I wonder why I didn’t get round to reading it
earlier ? It hasn’t dated as much as I feared it might have done; the
general points made seem as pertinent now as when they were written,
although some of the predictions made it in now seem wildly
over-optimistic. A poll of computer experts, conducted in 1973 showed
that half thought that a robot chauffeur and a computerized
psychiatrist would both be in industrial production by the year 2000,
and a robotic domestic servant would be on sale by 2010.
