The following transcribed draft of a letter to Karl Popper was written by Abba Lerner during a transatlantic trip from Southampton to the port of New York on the ship “Anna Salen”. The draft is undated, but checking port arrival lists at the ancestry.com website I found the record of Abba Lerner, his wife Alice and their twins Lionel (M) and Marion (F) arriving at the port of New York on September 20, 1951 aboard the Anna Salen, having sailed from Havre-Southampton, Hook Holland to New York City. I was struck by the overwhelming number of academic addresses among the passengers, which turns out to reflect one use of the dual-use for this converted Navy transport ship.
What higher praise could Lerner possibly have given Karl Popper than “I found your book the most exciting one I had read for a very long time and admired the clarity and forthrightness with which you have stated positions toward which I felt I h[a]d been groping for many years”? One wonders what Popper thought of this, presumably sincere, attempt by one kindred spirit to adopt another.
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Summer travel for academics, winter transport for D.P.s
Barnard Bulletin (June 7, 1951, p. 1) “….the Anna Salen, a converted Navy transport which alternates between being a student ship in the summer and carrying Displaced Persons in the winter.”
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An Open Society Fan-Boy writes…
At Sea on the Anna Salen
Southampton – NY
as from Roosevelt College,
Chicago 5, Ill. USA
Dear Professor Popper,
For a long time I have been wanting to read your two volumes on The Open Society and Its Enemies, but did not get around to it until the last two days on this boat. I found your book the most exciting one I had read for a very long time and admired the clarity and forthrightness with which you have stated positions toward which I felt I h[a]d been groping for many years. I am sending you a copy of my “Economic[s] of Employment” which I think might have helped you in the economic analysis of Marx’ trade cycle writings. Time and again in reading your book I w[a]s reminded arguments and writings in which the closeness of your thought to mine is remarkable. I am thinking in particular of a debate I once had with Maurice Dobb on “Vulgar Marxism” (which has a slightly different connotation than your use of the phrase, being directed more to my sp[e]cial interest of economics), a review of Clarence E Ayres [Lerner’s review of The Theory of Economic Progress in American Economic Review, March 1945] who is an excellent example of what you so fel[i]citously call “Moral Futurism”, and an article on Dialectics in “Science and Society” (about 1938) which is a polemic against Haldane’s “dialectical” mysticism.
I remember attending a lecture of yours at the London School of Economics some-time in the early thirties and asking you a question – something about Marxian time-limited “truth”. You probably do not remember this. I was also sorry for having missed your lectures in Chicago last year while I was away temporarily in Geneva. While in London this summer I tried to call you up in case you were around – I had a colleague from Roosevelt College, a teacher of philos[o]phy, Dr Lionel Ruby, who also wanted to meet you, but through some misunderstanding, which was never thoroughly cleared up, perhaps I got the wrong number, I was told that you had died and only a few days later did Lionel Robbins tell me that it must have been a mistake. I do hope to meet you again soon.
Yours most sincerely,
Abba P. Lerner
Source: U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. The papers of Abba P. Lerner, Box 17, Folder 2 “ ‘P’ miscellany 1978-80, w.d.”
Image Source: See Webpage: Salén Rederierna. There is to be found the page in Swedish) with photos of the Anna Dalén.