A Review of the Book
Unemployment in History:
Economic Thought and Public Policy
by John A. Garraty
Robert Clancy
[Originally published with the title, "Pyramids,
Public Works
and the Causes of Mass Unemployment".
Reprinted from Land & Liberty, November-December, 1978]
Unemployment has plagued societies from early days to the present. A
new book attempts to put it all together and the author believes his
is the first that covers unemployment in history.
John Garraty is a Professor of History at Columbia University. He
tackles his job as a study of "how the condition of being without
work has been perceived and dealt with" throughout history. It is
evident that it has been a pervasive condition that has troubled all
societies, ancient and modern.
The pyramid building in Egypt and the bread and circuses of Rome
indicate a large-scale unemployment problem. In feudal days people
were more or less fixed in place but as towns grew, so did
unemployment. In the 16th century in England and Europe, vagrants,
beggars, loafers and thieves swarmed city and country. Thomas More had
an inkling that this was caused by the enclosure of the common lands,
but nobody was paying much attention. The main thing that was noticed
was that this was a great nuisance. Not just stealing, but begging too
was counted a crime punishable by flogging and even by death.
In the grey dawn of political economy in the 17th century, some
thinkers finally concluded that a great potential for production was
being wasted and that those without work ought to be put to work --
but nobody seemed to have a clear idea as to how to do it.
Some public works programs were instituted and then the workhouses
were started, no better than loathsome prisons. These programs always
cost more than they yielded -- yet they were kept up. For the idea
persisted through tube 19th century that the poor were inferior
beings, responsible for their own poverty, and that they were not
working because they were lazy. Thus it became more important to put
them to work to teach them a lesson than to be productive -- and
ironically, they were to be kept poor lest they become strong and
insolent and indulge in riotous living (that was only for the lords).
One wonders why the poor and unemployed tolerated for so long being
treated with such inhuman contempt.
Garraty provides us with a fair summary of Henry George's answer to
poverty and unemployment and makes it sound plausible, then simply
concludes (historically):
"But, despite his argument that his reform would
injure no class and cause no social disruption, no government dared
to enact the single tax."
In the 20th century, employment received increasing attention. It
became virtually the world's number one problem with the Great
Depression of the 1930's, and Keynes advanced his theories of deficit
financing in his General Theory, which soon became popular. Applying
Keynesian economics, one only had to watch the balance between
unemployment and inflation. Economists became Keynesians and it was
thought that the problem was at last solved.
But then came the 1970's. Inflation and unemployment increased
together, baffling economists and statesmen and undermining Keynes. We
are now said to be in the "post-Keynes era," and economic
theory is currently in disarray.
Finally, in the 19th century, some thinkers looked for general causes
of poverty and unemployment. There was Malthus who found the cause in
the tendency of population to increase beyond the means of substance,
and the remedy was to let the surplus die off. However, even the very
poor were unwilling to "die philanthropically for the greater
glory of the principles of Malthus," as one critic put it; indeed
they became restless and troublesome.
Other theories were advanced. Some saw the evil in the mechanization
of the Industrial Revolution which put men out of work; others saw the
remedy in cooperative communities in which work and wealth would be
shared; and of course there was Karl Marx, who saw the evil in the
entire capitalist system.
Garraty has made a significant contribution by undertaking this
survey. It is hard to understand why it hasn't been done before.
The theories about unemployment and the remedies for it range through
punishment for idleness, uncontrollable natural forces, public charity
and state control. The only one who seems to have had the idea of
abolishing involuntary unemployment by opening up natural
opportunities was Henry George. Maybe we had better go back to him and
start daring to apply his ideas.
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