Engaged Economists. Politics, profession and economics in the left-wing commitment, 1930s-1960s.

The research project argues for a new understanding of the relationship between engagement, profession, and economic ideas. It aims to overcome the traditional dichotomy in intellectual history between the history of ideas and the social history of intellectuals, by combining a social history of economists’ engagement with a study of texts of economics. It studies the engagement of economists in the communist, socialist, and labour left in Europe, namely in France, the United Kingdom, and Italy, between the 1900s and the 1950s, by a transnational-comparative and prosopographical approach. It focuses three topics: 1) the factors explaining engagement and its practices; 2) how economists justify their economic approach and motivate their engagement; 3) the implications of the engagement for economic ideas. It considers the analysis of engagement essential in order to understand a period characterized by an unprecedented role played by economists in a labour movement on the ascendancy, by the rise of heterodox economics (broadly defined, as economics, including Keynesianism, advocating for a managed economy), and by the zenith of managed economy. After the economic crisis of 2008-2009 and faced to post-covid economic problems, which challenge the previous economics postulates, the research project contributes to the discussion of a major issue to contemporary civil society and political debates. The research project aims to better understand how the identity and the role of economists in society are shaped and evolve. It then contributes to bring an aspect of the production of economic ideas which is rarely studied to light.

By force of pandemic circumstances, the research has been hampered over the course of the fellowship. Crucial archives and items of the texts corpus that were important for the completion of the project have been closed for part of the period, or travel restrictions made it impossible for me to get to them. The research work focused on the construction of the corpus of economists born between 1870s and early 1930s, by using limited archives in the UK, Italy, and France of parties, universities, and economists; printed primary sources; and literature (in particular, autobiographies, biographies, biographical dictionaries, and obituaries). I published one article of popularization on an independent media of news and views, one article on methodological and historiographical issues with Cambridge University Press, and one book chapter in Italian. An article which analyses the relationship between academic sphere and partisan sphere, and focuses on French Marxist economists, is under review by a French historical journal. I co-organized with my supervisor an international workshop on the social and intellectual history of wages, with the aim of a publication. The book proposal, which includes a co-written introduction, my chapter, and other 14 contributions made by leading scholars in this field, has been proposed to an anglophone international publisher. I was member of the scientific committee of an international annual conference of history economic thought. At the beginning of the fellowship, I created an account twitter followed by historians, economists and general public which has been very useful to disseminate the results of the research. In the meantime, I taught a course and examined MPhil thesis at the faculty of history of the University of Cambridge on topics related to the research project. I prepared a MPhil course on the history of economic thought to be taught next year at the University of Cambridge, which will integrate knowledge, approaches, and reflexions engendered by the research project.

We still had a fragmented analytical framework on the political engagement practices and trajectories of the economists. Prosopographical studies are very rare. Even the Cambridge Keynesians, the most studied group of economists, had never been before the subject of a prosopographical work, to which biographical approaches have been preferred. A predominant science institutionalist characterized the works on the Keynesian school and other currents of heterodox economics. The social, cultural, institutional, and political causes of activism as well as the relationship between political commitment and economic ideas remained blind spots in historiography and sociology. Thus, the grant allowed me to analyse a new topic through an innovative approach. It allowed me to bring the left engagement and its implications for economics in three major European countries to light, in a field of study in which comparative and transnational approaches are uncommon. I believe this research can contribute to a renewal of both history of economic ideas and political history. I made progress beyond the state of the art by establishing a sociological typology of these heterodox economists; by fine-tuning a chronology and a macro-historical explanation of the political engagement and disengagement; and by understanding how primary socialization, engagement, university training, profession, and economics interlink. The outcomes of the research question the commonly adopted criteria in literature and in common sense judgements concerning the distinction between scientific work and extra-scientific work. They help to better understand the social conditions of possibility of dissident works in economics. The results of the research can potentially impact the view of the general public and civil society about the figure of the economist and the nature of economic ideas. They can spread the awarness of the benefit of a democratic and pluralistic debate on alternative economic postulates and policies.

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENGECON (Engaged Economists. Politics, profession and economics in the left-wing commitment, 1930s-1960s.)

Share this page

Download