Abstract
This book is most welcome and fills a lacuna. Gunnar Myrdal’s background in economics provides a key to the understanding of his work as a whole. In his early works (e.g., Myrdal, 1927), the role of expectations is a core element, reappearing in many later instances. Appelqvist throws light upon this often neglected element. His book is a following-up of research on Myrdal for many years and with several publications, among others as co-editor (together with Stellan Andersson) of The Essential Myrdal, a commented selection from a Swedish centenary anthology (2005).
According to Myrdal, there are problems, and they might have many dimensions, needed for an explanation, be it political, economic, or sociological. This is the same position as we find in Karl Popper (“science starts with problems”), Gulbenkian Commission, Immanuel Wallerstein (1991), Björn Wittrock, and many others. In America, Myrdal is often seen as a sociologist. In Sweden, he is a prominent member of the Stockholm School of Economics (not to mix up with the institution with the same name), with colleagues such as Bertil Ohlin, David Davidsson, Alf Johansson, Dag Hammarskjöld, and others. Myrdal’s chair in economics was located at the faculty of jurisprudence at Stockholms Högskola (today Stockholm University), and he was a pupil of Gustav Cassel, whom he succeeded. Myrdal in interviews (available at ARAB, the Archives and library of the labor movement) emphasizes the formative influences of his legal training. Myrdal is also a prominent member of the school of Scandinavian Legal Realism, an apostle of the prophet Axel Hägerström, professor in practical philosophy at Uppsala University and the first to formulate a consistent negative value ontology doctrine. (“There is no science in morals, only about morals”, as his inaugural lecture from 1911 is often summarized; see, for instance, http://www.hagerstromcentenary.se)
Myrdal’s (1968) late work Asian Drama also makes him a political scientist, because of his concept of “soft state,” as an obstacle to the development of underdeveloped countries. (Myrdal had an allergy against euphemisms and did not speak of developing countries.)
It is said that Myrdal in writing the theoretical motivation to the first budget of the social democratic government in 1932 anticipates Keynes, whose main work was published in 1936. However, counter-cyclical budgetary politics was not that rare and was in fact what Herbert Hoover wanted to implement, although the federal government had few resources during his presidency. Myrdal writes extensively about this in his many letters to Cassel from America during the Rockefeller year 1929–1930. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR) administration took over Hoover’s program and even his experts. The American experience was formative. According to Gunnar, they became social democrats in the wake of the Wall Street crash. However, Alva was not a “card carrying” member of the social democratic party until fall 1934.
Ragnar Björk (1996) has written about Hoover’s social engineering. He initiated Recent Social Trends (1933), a huge mapping of the American nation, with Wesley Mitchell as chair and Charles Merriam as deputy chair. Among involved sociologists, William F. Ogburn and Howard W Odum can be mentioned. FDR took over both experts and policy research from Hoover, who has not been fairly treated by history. As a social research program, it could be characterized as “big inductivism” providing the basis for policy decisions by politicians. “We didn’t admit at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started” (Rexford Tugwell, in an interview 1974). FDR was elected on a pre-Keynesian conservative program, and the wheels were not turning full speed until stimulating war production got started, as noticed also by Myrdal (1945), in his Varning för fredsoptimism (Warning for peace optimism: 104).
The hypothetical link to “the great engineer” Hoover is intriguing but speculative; Keynes’ thinking was rather likely already known in Sthlm, from his “An end to Laissez-Faire” (1926). It seems though that Myrdal’s social engineering had a high affinity with the efficiency movement, which was quite significant in the United States in the era of the progressive movement, with spokesmen such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, and Hoover. There is a link to Fordism and Taylorism and social policy. It is also significant in Europe.
Appelqvist is well aware of Hägerström’s value nihilism as a source of inspiration for Myrdals (also to Alva) – and for Dag Hammarskjöld (in his case rather technical aspects of the role of consumers’ value preferences in price formation processes). Values exist in the mind of people and have real consequences, but evaluative statements have no cognitive truth content; they are neither false, nor true. In order to promote an instrumental means-end-rational social policy, we have to make a choice, and in order to prevent uncontrolled value intrusion in the knowledge formation process, our chosen value premises must be made explicit.
