Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman

by Jeremy Adelman

  38. Gold, Crossroads, p. 160.

  39. Ibid., p. 158.

  40. Fry, Surrender, pp. 46–47.

  41. Gold, Crossroads, pp. 160–161.

  42. Ibid., pp. 209–211.

  43. Fry, Surrender, p. 89; Gold, Crossroads, p. 228.

  44. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VHS-5/2, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT; Fry, Surrender, p. 150.

  45. Sheila Isenberg, A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 152–153.

  46. OH to Max Ascoli, 25 Sept. 1940, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  47. Max Ascoli to OH, 27 Sept. 1940, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  48. Max Ascoli to OH, 4 Oct. 1940, Ascoli Papers, Boston University.

  49. OH to Max Ascoli, 2 Oct. 1940, Ascoli Papers, Boston University; Alexander Stevenson, interview, 17 Oct. 2003; Diaries, Alexander Makinsky, 1 Nov. 1940, RG 12.1, RAC.

  50. Fry, Surrender, p. 151.

  51. AOH Interview, 15 Apr. 2002.

  52. Diaries, Alexander Makinsky, 1940–42, 26 Dec. 1940, RG 12-1, RAC.

  53. Cited in www.varianfry.org/fittko_en.htm

  54. AOH to HH, 8 Feb. 1941, PP.

  55. AOH to HH, 13 Feb. 1941, PP.

  CHAPTER 6: Of Guns and Butter

  1. Andy Marino, A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry (New York: St Martin’s, 1999), p. 257.

  2. “Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  3. AOH, interview, 15 Apr. and 11 June 2002.

  4. AOH to UH, 23 Mar. 1941, PP.

  5. AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005; Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-60/1-2, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  6. Ezra Suleiman to SH, n.d., box 20, folder 5, AOHP.

  7. “Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  8. AOH to UH, 21 July 1941, PP.

  9. UH to AOH, 3 July 1941, PP.

  10. AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  11. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-60/4, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  12. AOH to UH, 21 July 1941, PP.

  13. AOH to SH, 21 May 1941, PP.

  14. SH, interview, 14 Apr. 2006.

  15. AOH to SH, May 1941, PP; AOH and SH, interview, 19 Apr. 2005.

  16. AOH to UH, 3 Nov. 1941, PP.

  17. AOH to UH, 2 Sept. and 5 Oct. 1941.

  18. AOH to UH, 21 July 1941, PP; AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  19. AOH to SH, May 1941, PP.

  20. AOH to UH, 21 July 1941, PP.

  21. AOH, interview, 11 Mar. 2002.

  22. Transcript from Hirschman interview, Exile Film Project Records, VC-60/5-6, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT.

  23. J.B. Condliffe, The Reconstruction of World Trade: A Survey of International Economic Relations (New York: W.W. Norton, 1940).

  24. AOH, interview, 11 June 2002; AOH to UH, 21 July and 9 Aug. 1941, PP; AOH, “On Measures of Dispersion for a Finite Distribution,” Journal of the American Statistical Association (September 1943); AOH, “The Commodity Structure of World Trade,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (August 1943).

  25. Alexander Gerschenkron, Bread and Democracy in Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).

  26. AOH, interview, 11 June 2002; Sandy Stevenson interview, 17 Oct. 2003; Nicholas Davidoff, The Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character (New York: Vintage, 2002), pp. 121–125.

  27. “Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  28. AOH, interview, 11 June 2002.

  29. Ibid.

  30. SH, interview, 25 July 2005.

  31. AOH Interview, 11 June 2002; AOH, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980 ed.), p. 3.

  32. Philip Buck, Annals of the American Academy, March 1946, p. 222; Henry Oliver, Southern Economic Journal (Jan. 1946), p. 304; Michael Florinski, Political Science Quarterly 61, p. 272.

  33. AOH, “Beyond Asymmetry: Critical Notes on Myself as a Young Man and Some Other Old Friends,” International Organization 32:1 (February 1978), pp. 45–50, republished in Essays in Trespassing, pp. 27–34.

  34. AOH, “The Paternity of an Index,” American Economic Review 54:5 (September 1964), p.762.

  CHAPTER 7: The Last Battle

  1. Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  2. Ibid.

  3. AOH to Adjutant General of the United States Army, 13 Feb. 1942, PP.

  4. Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  5. Ibid.

  6. AOH, interview, 24 June 2002; Barry M. Katz, Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1942–1945 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 8–10.

  7. AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  8. Ibid.

  9. AOH to SH, 15 Feb. 1944.

  10. Max Corvo, The OSS in Italy, 1942–1945 (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 90–99; George C. Chalou, The Secret War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (Washington: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), pp. 184–185.

