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American
Economic History
:
The
Story of American
Economic History
J. Bradford DeLong
U.C. Berkeley, WCEG, NBER, and BCDE
2017-01-12
key
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0AreWnIrBexmE3O-8j8LkH4xg#2017-01-12_The_Story_of_America
n_Economic_History
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economic-history.html
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The_Story_of_American_Economic_History
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1895 words
1
I. A Story
A. Born on the Prairie
Let me start this course about American economic history
with a story:
This is a story about a guy born in the late 19th century, in
1879, on the prairie: his family
’
s homestead was 17 miles
from the nearest post offi ce. In historical terms,
t
he horse-
riding nomads who had dominated the prairie had only
recently been driven off by the guns of government
soldiers. Agricultural settlement in one of the richest soil
regions of the world was well advanced, but frontier life
was still raw and uncivilized. The kid was smart. So at the
age of nine his parents decided to send him to the big city
for school. He thus grew up in the bustling cosmopolitan
big port city undergoing very rapid economic growth and
industrialization as it processed and transported the grain
and other exports of one of the most fertile agricultural
regions of the world.
But the city was Odessa, not Chicago. He was Russian, not
American. His name was Lev Davidovitch Bronstein—Lev
is either Hebrew for
“
heart
”
or Russian for
“
lion
”
;
Davidovitch is
“
son of the beloved one
”
; Bronstein is
German or Yiddish for
“
stone well
”
.
2
B. The Foundry Where the Future Will Be
Forged
He did eventually wind up in the United States, after being
arrested, jailed, and exiled four times; leading one
unsuccessful revolution; and rising to the top of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party. By then he was known as
Leon Trotsky—a pseudonym he adopted in 1902 to try to
throw the Czarist secret police—the Okhrana—off of his
scent, supposedly the name of one of his Czarist jailers. By
then he had lived in many places and seen a great deal of
the world—Nikolayev, Kherson, Kiev, and Odessa in
Ukraine; Moscow and St. Petersburg in European Russia;
Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan; Ust-Kut in Siberia, Vienna,
Geneva, and Paris, all before being deported from France to
Spain and then Spain to New York, where he arrived on
January 13, 1917.
But he did not stay in the United States for long. When the
Kerenskyites overthrew the Czar Nikolai II Romanov in
February 1917 to try to establish a democratic republic in
Russia, Trotsky immediately sailed back to his country,
departing from New York on March 27, 1917. He then took
his place at Vladimir Lenin
’
s right hand in the October
Revolution and the construction of the Soviet Union
,
before
being purged, exiled, and murdered—stabbed with an ice
pick by
the undercover
NKVD agent
who was the lover of
his personal secretary
soon after moving out of artist Frida
Kahlo's house in Mexico City—by Josef Stalin. Russia was
3
his country. Lenin was his friend, leader, and comrade. And
Lenin
’
s Majority—Bolshevik—faction of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party was his cause.
However, later, in 1930 in his autobiography
My Life: An
Attempt at Autobiography
,
1
he would write that he left with
regrets that his stay had been so short:
It would be a gross exaggeration to say that I learned
much.... The Russian revolution came so soon that I
only managed to catch the general life-rhythm of the
monster known as New York. I was leaving for
Europe, with the feeling of a man who has had only a
peep into the foundry in which the fate of man is to
be forged...
“
The foundry where the fate of humanity is to be forged
”
.
The then-38 year old Trotsky had seen more of the world
and its history from more levels than all but a few, and had
a brain and education that put him in the very select
company of those who could try to grasp and understand it.
And Trotsky
’
s judgment was that he; in returning to St.
Petersburg and Moscow was returning to a backwater:
moving back to the past that was his country from where
the future was being made every day.
4
1
Leon Trotsky (1930):
My Life: An Attempt at Autobiography
(New York:
Scribner: 0873481445)
http://amzn.to/2jbLh6M
https://www.marxists.org/
archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/
And Trotsky was right. America has been—since 1776 and
perhaps since 1630—the place where the future of
humanity has been and is being hammered out. That is why
its history—the study of what has happened here—is of
general interest to humans wherever they live in the world,
and will be of interest to humans long into the future.
II. We Are Story-Telling Animals
Why did I start this lecture with this story?
Why didn't I just say:
“
America has been—since 1776 and
perhaps since 1630—the place where the future of
humanity has been and is being hammered out. That is why
its history—the study of what has happened here—is of
general interest to humans wherever they live in the world,
and will be of interest to humans long into the future
”
; and
omit
all
the
lengthy
windup?
