Austrian Economics and Culture an Interview with Paul Cantor

Austrian Economics and Culture An Interview With Paul Cantor Spring 2001 — Volume 21, number 1 THE AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER Spring 2001 — Volume 21, Number 1 Copyright © 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528 phone (334) 321-2100; fax (334) 321-2119 email [email protected]; web www.mises.org The Austrian Economics Newsletter is published quarterly by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. An Interview With Paul Cantor AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS AND CULTURE AEN: Before we get to your work on popoular culture, let’s examine your literary project. CANTOR: The project of looking at literature with capitalist eyes began when I prepared a paper for a 1992 Mises Insti- tute conference, and won the prize for the best paper. But it’s something that I had been thinking about for years. I won- AUL ANTOR dered how I could put to use the training I had in Austrian P C economics within my own area of specialization. Dr. Cantor studied at Ludwig von AEN: The union of economics and literary criticism was Mises’s New York seminar before already well established in your profession? taking his B.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard. He is a professor of English at the University of Virginia, and the author CANTOR: Yes, in fact there seems to be an automatic of Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic identification: if you talk about economics and literature, and Empire (Cornell University Press, you have to be Marxist. By the mid-1980s, that point of view 1976), Creature and Creator: Myth- dominated literary criticism. making and English Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 1984), and, soon to be published, Gilligan By the late 1980s, however, Marxism had been discredited in Unbound: Popular Culture in the virtually every other intellectual endeavor. The collapse of Age of Globalization (Rowman real socialism in Eastern Europe was the final blow to the and Littlefield, 2001). theoretical and practical case for socialism. But here were literary critics who were Marxists and acting as if nothing had He is also the author of articles on literary criticism and economic happened. It would be like writing on literature and astron- theory in the Review of Austrian omy from a Ptolemaic perspective. Economics and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. I set out to show that it is possible to talk about literature and economics in ways that are not Marxist. For example, Dr. Cantor may be contacted via many Marxist critics were showing how literature often sup- email at [email protected]. He was interviewed during the February 2001 ports capitalist ideology. In fact, it seemed to me that many Mises Institute conference, “Liberty authors were programmatically left-wing and were seeking to and Public Life.” debunk the market economy. Shouldn’t we take notice of that LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE fact? And what about those writ- authority and prestige, and the should regret. This is a good indi- ers who understand market eco- old were denigrated. Instead of cation of how strong the anti- nomics? We should take notice of saving, housewives struggled to capitalist mentality is. These peo- their insights too. Hence, I spend as much money as possible. ple will praise anything that isn’t decided to turn the tables on the Hyperinflation led to a kind of capitalism. Left. hyperreality in which nothing has a fixed meaning. Society spun out I wrote an essay dealing with AEN: What was your first effort? of control. Percy Shelley, published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies. I CANTOR: It was a reinterpreta- This is all very canny on Mann’s showed that as a progressive in tion of Thomas Mann’s “Disor- part. He didn’t know Austrian the early nineteenth century, he der and Early Sorrow” in light of economics or Mises’s theory, but was rejecting the old mercantilist Misesian monetary theory. The as an artist, he had a feel for the system in Britain and arguing for results were quite fruitful. In his cultural consequences of infla- the gold standard. I argued that tion. But critics who are unfamil- even a real Marxist would have to iar with the literature on inflation see him as a progressive because THIS IS A GOOD might miss his point entirely. he was rejecting the remnants of feudalism. INDICATION By the way, Mann’s story also applies today. Some of the same But somehow the Marxist critics OF HOW cultural consequences—the under- missed this point. When critics STRONG THE mining of traditional authority, discuss his essay, “A Philosophical the subsidizing of youth—are all View of Reform,” they are utterly ANTICAPITALIST present. How much of this is due puzzled as to why he is arguing to expansive monetary policy is for the gold standard. But it is MENTALITY IS. up to the economist to discover. clear that he saw paper money as a tool of the well-connected rich. THESE PEOPLE AEN: Presumably even the Left Critics think of Shelley as a radi- should recognize the destructive cal whom they ought to like but WILL PRAISE power of inflation. they have no conception of what ANYTHING radicalism actually meant in those CANTOR: And yet it is some- days. It didn’t mean socialism as THAT ISN’T times difficult to predict their we know it now; it often meant likes and dislikes. Though literary laissez-faire. CAPITALISM. critics are mostly Marxists, they do not even accept Marx’s view AEN: What do you say to critics that the change from feudalism to who accuse you of doing the story, set in Germany at the time capitalism was a welcome event same thing to literature that the of the great inflation, the entire dictated by the forces of history. Marxists do, only with a different culture and economy is turned They still tend to romanticize the political agenda? upside down because of the soar- Middle Ages as some sort of glo- ing price of absolutely everything. rious precapitalist utopia. CANTOR: I hear that all the time. That criticism just rolls The people’s time preferences, as For example, the critics write off my back. The problem with Mises called them, were soaring essays on Shakespeare that dis- economic criticism of literature as well. In the inflationary envi- cuss the breakdown of the feudal is not that it takes account of ronment, the young had the order as if that is something we economics but that it uses bad 4 AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE left a vacuum that had to be filled. AEN: Yet, doesn’t it seem that there are intractable predisposi- tions toward socialism in the arts and humanities? CANTOR: Yes, and I’ve written about this. Under the influence of Mises’s Anti-Capitalistic Men- tality, I have examined the socialism of H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde, among others, and attempted to show why it has been in the interest of artists to endorse socialism. economic theory. Generally works far better than to demand THE FACT IS speaking, it is a mistake to aban- that they give up political inter- don economic and social criticism pretation entirely. Do you fight THIS: MOST to the Left, as the Right has done. fire with fire or with a vacuum? A perfect example is the old “New There is a real and justified PEOPLE COME Criticism” that wanted to separate impulse to study literature in a the study of literature from any- way that yields some greater TO LITERATURE thing in the real world. That’s understanding of the way we live. BECAUSE THEY ultimately a sterile and self- We shouldn’t tell students: “No, defeating position. don’t ask those questions!” We ARE TRYING should say, “Those questions are The fact is this: Most people come legitimate and here’s a perspec- TO LEARN to literature because they are try- tive you won’t get anywhere else.” ing to learn something about the SOMETHING world. They are interested in AEN: Are you suggesting that the important questions of economics pre-Marxist view is partially to ABOUT THE and politics. To attempt to bracket blame for the rise of the Marxian WORLD these subjects out and arrive at view? . some mythic purity is impoverish- ing. The answer isn’t to drain lit- CANTOR: Quite right. There’s a erature of economics and politics, reason Marxist criticism swept On Wilde in particular and his but to use the right kind of eco- the whole field. New Criticism’s essay, “The Soul of Man Under nomics and politics to arrive at a attempt to talk about the “genetic Socialism”: this piece is not often deeper understanding of the world fallacy,” “the heresy of para- talked about because it is too that literature presents us. phrase,” “a poem should not revealing. It was an attempt at mean but be”—this is all an sincerity by the most insincere To offer students an alternate attempt to sever literature from man who ever lived. And it repre- political–economic perspective any question of meaning. This sents a rare instance when a VOLUME 21, NO. 1 — SPRING 2001 5 LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE socialist author admits that his supply and demand. He doesn’t attachment to socialism is purely like the idea that a novel by aesthetic. Anthony Trollope should be suc- ADDITIONAL cessful because people like it. For example, Wilde says that he Why should common people be RESOURCES: finds poor people ugly, so there- able to judge Wilde? fore he would like someone to take care of them, which almost It is a very good essay to see just BOOKS: means to get rid of them.

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