The previous post provided the syllabus (with links to the readings) for Abbott Payson Usher’s 1921 course “European Industry and Commerce in the Nineteenth Century”. While looking for some background on Usher in the on-line archive for the Harvard Crimson, I came across the following two stories about a public discussion of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom that involved both Usher and Wassily Leontief.
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Newly-Formed Group To Hold First Meeting
Harvard Crimson, April 10, 1945
Following close on the heels of two seminars conducted here this past weekend by Friedrich A. Hayek, author of the currently-controversial book “The Road to Serfdom,” the newly-organized, non-partisan Harvard Political Science Forum is presenting in its first meeting a three-way discussion on the question “Is a planned economy the ‘Road to Serfdom’?”
Sharing the platform in the Lowell House Junior Common Room Thursday evening at 7:30 o’clock will be Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, Wassily W. Leontief, associate professor of Economics, and Abbott P. Usher, professor of Economics.
SOROKIN HITS HAYEK THESIS
Usher Deplores Trend to Planned Economy at Forum
Harvard Crimson, April 13, 1945
No political or economic machinations-not Yalta nor Dumbarton Oaks nor any other agreement-can give us lasting peace so long as the corpse of the capitalist economy continues to exist.” Thus declared Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, speaking last night together with Wassily W. Leontief, associate professor of Economics, and Abbott P. Usher ’04, professor of Economics, on the topic “Is the planned economy ‘the Road to Serfdom’?” at the first forum of the newly-organized Harvard Political Science Forum.
“I am not, however,” stressed Sorokin, “a partisan of totalitarian economy. I am merely ‘a conservative Christian anarchist’; I do not like any government.” With this declaration, Harvard’s stormy sociologist clarified his position in the controversy that, is currently raging over Friedrich A. Hayek’s new book “The Road to Serfdom.”
Usher Defends Hayek’s Ideas
Speaking first on the program, Professor Usher developed Hayek’s basic antithesis between that society which sets up a definite, unflexible end toward which it must constantly strive, and that society which recognizes a multiplicity of ends.
“This concept of ‘end result,'” said Usher, “Is in conflict with the concept of unplanned social evolution, which has characterized the growth of society.”
Professor Leontief, choosing the middle road between the two other speakers, took issue with Hayek’s thesis that society has, after several thousand years of growth, reached the peak of its development, beyond which we can progress no further. In seeking to forestall the inevitable evolution of the planned economy, Hayek is attempting, said-Leontief, to “prevent, as it were, the consummation of a solar eclipse.”
Image Source: Sorokin, Usher and Leontief from Harvard Album, 1946.