TBH it’s hard to take an L when John comes out swinging like that. Not much space to save face and walk away. Winning the argument is more important to Magness’s career and self conception.
But when the argument is unwinnable because the ground one has chosen to defend is dumb and wrong, bailing out is still the dominant strategy. Sometimes people just can't, I guess.
This beat down of the 'Chris Rufo of economic history' is necessary work. Kill fraud at the source because we'll likely hear PM's screed uncritically referred to at the next round of school board meetings, county councils, media (name your culture war venue) etc. "which was published in the prestigious JPE" Thank you for your service.
It is so fucking hard to read, but yes. It's like having to argue with the hordes of free market bros pushing the lie that the Nazis were left wing, agshually. It is so pervasive that it is hard to not simply loose faith in humanity.
Subscribed for a year after this post. I'm an econ person and was surprised with that paper's publication in a prestigious journal. I figure you're not surprised at all. Thanks for making its issues salient.
It is notable that the acknowledgments to the article show that it didn’t pass through a single decent historian of economic thought’s hands. Or if it did, none would agree to have their name attached. I would not be very surprised if Uhlig circumvented the regular peer review process—you should ask Magness to show the peer review reports.
It’s always gotta be fucking economists (I say, as an economist). Something about taking like three semesters of statistics makes these people think they can just roll into any other discipline and reveal truths its own scholars are too blind to see, and nevermind understanding what you’re talking about.
This seems to be an rather academic, inside-baseball dispute. It's always important to set the record straight, but Phil Magness seems too obscure a figure to waste time on. This type of public disagreement is not why I read Unpopular Front. That said, I find John's lack of hesitation in directly and publicly rebutting Magness admirable. However, the whole question seems better suited to an academic journal.
The journal that published this pile of horseshit is one of the most prestigious in the field of economics. Holding such institutions to account is a necessary public service.
Such a weird argument that guy is trying to make. You know you've made it if people don't directly cite you. In library librarianship we have something called the 5 laws. They're by Ranganathan but no one cites the lectures in which he discussed them. They're just Ranganathan's laws or the 5 laws of library science. It's like he's overly motivated by h indexes.
I would not ordinarily bother to point out a typo, but this one is significant. You write "Marianne Weber, Marx’s wife" when clearly you mean "Max's wife." Excuse my pettifogging.
There is also the point that anybody that people are rejecting in whole or in part is not obscure, unknown or unimportant. E.g., the strong motte-and-bailey version of their claim is that Marx was obscure and unimportant before the Russian Revolution, but you can't survey the period between 1880 and 1917 and note historians, biographers and philosophers agreeing that Marx and Marxist thought were rejected by "the majority of Englishmen" or among economists etc. without conceding in some sense that Marx was in fact not at all obscure or unknown. Lack of adoption is not lack of importance--you wouldn't be able to talk about people refusing or rejecting Marx if they had never heard of the guy.
Yeah, Phil Magness posted a quote from a book describing Weber arguing with Spengler where he accusses Spengler of ripping off Marx like some kind of trump card because the conversation happened in 1920, but to me, the very fact that a conservative like Spengler was ripping off Marx tells you everything you need to know.
“...the irony here is that the Bolsheviks were in fact a relatively minor tendency within the larger context of European Marxism up until the Revolution. The knock on Marxism from radical proletarians was often that it was too parliamentary, too reformist, too political.”
^^^important to remember; the Bolsheviks emerged from a faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Now why would radical Marxists in pre-revolutionary Russia have a party with a name like that? Unless, of course, they were consciously placing themselves within an existing European tradition of Marxist (or at least partially Marxist) political parties/factions/organizations who used words like “Social Democratic” and “Labour” in their names....
Today, a political party with that name would be associated with a broader center-left tendency. Or, perhaps, the name would be a sick joke, e.g. Russia’s own Liberal Democratic Party.
What does the endgame of a Twitter beef look like? This dude's thing seems so fundamentally dishonest, and he has several books and a professorship--has anyone ever caved and admitted they were wrong?
I don't even know if Twitter beefs writ large are the issue so much as Magness' entire career being based on being a professional bad-faith artist and troll in service of a particular ideology (which is why his being allowed to launder his nonsense in a supposedly reputable journal was to toxic). His job is basically to not back down, which is also why lying so transparently isn't really an obstacle, and in general, he'll archive whatever shots he takes or are taking at him, strip them of context, and revive them as a cudgel years later when everyone else has moved on. In this case, though, he might have engaged with someone with less to lose than he has (and I don't mean that as a criticism, it's a reflection on John's readership and lack of affiliation with a university or think tank), and so there's incentive for John to avoid confrontation.
