Book Review of Rediscovering Fire
The book review by Barkley and Marina Rosser of Rediscovering Fire is finally out in print, and citable to the April issue of JEBO. I would like to make a few comments here in reply to it, since it is not altogether flattering.
First, although the reviewers spend a fair bit of time criticing the missing bits from the index and other relatively minor (but annoying) flaws in the final edit, I would note that their final book review managed to get the title of my book wrong (they wrote 'experience' not 'experiment'), so perhaps we'd both do better to stick to content and not criticize minor mistakes.
Second, the reviewers complain that I do not treat the industrialization debate or discuss the fact that a different outcome in this debate might have led to a different sort of system. However, this misses the central point of the book, which I make over and over again: collective ownership over "the means of production" (over investment, factories, farms, etc) requires planning, and whole-economy central planning is inevitably going to be inefficient and the society will lack freedom. If the debate had "gone the other way" as the authors of the review suggest it might, that would simply have meant that the leadership would have chosen not to return to common ownership over the means of production. (Bukharin was arguing for a longer period--but not indefinite!--of private ownership in some areas of the economy, known as the 'New Economic Policy', so that the market could help develop the economy, while the public sector could more slowly expand.)
Hence, this was irrelevent to the book's purpose. The book discusses what happens when there is common ownership of the means of production, not what happens when there isn't. A more in-depth discussion of this debate would have been interesting to be sure, and would have supported my other arguments, but there simply was not room for it. The book focuses on the lessons that planners learned about common ownership, rather than the debates that the leadership had about whether planning or markets would better help them industrialize.
Third, the authors criticize the frequent references to Barack Obama and his policies, and argue that the Soviet lessons do not apply to the moderate policies I critique. They also wonder why I don't compare the policies of different mixed economies. Again, I think they have missed the point of the book. I do reference Obama's policies more often than policies of other places and periods. (Although I do also discuss, for example, British, French, German and Japanese policy, as well as policy from the 1600s, the 1930s, 1970s, the Bush era, and other eras, and in fact lay blame for the housing crisis and the financial crisis upon earlier decades' policies.) But I reference Obama's policies more than earlier eras because they are current policy. The point is to take the lessons that the Soviet planners learned during their experiment with common ownership over the means of production and apply them to current policy debates. Although historical policy in the US or other counties is interesting (and I do mention some of them), and comparison between different mixed economies is valuable, this is not the central focus of the book.
Finally, in their discussion about my use of the planners' lessons regarding production, distribution, and middlemen, they argue that the US healthcare system spends more and has worse outcomes than European systems. They mention this because they find it frustrating that I did not compare the pre-Obama-reform US system to European systems. There are two mistakes in the reviewers' discussion. First, I was not arguing in the book that the US system was good; I was arguing that the proposed reforms would not necessarily produce the intended results. The US system might be worse than the European systems that the reviewers mention and it could still be true that the proposed reforms would not produce the intended results. So, the reviewers evidence on this count is irrelevant. Second, as a side point, the reviewers use the US ranking in infant mortality and life expenctancy as evidence that the US system is worse. Not only are such high level indicators fairly unreliable without controlling for e.g., immigration levels, but one of them is highly misleading. It is well known that the rankings of infant mortality are highly skewed because the US counts all infant deaths while many other countries count only deaths of infants who were born of a healthy weight and size, and also because the avilability of fertility treatments in the US has led to a higher average maternal age and births by mothers with other risk factors. Either the reviewers are citing statistics that they do not understand, or they are citing statistics they know to be misleading. Either way, I expect some of the readership to see the error.
In any case, I am grateful for the review. I hope that readers of the journal will recognize that much of the review is colored by the reviewers' own opinions and tastes, and that they may find the book more balanced and cogent than the reviewers did.
First, although the reviewers spend a fair bit of time criticing the missing bits from the index and other relatively minor (but annoying) flaws in the final edit, I would note that their final book review managed to get the title of my book wrong (they wrote 'experience' not 'experiment'), so perhaps we'd both do better to stick to content and not criticize minor mistakes.
Second, the reviewers complain that I do not treat the industrialization debate or discuss the fact that a different outcome in this debate might have led to a different sort of system. However, this misses the central point of the book, which I make over and over again: collective ownership over "the means of production" (over investment, factories, farms, etc) requires planning, and whole-economy central planning is inevitably going to be inefficient and the society will lack freedom. If the debate had "gone the other way" as the authors of the review suggest it might, that would simply have meant that the leadership would have chosen not to return to common ownership over the means of production. (Bukharin was arguing for a longer period--but not indefinite!--of private ownership in some areas of the economy, known as the 'New Economic Policy', so that the market could help develop the economy, while the public sector could more slowly expand.)
Hence, this was irrelevent to the book's purpose. The book discusses what happens when there is common ownership of the means of production, not what happens when there isn't. A more in-depth discussion of this debate would have been interesting to be sure, and would have supported my other arguments, but there simply was not room for it. The book focuses on the lessons that planners learned about common ownership, rather than the debates that the leadership had about whether planning or markets would better help them industrialize.
Third, the authors criticize the frequent references to Barack Obama and his policies, and argue that the Soviet lessons do not apply to the moderate policies I critique. They also wonder why I don't compare the policies of different mixed economies. Again, I think they have missed the point of the book. I do reference Obama's policies more often than policies of other places and periods. (Although I do also discuss, for example, British, French, German and Japanese policy, as well as policy from the 1600s, the 1930s, 1970s, the Bush era, and other eras, and in fact lay blame for the housing crisis and the financial crisis upon earlier decades' policies.) But I reference Obama's policies more than earlier eras because they are current policy. The point is to take the lessons that the Soviet planners learned during their experiment with common ownership over the means of production and apply them to current policy debates. Although historical policy in the US or other counties is interesting (and I do mention some of them), and comparison between different mixed economies is valuable, this is not the central focus of the book.
Finally, in their discussion about my use of the planners' lessons regarding production, distribution, and middlemen, they argue that the US healthcare system spends more and has worse outcomes than European systems. They mention this because they find it frustrating that I did not compare the pre-Obama-reform US system to European systems. There are two mistakes in the reviewers' discussion. First, I was not arguing in the book that the US system was good; I was arguing that the proposed reforms would not necessarily produce the intended results. The US system might be worse than the European systems that the reviewers mention and it could still be true that the proposed reforms would not produce the intended results. So, the reviewers evidence on this count is irrelevant. Second, as a side point, the reviewers use the US ranking in infant mortality and life expenctancy as evidence that the US system is worse. Not only are such high level indicators fairly unreliable without controlling for e.g., immigration levels, but one of them is highly misleading. It is well known that the rankings of infant mortality are highly skewed because the US counts all infant deaths while many other countries count only deaths of infants who were born of a healthy weight and size, and also because the avilability of fertility treatments in the US has led to a higher average maternal age and births by mothers with other risk factors. Either the reviewers are citing statistics that they do not understand, or they are citing statistics they know to be misleading. Either way, I expect some of the readership to see the error.
In any case, I am grateful for the review. I hope that readers of the journal will recognize that much of the review is colored by the reviewers' own opinions and tastes, and that they may find the book more balanced and cogent than the reviewers did.
Labels: Rediscovering Fire
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