  11. AOH to SH, 18 Mar. 1944; Brown Notebook, n.d., PP.

  12. Katz, Foreign Intelligence, pp. 23–24.

  13. AOH to SH, 30 Mar. 1944, PP.

  14. AOH to SH, 23 Apr. 1944, PP.

  15. AOH to SH, 30 Mar. 1944, PP.

  16. AOH to SH, 1 June 1944, PP.

  17. AOH to SH, 11 May 1944, PP.

  18. AOH to SH, 28 Feb. 1944, PP.

  19. Eugenio Corloni, “Ventone Manifesto,” in Documents on the History of European Integration, ed. Walter Lipgens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), vol. 1, p. 473.

  20. John Pinder, “Spinelli and the Ventotene Manifesto,” The Federalist Debate 14:3 (November 2001), pp. 12–14.

  21. AOH to SH, 14 May 1944, PP.

  22. Eugenio Colorni, “Character of the European Federation,” in Documents on the History of European Integration, ed. Walter Lipgens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985), vol. 1, p. 507; Klaus Voigt, “Ideas of the Italian Resistance on the Postwar Order in Europe,” in ibid., pp. 463–465, quotation on p. 466.

  23. Frank Rosengarten, The Italian Anti-Fascist Press (1919–1945) (Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1968), p. 100.

  24. AOH to SH, 22 and 25 June 1944, PP.

  25. Hempel, p. 29; Brown Notebook, entry 23 June (n.yr.), PP.

  26. Brown Notebook, n.d.; AOH to UH, 30 Apr. 1945 and 27 Aug. 1969, PP.

  27. AOH to SH, 27 June 1944, PP.

  28. AOH to SH, 10 July 1944, PP.

  29. AOH to SH, 25 July 1944, PP.

  30. AOH to SH, 9 Aug. 1944, PP.

  31. AOH to SH, 12 Sept. 1944, PP.

  32. AOH to SH, 5 Oct. 1944 and 22 May, 1944, PP.

  33. AOH to SH, 14 Jan. 1945, PP.

  34. AOH to SH, 21 Oct. 1944, PP.

  35. AOH to SH, 30 Nov. 1944, PP.

  36. AOH to SH, 15 Mar. 1945, PP.

  37. AOH to SH, 7 Oct. 1945, PP.

  38. AOH to SH, 21 and 26 Dec. 1944, PP.

  39. AOH to SH, 12 Jan. 1945, PP.

  40. Saba poem quoted in AOH, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, p. 113, fn 10.

  41. AOH, interview, 24 June 2002; SH to author, “Group in Siena,” letter, n.d., in author’s possession.

  42. AOH to SH, 10 Feb. 1945, PP.

  43. AOH to SH, 12 Apr. 1945, PP.

  44. AOH to SH, 10 Feb. 1945, PP.

  45. AOH to SH, 25 Feb. 1945, PP.

  46. AOH to SH, 30 Sept. 1945, PP.

  47. F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 223.

  48. Manlio Cancogni, “Historic Eulogy to the Black Market in Italy during the Twentieth Century” [in Italian], trans. AOH, box 69, folder 14, AOHP.

&n
bsp; 49. AOH to SH, 23 July, 1945, PP.

  50. AOH to SH, 27 Mar. 1945, PP.

  51. AOH to SH, 10 Mar. 1944, PP.

  52. AOH to SH, 10 June and 9 Aug. 1944, PP.

  53. AOH to SH, 13 Oct. 1944, PP.

  54. AOH to SH, 19 Oct. 1944, PP.

  55. AOH to SH, 15 Aug. 1945, PP.

  56. AOH to SH, 4 Feb. 1945, PP.

  57. AOH to SH, 15 and 19 Aug. 1945, PP.

  58. AOH to SH, 21 Apr. 1945, PP.

  59. AOH to SH, 28 Nov. 1945, PP.

  60. AOH to SH, 5 May 1945; AOH to UH, 29 May 1945, PP.

  61. AOH to SH, 12 Dec. 1945, PP.

  62. AOH to UH, 27 May 1945, PP.

  63. AOH to SH, 22 June and 12 Dec. 1945, PP.

  64. See the superb Kerstin von Lingen, Kesselring’s Last Battle: War Crimes Trials and Cold War Politics, 1945–1960 (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 2009).

  65. AOH to SH, 7 Oct. 1945, PP.

  66. AOH to SH, 10 Oct. 1945, PP.

  67. AOH to SH, 14 Oct. 1945, PP; Richard Raiber, Anatomy of Perjury: Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Via Rasella, and the Ginny Mission (Newark DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008), chap. 5.