First,
I did so
to stress that my judgment that the history of
America is of general rather than parochial interest is
shared by one of the smartest and most farsighted human
beings of the twentieth century, and one whose politics and
understanding of the world are very, very different from
mine. My judgment is not mine alone—far from it.
5
Second,
I did so
to try to keep you awake: We have here
someone who should be sympathetic to you—a young, very
smart, man on the make, upwardly mobile and trying to
fi gure out what to do with his life. Plus we have travel,
danger, imprisonment, revolution, and murder while
reading in his study by a single blow in the back of his head
from an ice pick wielded by the lover of his personal
secretary and Russian NKVD agent Ramon Mercader.
Third,
I did so because
you
will not
remember
“
America
has been—since 1776 and perhaps since 1630—the place
where the future of humanity has been and is being
hammered out. That is why its history—the study of what
has happened here—is of general interest to humans
wherever they live in the world, and will be of interest to
humans long into the future
”
. You will remember the
story
:
You will remember that there was this interesting dude
named Trotsky who had a very full life and to whom lots of
things happened, and he thought the U.S. and its history
was really important—so much so that he left New York to
become Leni
n’
s principal deputy and People's Commissar
for Foreign Affairs in the Soviet government with some
regret.
You see, we are narrative-loving animals. We like stories. It
is how we think. We are jumped-up East African Plains
Apes, only 3000 generations removed from those who fi rst
developed language, trying to understand the world as
6
monkeys with, as Winnie-the-Pooh would say,
“
very little
brain
”
. We are lousy at remembering lists—that is why we
need to write them down. We are not much good at
retaining sets of information—unless we can, somehow,
turn them into a journey or a memory palace. We are
excellent, however, at remembering landscapes. And we are
fabulous at stories: human characters with believable
motivations; beginnings, middles, and endings; hubris and
nemesis; cause and effect; villains and heroes.
To place ideas and lessons in the context of a story is a
mighty aid to our thinking. And history and its narratives
are how we do that.
That is the fi rst BIG IDEA of this course: that you should
study history because it is a mental force multiplier for your
brain, and that disciplines that do not take a historical
approach and ideas that do not admit of a narrative
historical presentation are crippling themselves.
III. BIG IDEAS
There are thirteen other BIG IDEAS to watch out for in this
American economic history course. Yes, I know that is too
many. Make a list and refer to it.
The BIG IDEAS are:
7
1.
We are animals that live by narrative—hence by
history…
2.
There are three American nationalisms
: (a)
The City
Upon a Hill: “Let it be as it was in New-
England…”
(b)
A place where we can live freely…
(c)
“But here was Old Kentucky!”
3.
The American project has been astonishingly
successful—in Trotsky’s words: “the furnace where the
future is being forged…”
4.
But the American project has been much worse than
shadowed by plantation slavery and its echoes down
the centuries…
5.
One big contributor to the success of the American
project has been immigration…
6.
American society has generated a large—in
comparative context—but unevenly distributed
quantum of liberty…
7.
American society used to deliver an unusually large
quantum of opportunity—but not any more…
8.
American society has delivered an unprecedented and
unequalled quantum of prosperity
…
9.
The story of industrialization requires focusing on
growth-oriented industrial policy…
10.
The story of industrialization requires focusing on
societal well being-oriented industrial policy…
11.
The story of opportunity and prosperity is the story of
our two Gilded Ages: their rise, fall, and rise
…
8
12.
The apogee of American success is the mid twentieth
century era of social democracy
…
13.
Society has moved from agriculture to industry to post-
industrial services, and is now moving on to ?…
14.
Much of what has gone wrong with America can be
traced to regional geography—and to the cultures that
entrenched themselves in that geography…
IV. Note
Want to learn more about Lev Bronstein—Leon Trotsky?
IMHO, the best places to start are with two books: First, the
relevant sections of Edmund Wilson (1940):
To the Finland
Station
.
2
Second, Leon Trotsky (1930):
My Life
.
3
9
2
Edmund Wilson (1940):
To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and
Acting of History
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 0374533458)
http://
amzn.to/2jc1t88
3
Leon Trotsky (1930):
My Life: An Attempt at Autobiography
(New York:
Scribner: 0873481445)
http://amzn.to/2jbLh6M
https://www.marxists.org/
archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/
References
Leon Trotsky (1930):
My Life: An Attempt at
Autobiography
(New York: Scribner: 0873481445)
http://
amzn.to/2jbLh6M
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/
mylife/
Edmund Wilson (1940):
To the Finland Station: A Study in
the Writing and Acting of History
(New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux: 0374533458)
http://amzn.to/2jc1t88
10
