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LONG IS THE JOURNEY Winter 2020
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LONG IS THE JOURNEY Dossier n. 5 - winter 2020 Editors: Luca Meldolesi, Nicoletta Stame Assistant editor: Roberto Celentano Translator: Michael Gilmartin Creative director: Gennaro Di Cello (Entopan Company) Art Director: Brunella Chiodo (Entopan Company) Graphic Designer: Francesco Falvo D’Urso (Entopan Company) Web Developer: Ornella Leanza (Entopan Company) Cover: Agnolo Bronzino, "Ritratto di giovane uomo con libro" (Particolare).
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Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
Fifty years since Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation. by Luca Meldolesi
“From Leibniz,” Colorni wrote (1935, p. vi, n.) “we draw concepts and ideas that are still living—methods which, once translated into the terminology of current problems, may yield new and very interesting results.” The philosopher, Colorni argued (July 1937; now 2020, p. 97) “considers philosophy a science, not a simple search for a ‘point of view.’ A concrete science that can achieve positive results, discoveries that stand as a gain for mankind. A science with an infinite variety of methods, each extremely difficult to learn, requiring a violent struggle against oneself. He despises those who think philosophy means having a formula for interpreting the world.” 1 – The mere fact of addressing this issue means that I finally feel up to reopening the painful page of our declining relationship with Albert Hirschman following his ruinous fall in the Alps in the summer of 1995. Nicoletta Stame and I had not been warned about the gravity of what had happened. Nevertheless (as I explained in Italia Vulcanica n. 4), when we visited Princeton in January 1996, we realized things were no longer going the way they should have been. So this was the start of our stubborn and prolonged effort (with little to show for it, unfortunately) to try and somehow ameliorate what was happening to Albert. We tried everything — including the 1999 honorary degree from the Faculty of Economics at Federico II University of Naples and the offer of an official invitation from the Prime Minister, whose office I was working in at the time. Hirschman was by then fragile and slowly continued to get worse, while we, inevitably, could do nothing more than offer him a prominent role in our own affairs… 2 – At the same time that descending curve, which proved unstoppable, had been presaged by a forewarning. In 1996 Albert suggested that I edit a collection of unpublished essays on “Exit and Voice” written by a circle of intellectuals close to him. He let me know who the scholars were that he had in mind and put me in touch with them. I collected the texts and diligently wrote an introduction to Six Studies on Exit and Voice and the Actual Working of the Market Economy1. But the book apparently did not 1 “The exit-voice polarity,” my introduction began, “is a versatile analytical tool suited to our time, as economies and societies look for ways of adapting to change. It was invented in the late ‘60s in the wake of great social unrest, it was expanded in the ‘70s and in the ‘80s, and at-
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find a suitable publisher (and Hirschman never wrote the “Foreword” he had initially promised). The reasons for this letdown were never made clear. Perhaps the end product did not meet expectations. Perhaps news of Albert’s decline was already circulating — some academic friends had agreed to participate, but others, and in fact the ambiance as a whole, had already begun to shrug (behavior which, by the way, while less than gentlemanly, is — as I later learned — common in the United States). But be that as it may, I have never ceased to wonder why Albert decided to entrust such a delicate task to me (“an Italian scholar” – as he sometimes introduced me) rather than to an American intellectual. Not only that — in hindsight I wondered what I would have had to do to really deserve that trust. And I have to say that given the circumstances, it would have been very difficult (if not impossible) for me to act differently. But this was not the end of the matter, at least in retrospect. Because it is conceivable that in 1996-97, while his strength was already waning,2 Albert wanted to achieve another success — pretracted renewed interest in the process which ended the Cold War. It is applied in this book while the social advances which triggered the latter event are still delivering their rejuvenating message throughout the world. […] Hidden rationalities” – this was the point of our work – “seem to emerge in various domains of our economies, such as the stock exchange, industrial relations, the labor market, industrial districts, the supply industry, and health care.” The contents of the book were as follows: Foreword (Albert Hirschman); Introduction (L.M.); Ch. 1: Corporate Governance and the Voice of the Paparazzi (Louis Lowenstein, Columbia University); Ch. 2: Evolving Institutions for Employee Voice (Richard Freeman, Harvard University); Ch. 3: Exit and Voice in Informal and Formal Labor Markets (Luca Meldolesi, University of Naples); Ch. 4: The Changing Forms of Supplier Relations in an Italian Industrial District: an Exit-Voice Approach (Gabi Dei Ottati, University of Florence); Ch. 5: Exit, Voice, and Cost Reduction: Evidence from the Auto Supply Industry (Susan Helper, Case Western Reserve University); Ch. 6: Exit and Voice in American Health Care (Marc Rodwin, Indiana University). 2 And he was about to finish — or had already finished — his last collection of essays: Hirschman 1998.