  68. Virginia Lee Warren, “Dostler Sentenced to Die for Shooting of OSS Men,” New York Times, 13 Oct. 1945, p. 1.

  69. SH, interview, 14 Apr. 2006.

  70. AOH to SH, 26 Oct. and 2 Nov. 1945, PP.

  71. AOH to SH, 11 Dec. 1945, PP.

  72. Ibid.

  73. AOH to SH, n.d., PP.

  CHAPTER 8: The Anthill

  1. AOH to UH, 13 Jan. 1946, PP.

  2. AOH to UH, 2 Feb. 1946, PP.

  3. AOH to UH, 13 Jan. 1946, PP.

  4. AOH to UH, 24 Apr. 1946, PP.

  5. SH, interviews, 15 Sept. and 16 Aug. 2005.

  6. AOH and SH interview, 11 Oct. 2005.

  7. AOH to UH, 13 Oct. 1946, PP.

  8. Ibid.

  9. US National Archives, declassified FBI file, in author’s possession.

  10. AOH to UH, 14 June 1946, PP.

  11. AOH, interview, 31 June 2002; AOH to UH, n.d. [fall 1946], PP.

  12. “M. Schuman’s Devaluation Paradox,” RFD, 31 Dec. 1946, pp. 6–8.

  13. AOH to UH, 22 Dec. 1946, PP.

  14. “Higher interest rates and the credit shortage in France,” RFD, 28 Jan. 1947, pp. 10–13; “Exchange Control in Italy,” RFD, 11 Mar. 1947.

  15. AOH, interview, 31 June 2002.

  16. AOH to UH, 21 Apr. 1947, PP.

  17. AOH, “France and Italy: Patterns of Reconstruction,” Federal Reserve Bulletin 33:4 (April 1947), pp. 353–366.

  18. AOH, “Public Finance, Money Markets, and Inflation in France,” RFD, 29 July 1947.

  19. Greg Behrman, The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and How Americans Helped Rebuild Europe (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 43.

  20. “Trade Structure of the Marshall Plan Countries,” RFD, 12 Aug. 1947, pp. 7–12; “Trade and Credit Arrangements Between the ‘Marshall Plan Countries,’ ” RFD, 26 Aug. 1947, pp. 8–11.

  21. “Italian Exchange Rate Policy,” RFD, 16 Dec. 1947; AOH, “Inflation and Deflation in Italy,” American Economic Review 38:4 (September 1948), pp. 598–606; “French Exports and the Franc,” RFD, 23 Sept. 1947.

  22. Richard Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 38; AOH to UH, 24 Nov. 1947.

  23. AOH, interview, 11 Mar. 2002.

  24. AOH to Altiero Spinelli, 1 Aug. 1948, PP.

  25. SH, interview, 16 Aug. 2005.

  26. AOH to Altiero Spinelli, 1 Aug. 1948, PP.

  27. “The OEEC ‘Interim Report on the European Recovery Program’—A Summary,” RFD, 8 Feb. 1949.

  28. Bissell, Reflections, p. 54.

  29. AOH to UH, 21 Dec. 1947, PP.

  30. “Some Recent Developments in French Finance and Credit Policy,” RFD, 19 Oct. 1948; “Credit Controls in the Postwar Economy of France,” RFD, 8 Mar. 1949; AOH, “Postwar Credit Controls in France,” Federal Reserve Bulletin (April 1949), pp. 1–13.

  31. “Economic and Financial Conditions in Italy,” RFD, 14 Dec. 1948.

  32. “Inflation and Balance of Payments Deficit,” RFD, 24 Aug. 1948; these thoughts induced him to write a more formal arithmetic model that would explain the multicausal relationship between devaluation and trade balances, “Devaluation and the Trade Balance: A Note,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 31:1 (February 1949), pp. 50–53; Charles P. Kindleberger to AOH, box 65, folder 7, AOHP.

  33. AOH, “Disinflation, Discrimination, and the Dollar Shortage,” American Economic Review 38:5 (December 1948), pp. 886–892.

  34. “International Aspects of a Recession,” RFD, 7 June 1949; “The US Recession and the Dollar Position of the OEEC Countries,” RFD, 27 Sept. 1949.

  35. Alan S. Milward, The Reconstruction of Postwar Europe, 1945–1951 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 278.

  36. “The New Intra-European Payments Scheme,” RFD, 19 July 1949.

  37. AOH to UH, 22 Sept. 1947, PP.

  38. Bissell, Reflections, p. 66; AOH, “Proposal for a European Monetary Authority,” 2 Nov. 1949, Program Secretary, ECA, box 65, folder 7, AOHP; AOH, “Proposal for the Establishment of a European Monetary Authority,” marked “Secret”, box 65, folder 7, AOHP.

  39. “European Payments Union—A Possible Basis for Agreement,” RFD, 28 Feb. 1950; “Multilateralism and European Integration,” RFD, 25 Apr. 1950.

  40. Bissell, Reflections, p. 57.

  41. AOH, “Approaches to Multilateralism and European Integration,” Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Washington DC, 1950, box 65, folder 9, AOHP.

