Minds, Markets and Money: Psychological Foundations of Economic Behavior
Maital ., Shlomo
The mentality of the American electorate was represented "by t h e fact that the Hearst publications have twenty-five niillion readers." If democracy were to be of any positive use to...
...It is genuine conservatism because it comprehends the whole of life, unlike the partial conservatism of various economic conservatives, libertarians, and ex-Communists, who are anarchic individualists and therefore the spawn of the romantic heresy...
...In addition, the least interesting of the stories, "Snowball Berry Red" by Vasily Shukshin, is the most Soviet...
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...Like other eighteenth-century thinkers who regarded s e l f - i n t e r e s t in a favorable light, Smith thought a nation could be strong and stable only if it were governed by wise leaders who would not try to stamp out self-interest so much as r e g u l a t e i t - - t h a t is, to p r e v e n t people in t h e i r pursuit of self-interest from engaging in activities that might undermine the health of the nation...
...If democracy were to be of any positive use to civilization, one would somehow have to "substitute the doctrine of the right man for the doctrine of the rights of man...
...Babbitt believed in the Burkean natural aristocracy, which could be realized through education designed to breed leaders, not equals...
...Maital does not seem to be a socialist, yet he too drones on about the need in today's world for "cooperation, sacrifice, and altruism...
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...The thinker who loathed self-interest most was of course Karl Marx...
...Both Tories and radicals equated self-interest with selfishness and greed...
...dotes that compose the.book...
...Or is it that Maital thinks economists can begin to gc about changing human behavior-"altering," as he says, "how people perceive, and act toward, one another"--once they understand how people behave...
...i YoucanbefluentmLatmAmencanSpanlsh Both courses use natwe speakers i [ ] or French -That's nght, fluent...
...Yet how can Maital make this recommendation with any confidence, when he himself implies that influencing people's perceptions is a tricky and difficult business...
...In the nineteenth century, however, self-interest acquired a bad reputation...
...In the eighteenth century, self-interest (or sometimes simply interest) was invoked by a wide variety of thinkers who considered themselves progressives insofar as they were in favor of commerce, technological progress, and economic growth...
...The part responsible for his celebrity status was his film work: a half dozen scripts, direction of six movies, and major roles in a dozen films...
...But simply because censorship and samizdat have become commonplaces is not to imply t h a t the t e r r i b l e s t i n g - - t h e horror and tragedy--of life in a totalitarian state has lessened over the years...
...at othel times he implies that he is not s( much against self-interest as agains narrow or short-run self-interest...
...But such a desire did not mean that they were obsessed with wealth--did not mean that they were inordinately greedy or madly acquisitive...
...Snowball Betry Red" is itself a prose t r e a t m e n t for a film which Shukshin made in 1974...
...M a i t a l ' s call for wage-price controis is less irritating, however, than his animadversions against selfi n t e r e s t . When will writers stop making a bogeyman out of selfinterest, assuming that anyone who pursues his self-interest always pursues it--that he is never capable of sacrifice or altruism...
...As Hamilton said in Federalist 14: "The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened [emphasis mine] statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth . . . . " In short, the self-interest of commercial man was by and large good for the nation...
...Only they, he argues, can control inflation...
...Through such inheritors as Eliot and Kirk, the origins of modern "intellectual conservatism" lie in the conservatism of Babbitt and his colleague andcoequal Paul Elmer More, with its comprehensive cultural critique, a philosophy with religious implications and depending ultimately on the support of religion...
...He directed it and starred in it, and the film was "one of the most effective tear-jerkers ever made...
...Marx's dream of a society animated by a disinterested concern for the common good has become the nightmare of modern totalitarianism, where people are forced to appear disinterested and children are encouraged to inform disinterestedly on their parents...
...S t i l l , the majority of the other writers represented are "Russian" in the sense that they employ the large themes--the pursuit of Truth or Meaning...