cisely through that collective volume of essays.3 And also because an adequate introduction to those essays would have required knowledge that I didn’t have, and have recently acquired. 3 – Actually, I believe I was the first to reconstruct the path which, starting from the observation of a “narrow tolerance for poor performance,” led Hirschman to construct Exit (1970), as well as to look for guiding lights in Colorni (to whom, of course, this famous book is dedicated).4 Among many other things, I also wanted to understand how it had been possible for the extraordinary metamorphosis from The Strategy to Exit to take place.5 This is of course not to say that the research was fully successful and actually able to explain such a “transubstantiation.”6 3 In doing this, it is likely that he overestimated his strength (seeing that he carried on fighting in his own way), his influence on the field, and also my abilities. Speaking of which, it is clear to me now that, even though I was working on the didactic anthology Colorni 1998, I had not at the time undertaken a real in-depth analysis of Eugenio’s “combinatory arts” (nor acquired effective knowledge of some relevant philosophical theses). Nevertheless, I think Albert’s decision to entrust this responsibility to me — before he was compelled, as he increasingly was, to withdraw little by little into his own shell — was a generous and important gesture, one that would prove important in the future (for our work, for Colorni, and for Europe). 4 Cf. Meldolesi 1995, Chap. 6 and Colorni 1998. 5 Or rather, from “Economics and Investment Planning,” written for a conference at MIT (1954) to Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970): “one of the most influential books in social science of the post Second World War era” (according to the Times Literary Supplement, 1995) which, starting from the realm of economics expands into territories as diverse as the two party system, divorce, the American character, black power etc. 6 In other words, it was clear to me that in his eyes, the reasoning in the trilogy Hirschman dedicated to development (Strateg y, Journeys, and Development Projects) “had yielded what it could” on this point. But I couldn’t understand how such a conclusion could have been a sufficient “launch pad” to lead Hirschman finally to the “theoretical leap” of Exit. Which is to say — to imagine (first of all) that there could be a higher, more general theoretical level through which to re-examine the entire issue and consequently harvest an additional (extraordinary) crop of results. Obviously, I had at my disposal many pieces of the puzzle, but I hadn’t learned well enough to connect the dots through processes of abstraction and generalization. Obviously I had
Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
Because in my view the key point for a reconsideration of Exit after half a century lies precisely here. It is said that Albert “created something from nothing” — why? Exit is a book that, as Jan Elster7 put it, “generated a state of almost intolerable intellectual excitement in the reader” — how? In spite of the extraordinary “overexposure” of those few pages (whose circulation was incredibly wide, especially in that most vast of American social sciences, political science) I don’t imagine that anyone looking for an answer to such questions actually got very far, basically due to the difficulty of bringing into focus the philosophical methodology that underpins the whole issue. This is in my view a key aspect of Exit that in any case (to give you an idea of what I have in mind) requires in its turn a brief review of the problem. 4 – First point: the theme has a solid logical foundation in the observation of some factual data. The narrow tolerance for poor performance was the primary pillar of The Strategy — it was an idea derived from the observation of the performance of Colombian airlines, an idea which, proposed by Hirschman in 1954, came to the attention of Thomas Schelling8. And thereafter it allowed the construction of Chap. 8 of The Strategy. Hence the bafflement that was undoubtedly generated in Hirschman’s mind by the contrary hit some unconscious resistance of my own on the subject. Apparently (and paradoxically) my lack of sympathy for idealism, metaphysics, aesthetics, and Crocian historicism (and for the works of Leibniz) was keeping me from understanding it. So that finally achieving success in this “struggle with myself” gave me room to hope that the cracks thus opened would help me (finally!) grasp the methodological possibilities Eugenio and Albert had used with such surprising results. 7 Elster 1982. 8 At the time of the conference mentioned in n. 5. Indeed, in 1956, along with other colleagues/friends, he helped Albert begin his metamorphosis from economic consultant (public and private) to an academic of extraordinary success. (Meldolesi 1995, p. 56, n.3; p. 72, n. 39; p. 156, n. 30).