It is not obvious how Myrdal can be at the same time a dedicated value nihilist in his whole life and combine this with a moral science in the spirit of J.S. Mill, which he sometimes also claims. However, with the choice of value premises as an act of transparent individual responsibility, it is quite possible. The choice should not be at random; in order to have an effect, they should be relevant and significant, for instance, the ones guiding the labor movement, or other social movements. When scholars say that Myrdal (1944) – who became a guru for the US civil rights movement in the 1960s – believes in the values he so carefully is listing in appendices in An American Dilemma, that is not correct but a misunderstanding. He finds a lack of coherence between the principles in the Enlightenment ideals in the US constitution and the “Jim Crow system” with Negroes (a term both Myrdal and Martin Luther King Jr still used) as victims of discrimination. As a researcher, there is no necessity for the researcher himself to adhere to the explicit values serving as points of departure for the investigation. Myrdal’s allegiance to Axel Hägerström is very explicit from his early 20s to high age. It is at best half-true that the Myrdals believe in the values serving as points of departure for their social engineering. They can argue for their instrumental choice but would not claim any truth value for their explicit value premises. Appelqvist perhaps overstresses the “moral choice”-dimension at the cost of the value philosophical nihilism; values might be indispensable but have to be fettered.
One of Myrdal’s most important works is Vetenskap och Politik i Nationalekonomin (The Political element in economics), in print in 1930. Appelqvist quotes from this with his own translation, which might be a good idea, although one might ask why he does not use existing translations, of Paul Streeten, 1953 (Routledge & Kegan Paul) and 1990 (Transaction publishers, with a very good Introduction by Richard Swedberg). This work might be Myrdal’s methodological peak, and it appears in the German language, translated by Gunnar’s pupil Gerhard (Jörd) Mackenroth, two decades earlier than in English. Streeten translates from Mackenroth’s German text, which is not an easy task. An illustration of the perils of translation – Streeten complains in one letter to Gunnar: “I have no idea what is meant by ‘alle Arten psychologischer Erscheinungen haben den Character der Gleichzeitigkeit und einer starken Einseitigkeit die sich auf Grund einer Menge sozialpsychologischer Resonansphänomene ergeben’.” Mackenroth’s translation is, however, supposed to be quite good, and he was fluent in the Swedish language. This pioneering work was conceived in seminars where also Alf Johansson was a creative mind, but Myrdal was the more efficient author (Åberg, 2006). Alf Johansson was possibly the inspiring source for applying Hägerström to a history of hidden values in doctrines of political economy. This is suggested by Carl Johan Åberg (2006: 67). According to Åberg, Alf Johansson was the one best informed in philosophy, and he launched the idea that one ought to write a book on how elder authorities did politics in the guise of science, suggesting that Myrdal write that book (see also Hederberg 2004: 58):
This resulted in Myrdal in 1930 alone published Vetenskap och politik i nationalekonomin. Myrdal wrote rapidly and was incredibly productive – Alf was more contemplating and slow and did not have the same ambitions as Myrdal to be seen and heard. (Åberg, 2006)
Appelqvist deserves much credit for his stress on Myrdal’s Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) period, otherwise strangely neglected. There is a huge material at ARAB, supplemented by Dave Owen’s collection at the Rare Books and Manuscripts department at Columbia University in New York, where we see the other side of Myrdal’s Journal intime, as he calls his many report – over 80 – to United Nations (UN) headquarter in New York 1947–1953 (much less letters 1953–1957 when it is Hammarskjöld and not Owen in the other end). We come very close to Gunnar in these reports about ECE activities in Geneva. But his boss Owen gets more reports and letters from other persons in same issues, so we get the fuller picture here. There are also some archive materials in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in Kings College’s archives. (Myrdal in an interview remembers Bodleyan in Oxford, but it is in Cambridge.) There is moreover material in Geneva as well.
I don’t get into details, but Myrdal tries to be a bridge-builder between East and West, although realizing it won’t be much traffic on that bridge. Originally, the idea is that he shall be in charge of the Marshall help, but a special authority is created for that. Myrdal has problems with his relations both with the United Kingdom and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) since both countries feel they have the right to appoint their representatives to ECE, while Gunnar insists that he has that competence and they only can make suggestions, and that the full loyalty of all his staff should be with the ECE and not their home countries.