...at the time of publication Aksenov still lived in Moscow, but since then he has emigrated...
...I'm not sure what Maitai means...
...This is the trademark of the great nineteenth-century Russian realists and satirists, and is apparent from the opening moments of the first story in Contemporary Russian Prose, Vasily Aksenov's "The Steel Bird": It would appear that the hero of my tale appeared in Moscow in the spring of 1948, at any rate that is when he was first observed on Fornarnii Lane...
...However, only the stories by Bitov, Shukshin, Trifonov, and Rasputin were actually published Robert Leiter has written for the New Republic, Commonweal, the American Scholar, and other journals...
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...The self-interest of people in Stephen Miller is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Christopher Lasch wants to construct "a new form of society, in which collective needs rather than private profit determine the form and content of production," and Irving Howe holds on to "a vision of society that has men acting for motives finer than accumulation, values better than manipulation, an ethic beyond the appetites of the self...
...improving their condition, they argued, was generally a moderate passion--very different from the immoderate passions of many landowning_ aristocrats...
...Not only is this abysmal cant, but it also undercuts Maital's main argument, which is that economists should pay more attention to the psychological foundations of economic behavior...
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...You can be- exclusively so that you hear exactly how [ ] [ ] speakmg with all the confidence of a sea- each w(}rd should sound It won't be long [ ] [ ] soned traveler m a matter of weeks...
...It is possible that he had inhabited the capital even earlier, no one denies it, maybe even a number of years, there are plenty of blank spots on the city map, after all...
...July 25, 1929...
...His premature death (heart attack) at the height of his fame was mourned by millions of fans...
...Aswell- before you start speakmg and thmkmg ~n I versed- in your new language as ~f you your newlanguage...
...Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the wrong men...
...Tawney-=-continue to dream wistfully of a society in which self-interest will be a thing of the past...
...pilgrims with fresh flowers still appear at his grave every day...
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...Indeed, in The Wealth of Nations Smith pitches his argument to disinterested legislators, asking them to refrain from being swayed by the protectionist arguments of merchants and manufacturers...
...There is realism and there is fantasy, even surrealism...
...The Proffers believe t h a t , in t h e i r considerable v a r i e t y , t h e s e stories offer us a glimpse of the diversity of prose styles now being practiced in Russia...
...since it is hard to rescue his centra argument from the welter of anec...
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...These are indisputably Soviet writers...
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...CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN PROSE Edited by Carl and EUendea Proffer / Ardis Publishers $25.00 cloth, $9.50 paper Robert Leiter C a r l and Ellendea P r o f f e r , the e d i t o r s of Contemporary Russian Prose, have g a t h e r e d t o g e t h e r the work of seven w r i t e r s - - V a s i l y Aksenov, Vasily Shukshin, Sasha Sokolov, Yuri Trifonov, Andrei Bitov, Fazil Iskander, and Valentin Rasput i n - f e w of whom will be familiar to American readers...
...Shukshin's two novels and one hundred and thirty'odd stories represent only One side of his talent...
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...Irving Babbitt is ~ght, [] MINDS, MARKETS ANDMONEY: PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR Shlomo Maital / Basic Books / $14.95 Stephen Miller The notion of self-interest has had a peculiar history...
...Finally, they argued that if people were allowed to pursue their self-interest relatively unimpeded by governmental strictures or class rigidities, they would increase the wealth of the nation...
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...If American conservatism is to make itself philosophically intelligible, and become an effective cultural force, it must reidentify itself with its roots in the thought of Babbitt and More...
...And he decried the democratization of the American Constitution...
...Few people would perceive wage-price controls as fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory...
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...Everything in it is set in the USSR...
...I f current inflation results mainty from people trying to avoid sacrifices which they feel o t h e r s are successfully evading, controls can work, provided they are perceived as fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory...
...d. October 2, 1974) was more than a writer--he was a phenomenon...
...As the Proffers tell us, " F o r Russians, Shukshin (b...
