The current events of the late ‘sixties are the clear inspiration for this somewhat dark, dystopian skit for the M.I.T. economics departmental Christmas party of December 1969. According to the cover page, it was written by Robert Solow with input from Frank Fisher.
The skit was transcribed from the typed text [that includes a short handwritten addition] from Robert Solow’s papers in the Economists’ Papers Archive at Duke University. A grateful tip of the hat to Roger Backhouse for this artifact that should keep a cultural historian of economics busy for a few hours and be worth a few minutes of procrastination for working economists.
Pro-tip: you can summon all of the Economics in the Rear-view Mirror posts with economic humor content using the keyword “Funny Business”:
https://www.irwincollier.com/category/funny-business/
_______________________
Back-story for selected references in the text
SPECTRE. In Ian Fleming’s world of James Bond the acronym for the organization of international evil [Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion].
Chairman Edel. Assistant Professor Matthew D. Edel (Yale, Ph.D.) taught the course Economic Growth and Development. Presumably pronounced to rhyme with “Fidel”. Edel was a regional expert for Latin America, spoke at a colloquium February 4, 1970 on “The Strategy of Cuban Economic Development”
14.463 Monetary Economics in term I, 1969-70 was taught by four instructors.
According to the staffing report for that term in the departmental records at the MIT archive.
Karen H. Johnson, M.I.T. Ph.D. (1973),
Robert K. Merton, M.I.T. Ph.D. (1970), advisor Paul Samuelson
David T. Scheffman, M.I.T. Ph.D. (1971), advisor Paul Samuelson
Jeremy J. Siegel, M.I.T. Ph.D. (1971)
There is no record that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ever graduate students of economics in M.I.T.
Bread and Roses. Reference to the Women’s Liberation Organization in Boston, 1969-1971. The name chosen in memory of the Great Lawrence Strike of 1912.
Ted Behr. An M.I.T. Ph.D. (1969) who by 2009 had already gone through seven career changes and twelve jobs. Must have been quite a character judging from this interview.
I think we may assume that no Bulgarians were injured in the writing or performance of this skit.
_______________________
Some Obvious Context
Fall 1964. Berkeley Free Speech Movement
Wikipedia Entry on the Protest Year 1968
April 1968. Columbia Student Strike ; Harvard Student Strike
February 1969. Black student strike at the University of Wisconsin
_______________________
RIP VAN SAMUELSON RETURNS TO MIT AFTER THE REVOLUTION
FACULTY SKIT
Christmas 1969
CAST
P. Diamond
R. Eckaus
R. Engle
F. Fisher
C. Kindleberger
M. Piore
SCRIPTWRITER-IN-CHIEF — R. Solow
HELPED BY – F. Fisher
Is it really true that Samuelson has been asleep all these years? Then how come the 13th and 14th editions of the textbook came out on time?
Well, I don’t know. Samuelson isn’t talking.
Careful, there. If it’s not talking it’s not Samuelson.
It’s got to be. His broker recognizes his fingerprints from soiled sell orders. Actually, there are two schools of thought about how the textbook came out while Samuelson was sleeping. Modigliani claims that the 13th and 14th editions were simply forecasted by the FRB-MIT model, using a long lag. But some people believe that the 13th and 14th editions are just the 2nd and 3rd editions reprinted. Can’t verify that, though. Nobody’s been able to find a copy of the early editions.
Not that it matters. Must be a shock for Paul to realize that nobody uses the text any more, except of course for the Bulgarian translation. They’re the only people reactionary enough to go for that stuff any more.
You mean even Hanoi University has dropped it?
Oh sure, they adopted Best Known Thoughts of Chairman Edel, last year. You know, the one that begins “Equilibrium grows out of a barrel…”
Out of the barrel of a gun?
No, no, a barrel of rum. Chairman Edel never got over that trip to Cuba.
Did you fellows hear that Samuelson is back? When did he disappear anyway?
Oh, a long time ago. Even before Chomsky became President. It’s hard to know the exact date. Things were pretty clear up until April 1972, when we were supposed to have 31 days of moratorium, but the month only had 30 days, so we cancelled the first day of May, only you couldn’t cancel May Day — Christmas you could cancel, but not May Day. So we cancelled the second day of May. But then we were three days short to fit in the 32 days of moratorium for that month, so we had to run into June. From then on it was chaos.
Things are still a little funny. I can’t get used to having summer vacation in the middle of winter, and Fisher pretending to go off skiing when it’s 90 degrees in the shade, when we all know he’s leading rent strikes anyway.
Don’t complain. It might have been worse. Solow claimed to have a proof that the term would never end once we got up to 32 moratorium days a month. But one of the younger mathematical economists made a brilliant application of the theory of Riemann surfaces and showed that you could pack any finite number of moratorium days into one month if you did it right.
It was the last article anyone published in this department. Can you remember when we used to write articles and hope for tenure? That was before tenure was abolished. God, life was easy then. Nowadays it’s all action, action, action. And if you’re lucky, if you happen to win a rent strike, or destroy some draft records, or win an amateur topless contest, then maybe the central committee of SPECTRE will keep you on for a year. But suppose you lose the strike, or you let a white man go to work on a construction site, boy that SPECTRE can be tough. You remember when they threw Domar into the arena with Kampf and gave Kampf the bullhorn?
I looked away. Bloodthirsty crew — they awarded Kampf both ears and the tail that day. We had to take up a collection to send Ricky and Alice [note: Evsey Domar’s daughters] to Bread and Roses Karate School. And today they’re members of SPECTRE, the Student Power Electoral Committee for Teachers of Relevant Economics. It was better in the old days when appointments went on good looks and amiability. Even publishing was better than action all the time. That last piece of work I did, keeping the recruiter for Mars Bars from getting onto the campus, it went well but it was exhausting.
