Snark Alert: This post contains a lot more snark than I usually allow myself. No apology; just the fact.
The Economist comes late to my mailbox. So, I read ‘Schumpeter’ on ‘Peculiar People’ – contemporary American corporations – last week, after I’d seen Alan Greenspan’s Financial Times article. I commented on Mr. Greenspan’s article on Sunday.
In future posts, I will look at ‘Schumpeter’s’ arguments about corporate personhood. Here, I want to introduce those posts and comment on something ‘Peculiar People’ has in common with the former Federal Reserve chair’s article.
‘Schumpeter’ Who?
First, who is ‘Schumpeter’? I had no idea until a circuitous Google search revealed the answer. [1]
To maintain its tradition of not crediting its staffers on most (but not all) articles, The Economist has named two of its major columns after relatively forgotten, but very significant, figures. [2]
‘Bagehot’, its column on UK politics, takes its name from Walter Bagehot, the mid-19th century editor who first made The Economist a must read. Today he is remembered for Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873), the first treatment of finance capitalism as it was practiced. But for generations of university students, he was the enlightened Tory who wrote The English Constitution (1867/72). [3] Hence, the column’s political position today.
‘Schumpeter’, its column on economics and business, takes its name from Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) the Austrian Economist who spent his last 20 years at Harvard. According to Paul Krugman, Schumpeter opposed any government intervention to alleviate the ills of the Depression. He regarded business cycles as necessarily self-correcting. Hence, the column’s political position today.
I find repellant presenting a current writer’s views under a significant name from the past. For one thing, how does one refer to the authors without infusing their views with the credibility of their appropriated namesakes? Imagine if I called this blog ‘Herzen’ and removed my name from the masthead and the posts.
I’d like to do unto ‘Bagehot’ and ‘Schumpeter’ as has been done unto ancient writers who wrote under the names of greater men. They have come down to us as Pseudo-Plutarch, Pseudo-Heraclitus and Pseudo-Aristotle, to list three of many.
A Greenspan Moment
‘Peculiar People’ contains a qualifier worthy of Alan Greenspan. As I wrote yesterday,
The blogosphere hooted over Mr. Greenspan’s assertion, ‘With notably rare exceptions (2008, for example), the global “invisible hand” has created relatively stable exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and wage rates.’ See Felix Salmon and especially Henry Farrell and his commenters on Crooked Timber.
What would help is if the Supreme Court … adopted a clear principle when it comes to the analogy between artificial persons and real ones: that companies should be treated as people only in so far as it is expedient. They clearly need to be able to enter into contracts just like individuals. But they should not be treated as if they experience such essentially human emotions as embarrassment and a desire for self-expression. Thus they should not have the same rights to privacy and political freedom as a citizen, but should have only as much of a right to confidentiality and political participation as is helpful for the efficient functioning of business (including letting firms contribute to the public debate on the regulation of business)…. [Emphasis added.]
‘With notably rare exceptions…’; ‘…only in so far as it is expedient.’ Rather than list my ever-growing satires of this brilliant qualifier, let’s agree it has been duly snarked.
Over the next few days, I want to move on to some misconceptions about corporate personhood ‘Peculiar People’ brought to mind. Here, the progressives’ are as damaging to the prospects for positive change as the corporate apologists’.
Notes
1. He is Adrian Wooldridge. I learnt this by Googling his name in connection with this book: John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003). Micklethwait is editor-in-chief of The Economist. More on this book in subsequent posts.
2. The Economist’s EU column is titled ‘Charlemagne’, a figure who is not all obscure. It amuses me no end that its namesake was a brutal, illiterate Frank whose Holy Roman Empire did not survive intact his grandsons – done in by fraternal feuds and the still more thugish Norsemen (Normans). Now there’s a political statement! Since Punch folded and reality outpaced Private Eye, The Economist has been my favorite British humour magazine. No kidding – or snarking.
3. These books are classics and reward reading today.
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