Capitalism

By Jeremy Adelman 

Jeremy Adelman, Member (2001–02) in the School of Historical Studies, explores the complex nature of Albert O. Hirschman’s (above) optimism during his early years at the Institute.

Albert O. Hirschman became a permanent Faculty member of the Institute in 1974, moving from Harvard’s economics department to join Clifford Geertz in the creation of the School of Social Science. By then, Hirschman was not just famous for his writings about economic development and his analyses of Latin American political economies. His Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Harvard University Press, 1970) had made him one of the country’s renowned social scientists.

Behind the scenes, however, his concerns were shifting; he was, he said, “retreating” into history and the study of the intellectual foundations of political economy. Retreat did not sever his interest in the present. If anything, it was the present that gnawed at him, especially in Latin America. In late summer 1973, Hirschman became the Chair of the Social Science Research Council Joint Committee for Latin American Studies. Ten days later, he learned of the violent overthrow of Chile’s socialist President, Salvador Allende, whom Hirschman had met and admired as an example of a “reform-monger,” a type he celebrated in Journeys Toward Progress (Twentieth Century Fund, 1963), his epic of Latin America’s hopeful 1960s. Allende’s death and the disappearance of friends and former students, indeed the wave of authoritarian regimes sweeping the region, shattered the optimism that had buoyed his thinking.