Why are we against Mars Bars?
Space, military, it’s all the same.
Anyhow, now that he’s back, what’s Paul going to do around the department? He’s getting a little old for real action, and he might find it hard to pass the monthly Relevance Check.
It’s going to be a problem. He was falling behind the times when he went to sleep. Of course he looks better now, with 10-15 years growth of beard, but he doesn’t dig the revolution. El Lider Maximo of the Graduate Student Commune asked him what he could contribute, and Samuelson said he’d like to teach the History of Economic Thought.
The History of WHAT???
That’s exactly what the Commune Lider said.
Poor old Samuelson doesn’t know that Thought isn’t Relevant. In fact he didn’t even know that Economics isn’t Relevant. When El Lider explained that it was all action now, old Samuelson said he thought there should be both Thought and Action just so their marginal net productivities were equal.
Gad, I haven’t heard anything like that since the day they fired Diamond for saying “Pareto-optimal” once too often.
Whatever happened to Diamond?
What else, he’s at B.I.T., the Bulgarian Institute of Technology. Boy, if the old stuff ever comes back in style, those Bulgarians will have it made. But go on, what happened when Samuelson pulled that bourgeois bit about marginal whatnots?
Well, Solow was standing there and he muttered something to Samuelson—it sounded like “Check the second-order conditions, Paul old boy”—and then went back to trying to look hip.
That’s living dangerously. Solow just barely passed last month’s Relevance Check, and he hasn’t been on a successful action in a long time. I don’t think that went over so good when he claimed that skiing Black Mountain was a real action. He better watch out — if B.I.T. won’t take an old man like that, SPECTRE may throw him to Kampf.
Right on. Nothing gets past El Lider. When Solow whispered that to Samuelson about second-order conditions, El Lider asked him right away — Did you say something? Solow replied Negative. Definite. That’s really living dangerously — I think it’s code of some kind.
It certainly doesn’t sound Relevant. I haven’t read anything like that in Ted Behr’s Newsweek column, at least not lately.
What’s going on this week in the department?
In the Theory course we’re holding an obstructive picket line at the drug counter of the Tech Store. Somebody discovered they were selling only white pills.
If I know what the pills are for, I hope the picket line isn’t too obstructive.
Of course not; I told you it was the Theory course. Then in the Economics of Education course we’re going to burn down a school. In the Money course, Johnson, Merton, Siegel, Bonnie, and Clyde are going to rob a bank and distribute the proceeds to the C.L.F.
Is that the California Liberation front?
Oh no, Berkeley has been a free-fire zone for months; nobody is left. It’s the Center for Love and Finance, our answer to the profit motive. Has anyone told you what the Econometrics Commune is doing?
No. Last week somebody had an idea for an empirical paper, but the results only came out at the 10% Relevance Level and half the commune was purged for Type One Error.
Served them right. Any Type II Error executions?
You know we have to have public trials for Type II error.
That’s right—Power to the People…. Well, it’s nice to see that the action curriculum is moving along. Sure beats the Old Days before chairman Edel — remember when they taught about Indifference curves? INDIFFERENCE curves, mind you, with innocent people being napalmed in Laos, Birmingham, Princeton, they taught about indifference curves.
Hard to believe. Of course now, ever since we adopted Bohmer’s best-selling text Economics for Good Guys we handle all that stuff by the tangency of the Relevance Map and the Isoconcern lines. Makes all the difference in the world, takes the subject out of the mind and puts it back in the gut, where it obviously belongs.
The Admissions Commune has been meeting all day.
How does the entering Movement look?
Terrific. There’s one girl who was heavyweight sugar-cane-cutting champion of the Big Ten, and another who had already led three successful rent strikes as a junior — two of them publishable, according to her advisor. Then there are a couple of Black Belts from Bread and Roses — they come on Karate Scholarships of course.
Any amateur topless contest winners?
We’re trying for a few, but most of them will go to Harvard—ever since they hired Brigitte Bardot for the economics faculty—
She was past her peak.
Peaks. And aren’t they all? Anyhow, all the amateur topless winners go to Harvard. But we’ve got some applicants who’ve starred in home movies. Not to mention a few school-burners and a couple of guys who have specialized in destroying computers.
How are their vibrations?
Good.
Fine. If there’s anything I can’t stand it’s bad vibrations. How about GRE scores.
The Graduate Relevance Exam grades just came — most of the people we’re accepting are in the 800’s on Obstructive and at least 750 in Vituperative. Looks like a good class — I mean Movement.
Has anyone heard what the Placement and Appointments Committees have decided?
They decided to eliminate the middleman and merge. That way everybody stays forever — once a Commune always a Commune. It gives new meaning to that old phrase about departmental inbreeding.
We still have this problem about what to do with Samuelson. Here he is after all those years asleep and hardly knowing anything about action and relevance and all the new things. The Bulgarians won’t take him — B.I.T. doesn’t mind using the old textbook, but they’re overloaded with these old-timers. If we can’t find something for him to do we may have to throw him to….
Terrible news. The students are revolting again. There’s a new movement sweeping all the Communes. They want one day of classes this month, two days of classes next month, three days the month after…there’s no telling where it will end, except that nobody can count over 30 any more.
Gad, we may have to go back to teaching again. Well, at least that gives something for Samuelson to do.
Oh didn’t they tell you. When Samuelson saw what the new system was like, he went back to sleep. Better get the Bulgarians on the phone.
Source: Duke University. David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Economists’ Papers Archive. Papers of Robert M. Solow, Box 83.
Image Source: Robert Solow in his office, MIT Museum Website.