observation: “I was troubled,” he wrote,9 “by the fact that [...in Nigeria] their railways did so poorly in spite of the fact that their latitude for performance was narrow.” What happened as a consequence we do not know.10 Hirschman was too reserved to keep us abreast of his torments. But we can conjecture, based on the two methodological clues from Colorni that I have included as an epigraph. His discomfort was probably followed by a “struggle with himself,” the decision to react according to the “principle of the hiding hand,” which he presented, not incidentally, at the beginning of Development Projects,11 and thus transform a “bad thing into something good.”12 This happened, if I’m not mistaken, in two phases. The first: finding himself midway through the construction of Development Projects,13 Hirschman thought that a discussion of the issue could be the backbone of the book. It was clear, in 9 Hirschman 1995, p. 131. 10 “In looking for the reason,” he added simply, “I eventually focused on a paradoxical question: could it be that the increasing availability of highway transportation was depriving the railroads of the criticism (or ‘voice’) they would have been subject to if their major customers had not had this easy alternative (or ‘exit’) open to them?” 11 Hirschman 1967, Chap 1. Therefore, if what I am suggesting is true, alongside the (poetic) case of the Karnaphuly Paper Mill, this famous chapter also has a personal origin. (Otherwise, why was Exit — as the subtitle says — constructed as Responses to Decline rather than “actions for”? Solely for the sake of exposition?) In other words, in the construction of Development Projects, Hirschman’s observation on the Nigerian railways already played a key role — perhaps even greater than that of the Colombian airlines in the construction of The Strateg y... 12 “Hirschman could find the reasons, methods and ideas he needed to continue with his work in his own experience. […] This was the source of the ‘luck’, as Hirschman called it, that led him to discover a particular aspect of his own work that could be expanded on a much vaster horizon” (Meldolesi 1995, p. 142-43). He hinted at that process on various occasions (1971, p. ix; 1981, p. v-vi; 1988a; 1995b, p. 131) explaining why — but not how — he did so. 13 Which was moreover in an as yet undefined condition (as it would appear from an exchange of correspondence with Judith Tendler which I was able to consult thanks to the courtesy of the Mudd Library at Princeton).
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Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
fact, that once the two extremes had been identified (represented, respectively, by the Nigerian railways and the Colombian airlines) other examples had to exist as well. This led to “Latitudes and Disciplines,” the third chapter of Development Projects, which brings various aspects of the question into focus: “Spatial or locational latitude,” “Temporal discipline in construction,” “Temporal discipline from construction to operation,” “Latitude for corruption,” “Latitude in substituting quantity for quality,” “Latitude in substituting private for public outlays.” And it finally led, in the fourth chapter —” Project Design: Train-Taking and Trait-Making” — to (inter alia) an in-depth analysis of the case of the Nigerian Railway Corporation.14 5 – However, what still impresses the reader (and the critic) of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty today is that this monograph, although following on the heels of the analysis just mentioned, does not slavishly continue its evolutionary process; it does not proceed incrementally from within the already consolidated train of thought of economic and development policy. On the contrary, it suddenly creates something new that makes implicit use of the data examined so far, but at the same time aims at a general construction. This is the aspect that marks a “historical” transition point 14 And to the noted page in Development Projects (1967, p. 135) that inspired Exit (1970, p. 44-5). “This is an unpremeditated book,” Hirschman wrote, opening the preface to Exit. “It has its origin in an observation on rail transport in Nigeria which occupied a paragraph in my previous book […]. One critic objected to that paragraph because, as he charitably expressed himself, ‘there must be a lot of assumptions hidden there somewhere.’ After a while, I decide to pursue these assumptions into their hidden places and was soon off on an absorbing expedition which lasted the full year that I had planned to spend in leisurely meditation at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The principal reason for which I persevered will be obvious to the reader: I had come upon a manner of analyzing certain economic processes which promised to illuminate a wide range of social, political, and indeed moral phenomena.”
in Hirschman’s design — from an almost complete concentration on development and Latin America to an interest in “everybody” (indeed, as Albert sometimes said, an interest in developed countries and therefore in everybody — so that some eminent Latin American intellectuals, such as Guillermo O’Donnell15 and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, were quick to seize upon it for application to their own respective countries). It is this “phase two,” this turning point, this change of gears, that needs clarification. Because it implies a twofold (and somewhat daring) decision. Firstly, an attempt at abstract theorizing starting from observations gathered over time in particular environments — in developing countries, to be specific. And because this fatal step brings with it another, which is to extend this to the whole world. This is what led the author to a change (or perhaps a development) in his research interests. To produce such (somewhat Colornian) acrobatics, Albert tells us, he used the construction method that he learned from Eugenio.16 And then the question becomes: how did Colorni invent it in the first place, and how did he teach it to Hirschman?17 6 – My impression is that no one up to now has been able to answer this. I myself had to wait for the legal right to republish Colorni’s works (70 years after his death) in order to be able to work on it thoroughly; and even then, having proceeded step by step and with great patience, it was 15 O’Donnell 1986; Meldolesi 1995, p. 202-03 and n. 26. 16 The book is in fact dedicated “To Eugenio Colorni (1909-1944), who taught me about small ideas and how they may grow.” 17 It is notable that Hirschman was the only one who learned it, even though Eugenio, characteristically, was anything but parsimonious in teaching it. This says a lot about Albert’s youthful perspicacity, but also (inevitably) about Eugenio’s entourage...