...And why do they often imply, as Maital does, that Adam Smith was hopelessly naive when he spoke of self-interest as a force for the common good...
...Everything in it was written in the USSR bY writers born and educated in the Soviet period...
...But all that can be accurately said of the story is that it is no better or worse than any of our bestsellers...
...And there is Sokolov, who doesn't fit any of the conventional c a t e g o r i e s . " For the Proffers, this great mix of styles is an indication of a " . . . h e a l t h y literature...
...By the way, Jeffrey Hart was wrong...
...But what I find far more interesting is the choice of the word "Russian" in the title rather than the perhaps more exact word" Soviet...
...The story has the sketchiness of a scenario...
...h economic life," he says, "I have triec _9 to show that again and again, ii contexts ranging from schooling t( labor, spending, saving, and risl taking, one economic agent, acting legitimately in his own self-interest causes harm to others, and ultimatel...
...in the USSR...
...Yearning f o r " a fundamental change in both psychology and morals," Maital--like all those who attack self-interest--would do well to ponder Hamilton's remark that "we may preach till we are tired of the theme, the necessity of disinterestedness in republics, without making a single proselyte...
...Unfortunately, in Maital's scheme of things enlightened selfi n t e r e s t means l i t t l e more than agreeing with his call for mandatory wage-price controls...
...As the editors admit, t h e i r collection clearly i l l u s t r a t e s the situation...
...Not standardization, but standards...
...Yet many contemporary intellectuals--heirs less to Marx, perhaps, than to the English socialist, R.H...
...There i,~ a further difficulty: At times Maita implies that we must look beyonc self-interest toward altruism...
...A sharp smell of mold, of filthy damp underwear, a mouse-like small struck the folk crowded round the beer vendor r e LearrL Spanish i 3 and French the U.8...
...Why so many i n t e l l e c t u a l s - - w h o are supposedly a thoughtful, intelligent, and well-read lot---continue to call for societies untainted by self-interest is difficult to fathom...
...A l l of which brings us to Maital's Minds, Markets and Money...
...The diff i c u l t i e s many of them have withstood in the struggle to publish their fiction have become the commonplaces of Soviet a r t i s t i c life since the Revolution...
...There is straightforward psychological realism (Trifonov), introspective realism (Bitov), retrospective realism (Rasputin), "and even epic realism (Iskander) with a touch of the nationalities...
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...The Aksenov story was published in Russian, but in the United States, twelve years after it was written...
...Smith never assumed t h a t people are always animated by s e l f - i n t e r e s t . Moreover, he took it for granted that some are not,' that their self-interest can take the form of a desire, say, for fame as a legislator r a t h e r than a desire for a b e t t e r material condition...
...If this is the gist of his argument then who are we to quarrel wit] 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 198 Maital...
...The people loved him, and the officials loved him--an extraordinary confluence of opinion...
...These writers, who include Mandeville, Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, David Hume, and the authors of The Federalist, did not so much champion self-interest as argue that self-interest must be acknowledged as a fact of life--and not a bad fact at that...
...Maital's poin here seems to be that people shouh have a more enlightened sense o their own self-interest...
...to himself as well...
...For how can Maital urge that more needs to be known about the way people really work--known about the inveterate complexities of human conduct and how they impinge upon economic behavior--and at the same time glibly dream of the way people ideally should be...
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...Description and motivation are at a minimum and the plot has touches imported from the Worst of American g a n g s t e r movies of the t h i r t i e s . The editors inform us that they included the work in order to "convey some idea of what a Soviet bestseller is like...
...Most people, they said, were driven by the engine of self-interest, by which they meant that most people want to improve their material condition...
...We have included here both 'country prose' (one of the dominant types of fiction in the USSR) and urban prose (Trifonov and Aksenov are q u i n t e s s e n t i a l Moscow writers...
Vol. 15 • November 1982 • No. 11