Myrdal is sometimes accused of being soft on the USSR, as indicated by the famous Russian credit deal in a controversial trade agreement, which he processed before being sacked (in reality) as Swedish minister of trade and commerce after WW2. I think it is a matter of interpretation. As an Enlightenment rationalist and “small state realist”, he felt that war was irrational, and the Swedish interest was to stay out with preserved territorial integrity – and the USSR had some good reasons to hesitate about the credibility of Swedish neutrality.
As an Enlightenment rationalist, Myrdal saw that Polish coal and Ruhr industries would fit together, so it is the same logic which motivated Schuman and Monnet to create the coal and steel union. It is amazing that so little has been done so far with the rich material from Myrdal’s tenure as executive director of ECE 1947–1957. Myrdal’s assistant Vaclav Kostelecky started a biography but died; fragments are published by his wife Enid. His interviews, with W.W. Rostow and others, are available though. Myrdal and ECE is also part of Cay Sevon’s (1995) work.
Dag Hammarskjöld and Myrdal did not get along well; Appelqvist (2008) documents the troubled relationship. There is a long background story.
The welfare state is a national project performed within the boundaries of nation states. Appelqvist writes about Myrdal’s relevance for post-2008 affairs. It is true that Myrdal has relevance for post 1989–1991 East of the Elbe affairs, and possibly also for post-2008. Myrdal’s tools, such as virtuous and vicious circles, cumulative causation, and so on, and concepts such as “soft state” are ever fresh. Asian Drama was never received to the extent it had deserved, but it might still be an important toolshed, both for post-die Wende and post 2008.
There is, however, a problem here. It is natural to ask what can we learn today from Myrdal, or to apply the “Lazarus approach”: What would Myrdal say today about this and that if reawakened from the dead ones? But a classic thinker still has to be interpreted in his context. Myrdal was foresighted, and we to quite some extent know what he would think in several issues. His double letter to Alva during his trip to central Asia 1957 is very telling, and he almost anticipates the implosion of the USSR.
Appelqvist’s work deserves much praise in the sense that it broadens our understanding of Myrdal. Toward the end, I am less positive and have a strong feeling that it is more Appelqvist than Myrdal, moreover “mossgrown”.
Myrdal might have cited Georg Borgström, who in the late 1960s predicted a hunger catastrophe. However, eschatological thinking tends to be wrong. The dramatic overpopulation never occurred, and the “Third World” seemingly repeats the demographical development we see in the developed world. Today food production for all human beings is a resolvable problem, although there might be political obstacles – protectionism in some places, such as Norway, France and Bavaria. The standard of living has increased, as Hans Rosling and others have demonstrated. It would have been interesting to learn what Myrdal would have said about recent developments in China.
Myrdal is an institutionalist in the same vein as Freddy List and today Douglass North and might accept a certain protectionism in early stages of development to protect infant industries (Bohutskyy 2010). Today, we have no unavoidable hunger catastrophes ahead of us because of innovations. And thanks to free trade, food can increasingly be produced where it is done most efficiently. The losers are subsidized farmers in the developed world.
There are also numerous minor errors, only on page 5 a couple of them. Myrdal was not born in Solvarbo, his home village, but in Skattungbyn where his parents were visiting. Alva Myrdal was neé Reimer and not Reimers.
He also misspells the title of Cay Sevon’s work and the name of Vaclav Kostelecky. Myrdal’s views develop and he turns increasingly pessimistic. His analyses have an obvious relevance today for pan-European affairs. Appelqvist transcends Myrdal in discussing today’s global problems.
Another instance of anti-nomical stands would be aid to underdeveloped countries, so-called U-countries. Myrdal dedicates decades of his life to promote the development and modernization of such countries, by various means. However, Myrdal is against such help, but in favor of well-organized international emergency catastrophe assistance, when needed, because of earth quakes, hunger catastrophes due to bad harvest, tsunamis, and so on. His method of help to development is to find methods for transfer of knowhow. Myrdal anticipated the risk for corruption. Today, several millions of Kenyans get their food from international aid, and their ministers in government are simultaneously among the best paid in the world. This is merely one example out of many.
To sum up. The book has a huge value added – but the last chapter is hagiographic and not convincing. Appelqvist is on thin ice over deep waters here.