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only when I set about editing the sixth book of his writings that I finally reached a sort of illumination.18 My reasoning goes like this. In 1937-38, when Albert learned from Eugenio the method he would apply in Exit more than thirty years later, Colorni had already undertaken two wide-ranging theoretical and factual explorations—one on the aesthetics of Croce and the other on the works of Leibniz. The thing that had attracted him in both cases was the actual “findings,” the concrete data (analytical, aesthetic, critical, social, economic, etc.) that the two authors had collected with the intention of connecting them together to form coherent systems. In his first exploration Colorni’s intention was that of a critic, in the sense that he meant to liberate the data Croce had gathered from its superimposed “dialectic of distinctions.” This involved the painstaking examination of every link in Croce’s reasoning on aesthetics, a labor of patience he recounted in “The philosophical illness.”19 In the case of Leibniz, on the other hand, Eugenio’s aim was constructive, even though partial. That is to say, he had tried to understand, in this
author’s work, how groups of specific data were linked to each other by reason, harmony, and beauty. Because “Leibniz’s writings are occasional. His biography is the collection of these occasions. He was interested in a wide variety of problems; able to grasp their details quickly, he looked for solutions, often achieving surprising results. This gave rise to a great collection of position statements. And yet ‘the individual problems prove gradually to be connected to each other—interdependent; the solutions converge, they justify each other and converge in turn,’ gradually revealing a general logic that gathers around a few main centers from which everything takes on a particular light.”20 In the one case as in the other, along with his ability to “philosophize,” Eugenio had accumulated considerable concrete work experience.21 And on top of that, at the same time he drew up a “Program” of scientific methodology22 (which he then gradually carried out during his confinement, and which, along with his own discipline—philoso-
18 I asked myself what I was missing that would let me begin to understand. First and foremost, a specific indication from Hirschman, one that never came (but there’s no point regretting it — my teacher was like this). Secondly, a true knowledge of the philosophical learning that Eugenio instilled in Albert and that he absorbed. Finally a serene reflection on my own and my collaborators’ trajectory in the Italian South. Fortunately, these elements finally, without my awareness, switched on a light bulb.
21 This consisted of two long-term exercises. Croce was at the time omnipresent in Italian culture, above all for his aesthetics and historicism—Eugenio had begun reading him in high school. His research on Leibniz’s work was a professional choice that kept him busy for eight years (and which he in the end left unfinished). If it required that much patience to break down Crocian aesthetics, what would it have taken to give meaning to this or that aspect of Leibniz’s work?
19 Colorni 1939, now in 2020, p. 130; Meldolesi 2020. “A skillful, perhaps too skillful internal criticism of Crocian thought is offered in this book of Eugenio Colorni’s,” wrote Domenico Carella (1932) in his review of L’estetica di Benedetto Croce. “In fact, through a suffocating pursuit of the philosopher’s every step, every point, every noun, every adjective, scrutinizing his intentions, eliminating doubts, and pointing out uncertainties, Colorni proceeds to uncover two aspects of Croce — one original and true, which is expressed entirely through a form of transcendental empiricism, the other springing from an organic and systematic need, unnecessary because it is occasionally drawn from idealistic philosophy.”
20 Colorni 1935, p. xxii-iv; and Meldolesi 1998, p. 57-8. (Of course, this vast exploration does not imply Colorni’s approval of Leibniz’s procedures, much less his construction of systems).
22 Now in Colorni 2020, p. 100-11. We read (among other things) in this essay (p. 101-02) that in philosophy “the expenditure of energy is enormous. We see humanity’s most intelligent men directing all their efforts toward reaching goals that will then be completely lost, and we are forced to scrape together with difficulty some of the residue of their work.” What is evident in passages like this, in my opinion, is Eugenio’s intention to reform the current way of “doing philosophy,” and also the desire (at least) to put to good use “some of the residue” of the work of past philosophers. In all probability, this is the intellectual sequence that led Colorni to teach Hirschman how to get a small idea to grow using the dialectic of distinctions (in the words of Benedetto Croce).
Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
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phy— involved from the outset physics, mathematics, psychology, economics etc.). With this in mind, he had by then mastered many of the methodologies of the different philosophical trends (positivist, pragmatic, idealist, irrationalist, conventionalist, etc.), methods of intellectual construction that he intended to make use of (either by themselves or in various combinations) for his own specific purposes. Eugenio and Albert saw each other almost every day and had deep and animated conversations about a little of everything.23 Unlike Hirschman (who, since he was six years younger mostly played the role of student-friend), Colorni (as mentor) liked to talk about his work because, he maintained, the discussions helped him move ahead in his reasoning. Thus it is almost certain that Hirschman was abreast of Eugenio’s intellectual journey. And that that precise memory was the origin of the spark that led to the transformation of the theory of the margins of tolerance into that of “how an initiative can be made to endure” over a vast range of concrete conditions (as the book’s subtitle undoubtedly makes clear). 7 – All very well, the doubtful reader might object at this point. Seen retrospectively from the viewpoint of the construction of Exit, Eugenio’s long labors, first on the aesthetics of Croce and then on Leibniz might assume the aspect of a preparatory exercise (in part unconscious, complicated as it was). But then? How can we proceed with this hypothetical simulation? The relevant pages of Colorni’s that come to mind are those of the famous “Apologue on four
23 Meldolesi 2013, Chap. 2.
ways of doing philosophy.”24 Above all, I focused (intuitively) on the point of transition between the positivist son (always busy with maintaining and improving this or that specific aspect of the edifice left to him by Father Kant), and his opposite— his idealistic brother who knows the entire building in detail (through maps, floor plans, “models” etc.), and keeps it under control while never moving from his comfortable armchair. Which is to say that when certain sensitive data is known, sometimes it is possible to set it aside and try to theorize ex novo at a higher level of abstraction, leaving the proven facts in the background—or even deleting them—as useful prolegomena that have exhausted their function. The third son (the irrationalist philosopher) disobeys the father, leaves the building, and comes back with improbable stories (that need to be decoded); while the fourth, Eugenio in fact, recognizes the conventional nature of the cognitive methods his brothers are using and sets out to lead them back to reason and join them together—to gradually increase overall knowledge of “how things actually go,” in the words of an old friend of mine and Albert’s, now gone (Marcello de Cecco). In other words, the use of (and combination of) more than one method can free us from inherited positions and ways of thinking (that we are often not even aware of), from mental restrictions and unreasonable reciprocal animosities, and so on. Such a way forward can allow us to broaden our framework in such a way that one step leads to 24 Colorni 1939 (now in Colorni 2020, Chap. 6). This essay was part of the collection that Ferruccio Rossi-Landi tried to publish (before the task passed to Norberto Bobbio – Colorni 1975). In all probability Albert Hirschman had come to know (value and think about) this essay well before writing Exit—not least because unlike other texts of Eugenio’s, its tone is didactic (and therefore does not require a particular passion for the somewhat debilitating type of philosophical reasoning which, as they say, “splits a hair into four parts”).
Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
another and, with the application of ingenuity and elbow grease, to significant and even unexpected discoveries. Isn’t this exactly what happened with the construction of Exit? 8 – Actually, Colorni explained, the cognitive process is based on the five senses along with a series of forms—categories—of associative and interpretive criteria that are traditional, or acquired through learning and experience. It allows us to master determined phenomena, to learn to break them down and put them back together so we can use them for our own purposes. It is also true that refuting previous erroneous methods and results allows women and men to acquire new ways of seeing and therefore new competencies. In this way new and ingeniously developed acquisitions can eventually lead to further discoveries. For this same reason it is also necessary to question past knowledge in the light of both the developmental processes we experience and our observations of our surroundings.25 Behind the scenes in Hirschman’s brief book, therefore, I believe we can glimpse Colorni’s theoretical and methodological conclusions as well as his elaborating skills, at once liberating and combinatory. In fact, his bold hand can be seen as well — especially in the move from the particular to the general and thus in establishing the sphere of application, which (in any case) had to be delimited.26 Furthermore, once the underlying points of 25 Colorni and Spinelli 2019; Colorni 2020; Hirschman 1995a; Meldolesi 2020, p. 85-7. 26 In the sense that it could not (and must not) be allowed to fall back into the logic of the system (as numerous “holistic” commentators would instead have preferred—both those who were critical and those who presumed to further fill out the logical scheme). The publication of Exit “gave rise to a momentum of hope […] partly fueled by the illusion that economics and politics could be reshaped – a common interdisciplinary aspiration”. “There was some expectation at the time as to how Hirschman would pursue his path. When he published ‘The
departure have been clarified (and their meaning carefully generalized), different analytical situations can be gradually and patiently discovered — and our knowledge increased step by step. I can say without doubt — it was exciting for me to recognize these correspondences along the logical path of the construction of Exit.27 In fact, Albert by now knew to perfection many specific details of the matter, but he had to rise above them to be able to focus on the overall view that they suggested. And he therefore had to identify the initial assumptions in order to generate this “elevation,” and then translate it gradually into a text that was full of ideas but stingy with words (to make it more effective, he told me).28 This, if I am not mistaken, is the origin of the meticulously detailed and exciting “merry-goround” that supports Exit; what gives it its unusual and sulfurous (or divine, depending on your taste) air. 9 – We need to establish whether all this actually helps us reread Exit. My answer is that it does — especially if we take account of Hirschman’s behavior once he arrived in the United States (a more individualist world than continental Europe, as he recognized in a note from Algiers written to
Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the course of Economic Development’ (1973 […]) some wondered what connection this had with Exit. ‘They are two different things’, he answered (private conversation, September 1988)”. Meldolesi 1995, p. 148 and n. 13. 27 It was almost like the long-awaited puncturing of the last thin wall separating two tunnels, laboriously dug in alternation from opposite sides of a mountain. 28 The book was written at Stanford in 1968 while the world was being “turned upside down.” It was only later that Albert became aware of the largely irrational drive at the basis of Exit. In fact, its ultimate origin lies in Albert’s remorse for having abandoned the Jewish community of Berlin immediately after the advent of Hitler — as its author explained in the preface to the German edition of the book (1974).
