Page 17 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Information and Literature Survey in Social Sciences

Notes Ely grabbed at the chance to professionalize political economy along lines that he and his German-
influenced colleagues had set out. Since the enemy camp had established chairs in universities, this
complicated matters considerably. The original statement of principles had been blunt, asserting that
‘the conflict between labor and capital has brought to prominence a vast number of problems, whose
solution requires the united efforts, each in its own sphere, of the church, of the state, and of science’
(quoted by Wesley C. Mitchell, 1969: 233). But to secure enough members to get the organization
going, the group found it necessary to qualify this, adding that ‘this statement was not be regarded
as binding upon individual members’ (ibid.). The American Economic Association came into existence
in 1885. Within three years the constitution was disemboweled and only the first objective was left
standing: the encouragement of economic research. E.R.A. Seligman subsequently insisted that the
changes were not made ‘in deference to a coterie.’ Even if so, the fact remains that the organizing
group was asking some of their colleagues to bite off more than they could chew.
The problem, plainly, was the implicit and explicit socialism which these men endorsed.
When in 1885, Ely had published an essay, ‘Recent American Socialism,’ and a book, The Labor
Movement. Sumner was led to call Ely a ‘charlatan.’ In an unsigned review, Simon described
the book as ‘the ravings of an anarchist and the dreams of a socialist. ‘He concluded that
‘Dr. Ely seems to be seriously out of place in a university chair’ (quoted by Dorfman, ill,
1949: 163).
The assessment was wildly unfair. Still, it surely served the wider purpose for which it must have been
intended. The events of the period, including the boycott by Yale and Harvard of the AEA, but more
importantly, ‘unprecedented labor violence and vicious capitalist retaliation,’ and then, in 1886, the
Haymarket affair, led to a break in the ranks. In a critical essay in Science, Henry C. Adams, himself in
difficulty with his split appointment at Cornell and Michigan, capitulated. As Furner puts the matter:
‘Professional economists were not going to be permitted to make ethical judgments that challenged
basic values or threatened entrenched interests. To avoid catastrophe for his emerging profession,
Adams proposed giving up any claim to moral authority’ (1975: 101). From the other side, Charles
F. Dunbar, head of economics at Harvard, was prepared to offer concessions. In the first issue of the
Quarterly Journal of Economics, which he edited, Dunbar offered that ‘revisionist’ political economy was
‘no revolution, but a natural reaction, probably salutary, and destined to promote ultimately a rapid
but still orderly development of the science, upon the lines laid down by the great masters of what is
called the deductivist school’ (quoted by Furner, 1975: 110). This was so much nonsense, but because
it was a hand eagerly taken by the ‘revisionists,’ the fundamental differences in the two conceptions
of political economy has since been obscured.
Ely surely had a. conception of his science which differed from Dunbar’s; but he had never been
a radical in any useful sense of the word. Two years previously he had himself denounced ‘rebels
against society’ who stood for’ common property, socialist production and distribution; the grossest
materialism, free love and anarchy’ (quoted by Herbst, 1965: 9). Ely called himself ‘a progressive
conservative;’ but red- baiting was already a potent weapon in America. In 1892, Ely was forced to
resign from his long-held position as secretary of the AEA. The year of the Pullman strike (1894),
he was charged with speaking and writing ‘in favor of socialism and social violence’ (Silva and
Slaughter, 1984: 89). He disavowed any such sympathies and eventually was acquitted. By the time
that he was elected President of the AEA in 1900, he had changed his mind sufficiently to endorse
almost everything he had once opposed. In his presidential address, he offered that competition was
both natural and beneficent. On his more considered view, what was needed was a balance between
‘the socialist extension of government activity and that of conservative demand’ (quoted by Silva
and Slaughter, 1984: 147).
It is of considerable significance to note that the ‘orderly development’ to which Dunbar had referred
included John Bates Clark’s enduring answer to the moral implications of the idea of surplus value.
Summarizing Clark, Silva and Slaughter write, ‘if socialists could prove that capitalist society defrauded

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