The Weekly Sage hopes to regularly bring brief profiles of key contributors to thought and faith before a Christian audience for historical education and awareness of valuable resources.

Lionel Robbins

–          “It has always been the areas of relatively great productive power which have produced the great cultures. There is nothing in history which would warrant the belief that the arts of civilization are associated with poverty in this respect. On the contrary, all that we know of the poor periods and the poor areas sustains the description of the life therein as nasty, mean, brutish, and short. It may be freely conceded that riches in the sense of high productive power are no guarantee of the emergence of worthwhile cultures. But the fact remains that, without such potentialities, worthwhile cultures are unlikely to be forthcoming.”[1]

–          “In the days of the decay of the great historical religions, men have deified the idea of the nation. They have made devotion to particular political machines a fanatical idolatry. They have erected a mythology of the state, or the race, more ridiculous, more inconsistent, more cruel than the superstitions of ancient barbarism. And because there is more than one state, there is conflict among the idols….But international liberalism does not bid us love humanity. It seeks only to persuade us that co-operation between the different members of humanity is advantageous for the furtherance of individual ends….despite the antics of gutternsnipe racialism, we need not cease to do homage to the idea of that fellowship in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free.”[2]

Lionel Robbins (1898-1984) was a leading 20^th century economist in the United Kingdom and a key faculty member and leader at the London School of Economics. A prolific author and lecturer, Robbins lived through several major transformations in economic thought that reshaped the field of economics in England, Europe, and the world. His thought significantly reflects these shifts, providing a valuable lens into understanding economics in the 20^th century and its responses to the great challenges of World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the 20^th century struggle for development.

Robbins was born west of London, to a Middlesex farmer who also was a local official. Like many young men of his generation, Robbins’ youthful intellectual trajectory was interrupted by World War I. Abandoning his university studies, Robbins served in the Royal Field Artillery, was wounded, and returned safely home. Like many whose confidence in the existing order was shaken by the brutality of the battlefield, Robbins became interested in socialism, leading to study in economics under leading figures of the field in England such as William Beveridge.

The depth of Robbins’ scientific study was serious and significant. One of the hallmarks of his writing is the extensive awareness of the economic literature from the 18^th century through the 20^th. Robbins’ books and lectures systematically deal with early figures from the Classical School such as Smith, Hume, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill. His more technical works are conversant with immediate predecessors such as Gustav Schmoller, Friedrich List, William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, and Alfred Marshall, while engaging fully with contemporaries such as Jacob Viner, John Maynard Keynes, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Harold Laski. Reading Robbins, in this sense, is a full primer on the key thinkers of economic history, up to the 20^th century, and Robbins is an even-handed and knowledgeable expositor and critic of all such thinkers.

As Robbins was writings his numerous works, his practical engagement with the field of economics continued to be extensive. Perhaps most famously, when Robbins became chair of the Department of Economics at the London School, he immediately brought in F.A. Hayek, the prominent Austrian economist, to create a full-throated debate between Hayek and John Maynard Keynes, then a faculty member at Cambridge. The extensive publications and discourses between Keynes and Hayek in this period contributed to the development of numerous prominent economic scholars in England during the period and provided Robbins with a lasting legacy as an administrator.

In addition, Robbins was also politically active as an advisor in numerous areas. When the United Kingdom embraced significant levels of planning and rationing to meet the needs of World War II, Robbins served in numerous administrative capacities. This experience shaped his intellectual viewpoint in post-war works, convincing him that planning was possible, but not ideal, and certainly a threat to an order of democratic freedom. Robbins also completed the Robbins Report, advocating a re-structuring and expansion of the university system that England undertook. Thus, Robbins sets a strong example as an involved and engaged economist, not simply a detached thinker.

Robbins’ writing includes both historical and thematic surveys, such as The Theory of Economic Development in the History of Economic Thought and Economic Planning and International Order. In the former category of works, Robbins often works to establish a truer and more complete understanding of earlier economics. Keynes’ dramatic attempts to modernize and even revolutionize economic thought often led earlier economists to be dismissed wholesale. Robbins ensures that the classical doctrines are understood thoroughly be extensive quotation and deep research into the works of numerous, less well-known economists, such as Nassau Senior.

In one case, Robbins extensively compares quotations between Keynes and Smith, revealing some of the underlying similarities in their conceptions, hoping to bring Smith’s philosophy to bear on restraining the extremes of young Keynesian economists.[3] This moderation in tone and style is characteristic of his work. While the extreme events of the 20^th century led to radical ideas of economics’ ability to bring universal prosperity, Robbins gently reveals that national planning has international consequences. He is constantly aware of the political realities that will prevent or even pervert economic schemes and brings these problems to the forefront in his works. This simple, constrained, realistic presentation is crucial for economics as a science often dazzled by the newest ideas and the most eloquent intellectuals. In this way, Robbins stands as an engaging and informative example for scientists, economists, and citizens of all schools and beliefs today.

–          “In a world in which technical knowledge and the general conditions of demand are changing rapidly, conditions of free migration, which at one time seem to involve disadvantage to the inhabitants of particular areas, may at another time be conducive to their advantage. It may be advantageous to be able to exclude emigrants from areas for whose products demand has contracted. But it may also be advantageous to migrate elsewhere when demand for one’s own products diminishes. It may be natural to demand the one without being willing to concede the other. But it is hardly logical to do so.”[4]

–          “There is a strong probability that, whichever way the start is made, and whatever motive is operative, one type of control will involve the others….if the thing starts by the quantitative control of imports, it is highly probable that it will lead to control of domestic industry. It will lead to control of the mechanism of import….Now this type of planning, even more than planning by tariffs and subsidies, has a tendency to spread. We all know that if one industry is given the protection of a tariff, many others will clamour for like favours….To control effectively in one line it is necessary to extend control in others. During the war it was found that if the state assumed control in one small section of industry, it was rapidly compelled, in order to give effect to its policy, to control all branches of industry remotely connected with it. In exactly the same way, in peace-time, if the government assumes control of one branch of agriculture and agricultural imports, it is not long before the repercussions of this policy bring into being a situation in which it is necessary to control other branches.”[5]

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[1] Lionel Robbins, The Theory of Economic Development in the History of Economic Thought, (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1968,) 175.

[2] Lionel Robbins, Economic Planning and International Order, (London: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1937), 325-326.

[3] Ibid, 225.

[4] Ibid, 318.

[5] Ibid, 25-28.