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Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
his wife Sarah during the war29), where he silently undertook a long intellectual battle (working on the Marshall Plan, in development economics, and in prominent American universities) relying fundamentally on his own strength, and over time learned to distinguish case by case what was worth letting the reader know about and what was instead better kept under wraps.30 Of course none of this is much help to the critic trying to reconstruct the genesis of his work. And yet.. Just as it was possible, a quarter century ago, to retrace the formative process of Exit (in a certain sense following nothing but a few crumbs31), it is now possible to set up a similar operation regarding the influence of Eugenio Colorni. In fact, when it came to representing Exit in his selective anthology Come complicare l’economia [How to Complicate Economics] (1988), Hirschman unhesitatingly chose (as I can testify) the first chapter: “Introduction and Doctrinal Background.” And indeed, rereading this text yet again (but with the problem just raised in mind), it is possible in my view to “catch in the act” the problem that interests us—overcoming (at least in part) a long-troubling ambiguity between what is said and what is not said. Understandably, having to present a new theory it is logical that Hirschman distances himself from the standard position of the economist—the general economic equilibrium of Walrasian tradition. It almost goes without saying, moreover,
that he should recognize, as he does at the end of a footnote,32 that his formulation is not applicable in conditions of perfect competition (in which the model is self-contained), but rather requires market forms that are oligopolistic or monopolistic, reflecting the imperfect competition that actually exists. And that in the end it raises a crucial issue—the possibility that recovery mechanisms exist with respect to yield decreases, even random ones. This is the little idea that peeps out.
29 30 September 1945, cit. in Adelman 2013, p.237-38. But this was also the source of Albert’s (contrary) growing receptiveness in his gradual “pro-social” return to Europe in the 1980s—especially in France, Italy and finally in Germany.
10 – “Under any economic, social, or political system,”—thus begins the first chapter of Exit33—“individual, business firms and organizations in general are subject to lapses from efficient, rational law-abiding, virtuous, or otherwise functional behavior. No matter how well a society’s basic institutions are devised, failures of some actors to live up to the behavior which is expected of them are bound to occur, if only for all kinds of accidental reasons. Each society learns to live with a certain amount of such dysfunctional or mis-behavior; but lest the misbehavior feed of itself and lead to general decay, society must be able to marshal from within itself forces which will make as many of the faltering actors as possible revert to the behavior required for its proper functioning. This book undertakes initially a reconnaissance of these forces as they operate in the economy; the concepts to be developed will, however, be found be applicable not only to economic operators such as business firms, but to a wide variety of noneconomic organizations and situations.” It is notable that in this “Doctrinal Background”
30 If I’m not mistaken, this is the origin of Hirschman’s famous “half truths” (1984; now in 1986, p. 4-5) and of his well known difficulty in “telling all” –-almost as if he had to protect the “secrets of the metier” (a word etymologically linked, in fact, to ‘mystery’!)
