Abstract
The aim of this article is to explore an emotional divide within the critical discourse on capitalism in the United States in the period from the late 1950s to the 1970s. By using the examples of John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert Lekachman, the article shows how an older generation of liberal economists used irony and sarcasm to create an air of emotional distance and disengagement between the critic and the subject at hand. This mode corresponded with the emotional regime of “American cool.” In the late 1960s, however, a younger generation of radical economists started to intervene. The rhetoric of this group was distinctively more emotional. Although the younger generation of radicals, like the older liberals, mostly belonged to the white middle class, the new global identity made it possible to overcome the emotional restraints of “American cool” and enabled the use of emotions and affectedness as a discursive tool in the fight for social and economic justice at home. Yet, the fact that the radical emotionality was linked to the hope for revolutionary change made it difficult to make compromises and agree to less radical reforms.
References
“AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions.” 2012. American Historical Review 117: 1487–531, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/117.5.1487.Search in Google Scholar
Bernstein, R. 1989. “A Feud Between the Nation and the New Republic.” New York Times, 14 December, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/14/arts/a-feud-between-the-nation-and-the-new-republic.html.Search in Google Scholar
Boddice, R. 2017. “The History of Emotions: Past, Present, Future.” Revista de Estudios Sociales 62: 10–5. https://doi.org/10.7440/res62.2017.02.Search in Google Scholar
Borstelmann, T. 2012. The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality. America in the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400839704Search in Google Scholar
Boutin, A. 2012. “Rethinking the Flâneur: Flânerie and the Senses.” Dix-Neuf 16 (2): 124–32. https://doi.org/10.1179/dix.2012.16.2.01.Search in Google Scholar
Burgin, A. 2012. The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674067431Search in Google Scholar
Chernow, R. 1978. “Robert Lekachman: The Irreverent Economist.” Change 10 (4): 32–7, https://doi.org/10.1080/00091383.1978.10569409.Search in Google Scholar
Clowson, P., and A. Kaufman. 1975. “Comrades Parker, Sherry, and Thomas.” URPE Newsletter 7 (1): 31–2.Search in Google Scholar
Cottier, M. 2023. “‘Dear Professor’: Exploring Lay Comments to Milton Friedman.” Modern Intellectual History 20 (2): 512–35, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244322000245.Search in Google Scholar
Doering-Manteuffel, A., and L. Raphael. 2012. Nach dem Boom: Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970, 3rd ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.10.13109/9783666300134Search in Google Scholar
Fraser, N. 2017. “From Progressive Neoliberalism to Trump – And beyond.” American Affairs 1 (4): 46–64.Search in Google Scholar
Freeman, C. 2020. “Feeling Neoliberal.” Feminist Anthropology 1 (1): 71–88. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12010.Search in Google Scholar
Frevert, U. 2011. Emotions in History – Lost and Found. The Natalie Zemon Davis Annual Lectures Series. Budapest: Central European University Press.10.1515/9786155225031Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K. 1967a. “Resolving Our Vietnam Predicament.” Playboy (December).Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K. 1967b. The New Industrial State. [7th print.]. Boston: Houghton.Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K. 1973. Economics and the Public Purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K. 1981. A Life in Our Times: Memoirs. London: Andre Deutsch.Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K. 2010. “The Affluent Society.” In The Affluent Society and Other Writings: 1952–1967. The Library of America 208, edited by J. K. Galbraith, 345–605. New York: Library of America.Search in Google Scholar
Galbraith, J. K., E. Kuh, and L. C. Thurow. 1971. “The Galbraith Plan to Promote the Minorities.” New York Times Magazine (22 August): 9, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/08/22/90688068.html?pageNumber=275.Search in Google Scholar
Gerstle, G. 2022. The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780197519646.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Gintis, H. 1979. “The New Industrial State: Reconsideration.” New Republic, 1 December.Search in Google Scholar
Häberlen, J. C. 2018. The Emotional Politics of the Alternative Left: West Germany, 1968–1984. New Studies in European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108559201Search in Google Scholar
Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199283262.003.0010Search in Google Scholar