It's funny, because, I do find myself thinking periodically, why isn't there a more active conservative presence in academia? Why isn't the conservative movement putting up thinkers and texts that we can actually use and engage? You can see real hunger for it in the German context--just witness the "rediscovery" of Schmitt, Gehlen, and the "return" to Heidegger in the 80s. Derrida engaged Schmitt, Adorno engaged Gehlen, and these dudes were actual Nazis. It's like--this is it? This your best shot? Your forefathers were trying to come up with a viable alternative to historical materialism. You're putting your thumb on an ngram to juke the results and then baiting people to fight you on Twitter?
It's like a perfect storm of every shitty contemporary academic pseudo-trend taken altogether: the digital humanities, the social-media-fication of the academic profession, the way that the percevied dominance of diversity initiatives creates a sub market for bad faith conservative operators...
My theory on this is that any truly rigorous intellectual conservatism would be too parochial, particularistic, and just plain *weird* to even be noticed by most scholars---let alone, most laymen.
Consequently, almost all of the conservative “intellectuals” both the broadly liberal-left academic establishment and the er, normie masses have any exposure to are shallow, dishonest, and are basically the same sorts of mean-spirited polemists who have long been popular on the Right---except in this case, they aspire to more highbrow things like triggering the libs via fascist apologetics in their capacity as a fellow at the Claremont Institute.
I think Corey Robin argues persuasively that the defense of existing social hierarchy just can't be founded on a universally legitimate intellectual basis anymore--the last gasp of that was probably Charles Murray, in the 90s. The out and out conservatives that are still read--I keep coming back to Schmitt and Gehlen just because I've been dipping into them recently--don't make those arguments, and position themselves instead as spotters of contradictions within liberalism itself.
I agree, similarly, with Joseph North--while I'm quoting people--that the actual political content of academic work often has a totally different politics than it claims too. He argues that New Historicism, which in its earlier programmatic texts claimed to be on the left is obviously conservative, and in the German context, you can witness the totally depoliticized readings of Adorno and Benjamin that have been dominant for decades, that basically treated them as metaphysicians.
This is one of the most powerful examples of someone just flat-out refusing to take the L and move on.
TBH it’s hard to take an L when John comes out swinging like that. Not much space to save face and walk away. Winning the argument is more important to Magness’s career and self conception.
But when the argument is unwinnable because the ground one has chosen to defend is dumb and wrong, bailing out is still the dominant strategy. Sometimes people just can't, I guess.
This beat down of the 'Chris Rufo of economic history' is necessary work. Kill fraud at the source because we'll likely hear PM's screed uncritically referred to at the next round of school board meetings, county councils, media (name your culture war venue) etc. "which was published in the prestigious JPE" Thank you for your service.
It is so fucking hard to read, but yes. It's like having to argue with the hordes of free market bros pushing the lie that the Nazis were left wing, agshually. It is so pervasive that it is hard to not simply loose faith in humanity.
Subscribed for a year after this post. I'm an econ person and was surprised with that paper's publication in a prestigious journal. I figure you're not surprised at all. Thanks for making its issues salient.
It is notable that the acknowledgments to the article show that it didn’t pass through a single decent historian of economic thought’s hands. Or if it did, none would agree to have their name attached. I would not be very surprised if Uhlig circumvented the regular peer review process—you should ask Magness to show the peer review reports.
It’s always gotta be fucking economists (I say, as an economist). Something about taking like three semesters of statistics makes these people think they can just roll into any other discipline and reveal truths its own scholars are too blind to see, and nevermind understanding what you’re talking about.
Yes, and bibliometrics is an actual field with history and methodology. Not just something you do on a whim.
This seems to be an rather academic, inside-baseball dispute. It's always important to set the record straight, but Phil Magness seems too obscure a figure to waste time on. This type of public disagreement is not why I read Unpopular Front. That said, I find John's lack of hesitation in directly and publicly rebutting Magness admirable. However, the whole question seems better suited to an academic journal.
The journal that published this pile of horseshit is one of the most prestigious in the field of economics. Holding such institutions to account is a necessary public service.
Such a weird argument that guy is trying to make. You know you've made it if people don't directly cite you. In library librarianship we have something called the 5 laws. They're by Ranganathan but no one cites the lectures in which he discussed them. They're just Ranganathan's laws or the 5 laws of library science. It's like he's overly motivated by h indexes.
I would not ordinarily bother to point out a typo, but this one is significant. You write "Marianne Weber, Marx’s wife" when clearly you mean "Max's wife." Excuse my pettifogging.
That guy is so unbelievable, thanks for taking it on John. It's impossible to look away!
You are cursed with the gift of polemic.