32 P. 4, but taken up again on pp. 9 and 21.
31 Meldolesi 1995, Chap. 6.
33 HIrschman 1970, p. 1.
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Albert doesn’t even try to question the (indeed well-fortified) logic of general economic equilibrium.34 He limits himself to discussing the practical relevance of the conditions of perfect competition (and the resulting attitudes of the economists trained in this tradition). In this way he opens a collateral passage with respect to the current culture of economics (used here as a limiting term), while distancing himself from it; or, conversely, he criticizes it implicitly, while making use of it.35 This is in essence Colorni’s relation between the critic and the linchpin).36 It was in that space, generally overlooked by the profession, that Hirschman found the conditions to cultivate his particular idea—observed directly in the field. So it is clear that Albert intended to theorize on an abstract level about the existence (or not) of a recovery mechanism that he encountered in the real world (the one that did not work properly in the case of the Nigerian railways); that he managed to carve out at a theoretical level a specific environment in which this was actually possible;37 34 Even though, following this and in another context, he would describe its rise as the profession’s defensive reaction to the nineteenth-century interest in the irrational (Hirschman 1986a; Meldolesi 1987). 35 In other words, as a starting point Hirschman adhered strictly to traditional economic logic because he wanted to be understood (even) by economists; but at the same time he showed that a small variation in the assumptions of the basic model of general economic equilibrium opened to view an entire field of ideas. The strength of the argument lies precisely in the ability to hold at the same time this double level of reasoning, which until then had been unexplored. And of course the opinions of Kenneth Arrow et al. printed on the back cover sound like a guarantee—even to the ear of an economist. 36 “Even though his writings are anything but mainstream,” Hirschman also wrote of Thomas Shelling (1989, p. 162-63) “he hardly ever writes in an adversarial, disputatious tone […]. Tom refrains from the imprecations because he has absolutely no use for the related activity: the construction of an alternative paradigm. He does not want to fall into the trap of exchanging one straitjacket for another.” 37 “The performance of a firm or an organization is assumed to be subject to deterioration for unspecified, random causes, which are neither so compelling nor durable as to prevent a return to previous per-
that his intention was to take what he had found to a high level of abstraction and generality, primarily by means of the opposition between two “distinctions”: exit and voice (which respectively represent, in a stylized way, the modes of economic action and political action); that once this road had been opened he could turn around and see how he himself, along with a group of colleagues, had already observed the concrete existence of the conditions that permitted such a construction;38 that the issue cannot (and therefore must not) be resolved within the economist’s model tout court; that, on the contrary, it has the advantage of putting economics and politics in communication with each other; that theorizing about it is not the province of a single discipline, but is in a certain sense located at the meeting point of several social disciplines; that to that end it is useful to determine, little by little, the possibility of acting through “trespassing” (carefully verifying the applicability in a certain context of a result obtained in another); that this is the origin of the surprising subtitle of the monograph—Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States39; and so on. In a half-century Exit has circulated widely within the social sciences—under the vigilant eye of its inventor as well as independently, from the widespread theoretical and practical application that followed its publication up to the equal level formance levels, provided managers direct their attention and energy to that task.” Hirschman 1970, p. 4. 38 Ibid, p. 10-5 and p. 18-9; e 1984, now in 1986, p. 12-4.”As is often the case with Hirschman, this argument implies two already familiar theses (from The Strateg y): the presence of slack in society […], and the notion that nonmarket forces are not necessarily less automatic than market driven ones” (Meldolesi 1995, p. 145). 39 As he once said to me with a devilish smile, it is a phrase that is “so encompassing” that it actually echoes The Origin of the Family, Private Ownership and the State by Friedrich Engels (1884; but which, I hasten to add, has nothing to do with the systemic pretensions of Marxism).
Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
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reached (belatedly) by the reinforcement model of exit-voice as compared with the so-called “hydraulic” model40 etc. Can we say, in conclusion, that Exit, along with the developments that followed it, effectively embodies what it is possible to build on a Colornian foundation beyond the already vast context that Colorni, in his time, managed to occupy? Could this awareness be the most suitable posthumous gift to Eugene and Albert, on the solemn occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of this extraordinary little book?
a cura di Luca Meldolesi, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. Elster J. (1982) “Trespasser”, London Review of Books, Sept. 16th Engels F. (1884) Der Urspung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Stats, Zurich. Hirschman A.O. (1954) “Economics and Investment Planning: Reflections Based on the Experience in Colombia” mimeo; now in A.O. Hirschman, A Bias, cit. 1971, Ch. 1. Hirschman A.O. (1958) The Strategy of Economic Development, New Heaven Conn., Yale Univ. Press. Hirschman A. O. (1963) Journeys toward Progress. Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America, New York, Twentieth Century Fund. Hirschman A. O. (1967) Development Projects Observed, Washington D.C., Brookings.
AA.VV. (2020) Mal di crescita. Italia Vulcanica n. 4, Luca Meldolesi, ed., Roma, Ide.. Adelman J. (2013) Worldly Philosopher. The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press.
Hirschman A. O. (1970) Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press; German tr. Abwanderung und Widerspruch, Tubinghen, Mohar, 1974.
Carella D. (1932) “L’estetica di Benedetto Croce di Eugenio Colorni,” Il Saggiatore, iii, 5, luglio.
Hirschman A. O. (1971) A Bias for Hope. Essays on Development and Latin America, New Haven (Conn.), Yale University Press.
Colorni E. (1932) L’estetica di Benedetto Croce, Milano, “La Cultura.”
