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Published by EH.NET (February 2001)
Robert M. Collins, _More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar
America_. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. xi + 299 pp. 5.00
(cloth), ISBN 0-19-504646-3.
Reviewed for EH.NET by William Keech, Department of Social and
Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University. <[log in to unmask]>
Robert Collins' book is a history of economic policymaking from the
New Deal through the middle of the Clinton administration. The phrase
"politics of economic growth" is in the title, and such is indeed the
theme of the book, though if this theme were not featured in the
title the book could be mistaken for a good, general, conventional
history of economic policy.
The prologue and the first two chapters remind us that growth was not
always a widely assumed and shared goal in American politics. The
prologue shows that the New Deal was ambivalent about growth, and
moved from an early period in which it was oriented mainly to
scarcity and stability to a later period in which it was more
oriented to growth and abundance. World War II shifted the balance
decisively in the direction of production and expansion, culminating
in the Employment Act of 1946, which made explicit the goal of
promoting "maximum employment, production and purchasing power."
"Economic growthmanship" appeared in the Truman administration's
Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). Chapter 1, which details this
emergence, is to me the most interesting in the book. Collins is
literate about economic theory, and refers to Samuelson, Harrod,
Domar, Kuznets and Rostow, among others in this chapter. He makes it
clear that the emergence of "growthmanship" was not a result of the
influence of economic theory on policy.
The emergence of "growthmanship" had much to do with Leon Keyserling,
a CEA member who was trained as a lawyer rather than an economist,
who was not enthusiastic about economic theory, and who had noted the
"poverty of growth theory." Keyserling was a tireless advocate of
economic growth, and a force behind the 1949 CEA report, which was a
manifesto for this new direction in national policy. Growth would
take priority over redistribution, and reduce "to manageable
proportions the ancient conflict between social equity and economic
incentives." Collins reflects on the roles of theory and policy in
this altering of the national agenda. It was policy, he says, that
caused the first step to be taken, but policy and theory worked in
tandem, "moving farther and faster than either could have alone."
The book never actually demonstrates this, and it never quite returns
to this analytical perspective. Remaining chapters show a partisan
difference in perspective during the Eisenhower years, with
Republicans being more concerned with price stability, and Democrats
being more expansionist. Growth returned to prominence in the Kennedy
and Johnson years, and made possible the ambitious policy agenda of
the Johnson administration. The treatment of the Great Society
includes a reflective section on the somewhat discordant impulses to
focus on the quality of life, and on adverse consequences of economic
growth for the environment, with mentions, for example, the work and
public impact of John Kenneth Galbraith and Rachel Carson.
There is a whole chapter on the multiple crises of 1968, which
stalled growth liberalism, and a chapter on Richard Nixon's "Whig
growthmanship," which brought growth into the "bipartisan mainstream"
as a more cautious stance with more recognition of limits and
choices. This stance also foundered in Nixon's second term over
well-known crises and events. Collins notes that 1973 is recognized
as the end of the postwar golden age of unprecedented economic
growth. "Retreat from Growth in the 1970s" chronicles the critical
literature of E. F. Schumacher, Ronald Inglehart, Barry Commoner,
Kenneth Boulding and the Club of Rome, at the same time that it
describes the stagflation of the 1970s and how it was dealt with by
the Ford and Carter administrations.
A chapter on the Reagan presidency shows how the former governor of
California did with "flair and fanfare" what Richard Nixon had
"sought to do by stealth and indirection." Reagan "stole the growth
issue that had for a generation been a Democratic staple, repackaged
it, and made it his own." After a fair-minded and balanced assessment
of the intellectual and political sources of supply-side economics,
Collins shows how this doctrine was used to revitalize and implement
a conservative and anti-statist vision of government. Economic growth
became "both vehicle and camouflage for a larger ideological agenda."
Collins observes that Bill Clinton was elected with the help of the
economy in 1992, and then faced a choice of increasing public
investment as was desired by many of his Democratic supporters, or
reducing the deficit that was one of the legacies of the Reagan
presidency. The deficit hawks won out, as we know, and the long
string of deficits since 1969 have turned into surpluses that have
begun to reduce federal debt. This was not at the expense of what
became the longest sustained economic expansion in American history.
Projected surpluses raise again the issue of choosing between paying
down the debt, cutting taxes, and public investment (or other kinds
of public spending).
_More_ comes to four main conclusions: that "the pursuit of exuberant
economic growth was central to the history of the postwar period,"
"that growthmanship was protean," serving not just as an end in
itself, but a variety of other purposes, that policymaking for growth
was very complex.and that the pursuit of economic growth was more
"tricky and dangerous" than policymakers expected. These conclusions
do not grow systematically out of a sustained analysis in the book.
It might have been better if these themes had been stated up front,
and developed throughout the narrative, rather than being tacked on
at the end.
Collins misses an opportunity to be as literate about modern growth
theory as he was about growth theory as it stood in the 1940s. Growth
theory is one of the most active areas of research in economics
today, and an economic history of this period in US history that was
sensitive to these theoretical issues would have been very
instructive.
William Keech is Professor of Political Economy and Head of the
Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon
University. His most recent book is _Economic Politics: The Costs of
Democracy_ (Cambridge University Press, 1995). His main research
interests center on the intersection of political science and
economics. He is especially interested in the relationship between
political institutions and economic performance, and is engaged in a
study of these issues in Latin America.
Copyright (c) 2001 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be
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Fax: 513-529-3308). Published by EH.Net (February 2001). All EH.Net
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