There is also the point that anybody that people are rejecting in whole or in part is not obscure, unknown or unimportant. E.g., the strong motte-and-bailey version of their claim is that Marx was obscure and unimportant before the Russian Revolution, but you can't survey the period between 1880 and 1917 and note historians, biographers and philosophers agreeing that Marx and Marxist thought were rejected by "the majority of Englishmen" or among economists etc. without conceding in some sense that Marx was in fact not at all obscure or unknown. Lack of adoption is not lack of importance--you wouldn't be able to talk about people refusing or rejecting Marx if they had never heard of the guy.
Yeah, Phil Magness posted a quote from a book describing Weber arguing with Spengler where he accusses Spengler of ripping off Marx like some kind of trump card because the conversation happened in 1920, but to me, the very fact that a conservative like Spengler was ripping off Marx tells you everything you need to know.
“...the irony here is that the Bolsheviks were in fact a relatively minor tendency within the larger context of European Marxism up until the Revolution. The knock on Marxism from radical proletarians was often that it was too parliamentary, too reformist, too political.”
^^^important to remember; the Bolsheviks emerged from a faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Now why would radical Marxists in pre-revolutionary Russia have a party with a name like that? Unless, of course, they were consciously placing themselves within an existing European tradition of Marxist (or at least partially Marxist) political parties/factions/organizations who used words like “Social Democratic” and “Labour” in their names....
Today, a political party with that name would be associated with a broader center-left tendency. Or, perhaps, the name would be a sick joke, e.g. Russia’s own Liberal Democratic Party.
Who must go? Magnes must go!
What does the endgame of a Twitter beef look like? This dude's thing seems so fundamentally dishonest, and he has several books and a professorship--has anyone ever caved and admitted they were wrong?
I don't even know if Twitter beefs writ large are the issue so much as Magness' entire career being based on being a professional bad-faith artist and troll in service of a particular ideology (which is why his being allowed to launder his nonsense in a supposedly reputable journal was to toxic). His job is basically to not back down, which is also why lying so transparently isn't really an obstacle, and in general, he'll archive whatever shots he takes or are taking at him, strip them of context, and revive them as a cudgel years later when everyone else has moved on. In this case, though, he might have engaged with someone with less to lose than he has (and I don't mean that as a criticism, it's a reflection on John's readership and lack of affiliation with a university or think tank), and so there's incentive for John to avoid confrontation.
It's funny, because, I do find myself thinking periodically, why isn't there a more active conservative presence in academia? Why isn't the conservative movement putting up thinkers and texts that we can actually use and engage? You can see real hunger for it in the German context--just witness the "rediscovery" of Schmitt, Gehlen, and the "return" to Heidegger in the 80s. Derrida engaged Schmitt, Adorno engaged Gehlen, and these dudes were actual Nazis. It's like--this is it? This your best shot? Your forefathers were trying to come up with a viable alternative to historical materialism. You're putting your thumb on an ngram to juke the results and then baiting people to fight you on Twitter?
It's like a perfect storm of every shitty contemporary academic pseudo-trend taken altogether: the digital humanities, the social-media-fication of the academic profession, the way that the percevied dominance of diversity initiatives creates a sub market for bad faith conservative operators...
My theory on this is that any truly rigorous intellectual conservatism would be too parochial, particularistic, and just plain *weird* to even be noticed by most scholars---let alone, most laymen.
Consequently, almost all of the conservative “intellectuals” both the broadly liberal-left academic establishment and the er, normie masses have any exposure to are shallow, dishonest, and are basically the same sorts of mean-spirited polemists who have long been popular on the Right---except in this case, they aspire to more highbrow things like triggering the libs via fascist apologetics in their capacity as a fellow at the Claremont Institute.
I think Corey Robin argues persuasively that the defense of existing social hierarchy just can't be founded on a universally legitimate intellectual basis anymore--the last gasp of that was probably Charles Murray, in the 90s. The out and out conservatives that are still read--I keep coming back to Schmitt and Gehlen just because I've been dipping into them recently--don't make those arguments, and position themselves instead as spotters of contradictions within liberalism itself.
Whoops--deleted and reposting here, for clarity:
I agree, similarly, with Joseph North--while I'm quoting people--that the actual political content of academic work often has a totally different politics than it claims too. He argues that New Historicism, which in its earlier programmatic texts claimed to be on the left is obviously conservative, and in the German context, you can witness the totally depoliticized readings of Adorno and Benjamin that have been dominant for decades, that basically treated them as metaphysicians.
"Marianne Weber, Marx’s wife" should be changed to "Max's wife" before you engender a 3 part essay about how you get basic historical facts wrong.
i fixed it
Just to clarify, the 3 part essay thing was meant as a dig on Magness, not you.