Hirschman A. O. (1973) “The Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the course of Economic Development”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, November.
Colorni E. (1935) “Prefazione,” “Nota bio-bibliografica” and “Esposizione antologica del sistema leibniziano,” to Goffredo Guglielmo Leibnitz, La Monadologia, cit. Colorni E. (1937) “Giustificazione,” typescript; now in Eugenio Colorni “La malattia filosofica” cit., 2020, Chap. 2. Colorni E. (1939) “Apologo su quattro modi di filosofare”, typescript; ora in Eugenio Colorni “La malattia filosofica” cit., 2020, Chap. 6. Colorni E. (1975) Scritti, N. Bobbio ed., Firenze, La Nuova Italia. Colorni E. (1998) Il coraggio dell’innocenza, L. Meldolesi ed., Napoli, La Città del Sole. Colorni E. (2009) La malattia della metafisica. Scritti filosofici e autobiografici, G. Cerchiai ed., Torino, Einaudi. Colorni E. (2020) “La malattia filosofica” ed altri scritti, L. Meldolesi ed., Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. Colorni E. e Spinelli A. (2018) I dialoghi di Ventotene, 40 As I tried to clarify in Eppur si può! (2020a).
Hirschman A. O. (1981) Essays in Trespassing: Economics to Politics and Beyond, Cambridge U.K., Cambridge Univ. Press. Hirschman A. O. (1982) Shifting Involvements. Private Interest and Public Action, Princeton N.J., Princeton Univ. Press; It. tr. Bologna, Il Mulino, 1995. Hirschman A.O. (1984) “A Dissenter’s Confession: Revisiting The Strategy of Economic Development”, in G.M. Meier and D. Seers eds., Pioneers in Development, Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press.
Hirschman A.O. (1986) Rival Views of Market Societies and Other Recent Essays. New York, Viking. Hirschman A.O. (1986a) “The Concept of Interest: from Euphemism to Tautology”, Ch 2 of Albert O. Hirschman Rival Views, cit.
Fifty years since Exit, "Voice, and Loyalty" by Albert O. Hirschman. A personalized interpretation.
Hirschman A.O. (1988) Come complicare l’economia, L. Meldolesi ed., Bologna, Il Mulino. Hirschman A.O. (1988a) Preface to Entwicklung, Markt und Moral, Munchen, Hauser. Hirschman A.O. (1989) “Thomas Schelling”, in R. Zekhauser ed. “Distinguished Fellow: Reflections on Thomas Schelling”, Journal of Economic Perspective, n. 2 (spring). Hirschman A.O. (1995) A Propensity to Self-Subversion, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press. Hirschman A.O. (1995a) “Doubt and Antifascist Action in Italy 1936-1938”, Ch. 9 of Albert O. Hirschman A Propensity to Self-Subversion, cit. Hirschman A.O. (1995b) “A Hidden Ambition”, Ch. 12 of Albert O. Hirschman A Propensity to Self-Subversion, cit. Hirschman A.O. (1998) Crossing Boundaries. Selected Writings, New York, Zone. Leibniz G. G. (1935) La Monadologia, Eugenio Colorni ed., Firenze, Sansoni. Meldolesi L. (1987) “Per una nuova ipotesi interpretativa della storia del pensiero economico moderno”, Quaderni di storia dell’economia politica, n. 1-2. Meldolesi L. (1994) Alla scoperta del possibile. Il mondo sorprendente di Albert O. Hirschman, Bologna, il Mulino. English translation: Discovering the Possible. The Suprising World of Albert O. Hirschman,
Notre Dame (Ill.), Univ. of Notre Dame Press 1995. Spanish translation: En bùsqueda de lo posible: el mundo sorprendente de Albert O. Hirschman, México, Fondo de Cultura Econòmica, 1997. Meldolesi L. ed. (1997) Six Studies on Exit and Voice and the Actual Working of the Market Economy, mimeo. Meldolesi L. (2013) Imparare ad imparare. Saggi di incontro e di passione all’origine di una possibile metamorfosi. Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. Meldolesi L. (2020) “Introduzione” a Eugenio Colorni “La malattia filosofica” cit. Meldolesi L. (2020a) Eppur si può! Saggi ed istruzioni autobiografiche, e “filo-possibiliste”. , Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino. O’Donnell G. (1986) “On the Fruitful Convergences of Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty and Shifting Involvements: Reflections from the Recent Argentine Experience”, in Foxley A., McPherson M.S. and O’Donnell G. ed., Development, Democracy, and the Art of Trespassing. Essays in Honor of Albert. O. Hirschman, Notre Dame (Ind.), Notre Dame University Press. Times Literary Supplement (1955) “The Hundred Most Influential Books since the War”. October 6.
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