Heilbroner, R. L. 1967. “Capitalism Without Tears.” New York Review of Books (29 June), https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/06/29/capitalism-without-tears/.Search in Google Scholar
Hill Collins, P. 2020. Intersectionality Key Concepts, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity.Search in Google Scholar
Hinckley, B. 1969. “Personal Recollection of the URPE Conference.” URPE Newsletter 1 (3): 14.Search in Google Scholar
Lanfranco, S. 1973. “Anthem Anathema.” URPE Newsletter 4-5 (2): 4–6.Search in Google Scholar
Lekachman, R. 1964. “Introduction.” In Keynes’ General Theory: Reports of Three Decades, edited by R. Lekachman, 1–10. New York: St Martin’s Press.10.1007/978-1-349-81807-5_1Search in Google Scholar
Lekachman, R. 1976. Economists at Bay: Why the Experts Will Never Solve Your Problems. New York: McGraw-Hill.Search in Google Scholar
Lekachman, R. 1982. Greed Is Not Enough: Reaganomics. New York: Pantheon.Search in Google Scholar
Mannheim, K. 1952. “The Problem of Generations.” In Essays, edited by K. Mannheim, 276–322. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Mata, T. 2005. “Dissent in Economics: Making Radical Political Economics and Post Keynesian Economics, 1960–1980.” London School of Economics and Political Science. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/2691/1/U615640.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
McClure, D. R. 2021. Winter in America: A Cultural History of Neoliberalism, from the Sixties to the Reagan Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.10.5149/northcarolina/9781469664682.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Mirowski, P., and D. Plehwe, eds. 2009. The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674054264Search in Google Scholar
Mudge, S. L. 2018. Leftism Reinvented: Western Parties from Socialism to Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674984837Search in Google Scholar
O’Connor, J. 1972. “Notes on ‘Utopian’ Economics.” URPE Newsletter 4 (2): 13–7.Search in Google Scholar
Parker, R. 2005. John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux.Search in Google Scholar
Plamper, J. 2010. “The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns.” History and Theory 49 (2): 237–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2303.2010.00541.x.Search in Google Scholar
Plamper, J. 2012. Geschichte Und Gefühl: Grundlagen Der Emotionsgeschichte. München: Siedler.Search in Google Scholar
Plehwe, D., Q. Slobodian, and P. Mirowski, eds. 2020. Nine Lives of Neoliberalism. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar
Quick, P. 1973. “Sexual Politics.” URPE Newsletter 4 (1): 15.10.1086/arlisnanews.1.4_5.27945189Search in Google Scholar
Radosh, R., and M. N. Rothbard, eds. 1972. A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.Search in Google Scholar
Reddy, W. M. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511512001Search in Google Scholar
Reich, M. 2016. “Radical Economics in Historical Perspective.” Review of Radical Political Economics 25 (3): 43–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/048661349302500306.Search in Google Scholar
Rodgers, D. T. 2011. Age of Fracture. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rosenwein, B. H. 2010. “Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions.” Passions in Context. Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1: 1–32. https://doi.org/10.4000/cem.12557.Search in Google Scholar
Schumacher, E. F. 1973. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row.Search in Google Scholar
Simmel, G. 1950. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” In The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited by K. H. Wolff, 409–22. Glencoe: Free Press.Search in Google Scholar
Slobodian, Q. 2018. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/9780674919808Search in Google Scholar
Stearns, P. N. 1994. American Cool: Constructing a Twentieth-Century Emotional Style. The History of Emotions Series. New York: New York University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Strum, N., D. Ousley, C. Cass, S. Kahn, B. Bothamley, D. Crain, G. Katsificas, P. Bohmer, and J. Hardesty. 1975. “A Critique of the URPE National Conference.” URPE Newsletter 7 (1): 26–28.Search in Google Scholar
Stutsman, D. 1969. “A Parable of Pigs: The Inflation/Unemployment Dilemma.” URPE Newsletter 1 (2): 7–12.Search in Google Scholar
“The URPE National Anthem.” 1972. URPE Newsletter 4 (3): 1.Search in Google Scholar
Ther, P. 2016. Europe Since 1989: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Walpen, B. 2004. Die Offenen Feinde Und Ihre Gesellschaft: Eine Hegemonietheoretische Studie Zur Mont Pèlerin Society. Schriften zur Geschichte und Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Bd. 1. Hamburg: VSA.Search in Google Scholar
Williams, J. H. 1975. “And Get Some Advice.” URPE Newsletter 7 (1): 17.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