  42. Behrman, Most Noble Adventure, pp. 290–327.

  43. AOH to UH, 17 Aug. 1949, PP.

  44. SH, interview, 8 Aug. 2005; AOH to UH, 24 Feb. 1946, PP.

  45. AOH, interview, 31 June 2002.

  46. KS, interview, 11 May 2007.

  47. SH, interview, 8 Aug. 2005.

  48. Ibid.

  49. David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Oxford University press, 2005).

  50. AOH to UH, 2 Feb. 1948; AOH to UH, n.d. [summer 1948], PP.

  51. AOH, “Criteria, Timing, and Revision of US Economic Aid to Western Europe,” 15 June 1951, box 66, folder 1, AOHP.

  52. “The Problem of the Belgian Surplus in the EPU,” RFD, 25 Sept. 1951.

  53. AOH to UH, 20 Jan. 1951, PP.

  54. AOH to Tommy Tomlinson, 13 July, 1951, box 65, folder 7, AOHP.

  55. AOH to UH, n.d. [early 1951], PP.

  56. AOH to HH, 10 Apr. 1951, PP.

  57. AOH to UH, 22 Dec. 1951, PP; AOH, interview, 11 Mar. 2002.

  58. Sandy Stevenson, interview, 17 Oct. 2003.

  59. AOH, interview, 11 Mar. 2002.

  60. SH, interview, 16 Aug. 2005.

  61. Robert Triffin to AOH, 19 May 1952 and Howard Ellis to AOH, 12 May 1952, box 39, folder 1, AOHP.

  62. Brown Notebook, n.d., PP.

  CHAPTER 9: The Biography of a File

  1. Confidential File on Albert O Hirschman, FOIPA No. 1030518-000, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from this document.

  2. “Fellowship Card, Otto Albert Hirschmann,” Series US-HSS, RAC.

  3. AOH to UH, 13 Jan. 1946, PP.

  4. Dauzat interview, p. 49.

  CHAPTER 10: Colombia Years

  1. Richard Bird, interview, 5 Aug. 2009.

  2. Cited in Michele Alacevich, The Political Economy of the World Bank: The Early Years (Stanford: SUP, 2009), p. 13; Amy L.S. Staples, The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945-1965 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2006), pp. 24–30; Mary S. Morgan, “ ‘On a Mission’ with Mutable Mobiles,” Working Paper on the Nature of Evidence, London School of Economics, August 2008, pp. 5
–6.

  3. Edward Mason and Robert E. Asher, The World Bank Since Bretton Woods (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1973), pp. 161–163.

  4. On Currie, see Roger J. Sandilands, The Life and Political Economy of Lauchlin Currie (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1990); Federal Bureau of Investigation, Investigative Report 101-3616, US National Archives.

  5. The Basis of a Development Program for Colombia, Report of a Mission Headed by Lauchlin Currie (Washington DC: IBRD, 1950).

  6. Eugene R. Black to President Ospina Pérez, 27 July 1950, Currie Mission Files, WBGA. There had been some grumbling. One bank official wondered whether the mission hadn’t missed some rather obvious complexities. Foremost among them were the effects of the civil war, which threatened to undermine the whole effort, or at the very least shake the confidence in the figures upon which the grand plan was premised. Others worried about more technical matters, like the scant attention to the private sector and investors inside Colombia. Was the private sector really so inert and deprived of funds? There were doubts about the balance of payments estimates—the very concern that had motivated so much of Hirschman’s dissenting reports about Europe’s “dollar gap” when he was working for the Fed. Currie himself worried in a confidential letter to the vice president of the World Bank that the civil strife in the country posed awkward questions about the prospects of good government, without adding that in large swaths of the country there was no government at all. But in public, and in light of the haste with which the chief sought to publish his report, little room was made for doubt or alternatives. When some Colombians sought input on the report, Currie batted them down; any study could be indefinite. Under the circumstances “I must be content in doing the best job I can in the limited time available.” Lauchlin Currie to Juan de Dios Ceballos, 14 Feb. 1950 and Currie to Robert Garner, 5 Sept. 1950, Currie Mission Files, WBGA.

  7. Development Program for Colombia, pp. 356 and 593.

  8. AOH to Emilio Toro, 11 Apr. 1952, box 39, folder,1, AOHP; Alacevich, Political Economy, p. 53.

  9. AOH to Burke Knapp, 18 Sept. 1952, box 39, folder 1, AOHP.

  10. Sandilands, Lauchlin Currie, p. 175; Alacevich, Political Economy, p. 56.

  11. AOH, “The Effects of Industrialization on the Markets of Industrial Countries,” in The Progress of Underdeveloped Areas, ed. Bert Hoselitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 270–283; AOH, interview, 11 Mar. 2002.