Patient Reader, remember that today (Aug. 3) marks the death anniversary of economist Veblen (1929), who was fired from the University of Chicago, and later fired from Stanford. Hats off, please.

This month also marks the birth and death of Scott Nearing, another of America’s major economists who tried to banish the Gothic ghosts and craven superstitions and self-serving mumbo-jumbo from the Haunted House of Classical Economics. Nearing got fired from Penn, and was smeared as a Red, and has been almost completely ignored by economists.

Nearing in an illustration for NY Call, 1918
Unlike fusty Henry George or shabby Thorstein Veblen, natty Nearing was a “solid sender” among radical economists. He even has a touch of Hollywood glamour. In 1981, near the end of his century-long life, Nearing lent his still handsome mug to fellow superhunk Warren Beatty, appearing as one of the interviewees in “Reds”.

Nearing was an extremely influential economist, and, like his friend Uptain Sinclair, a socialist/pacifist, and a visionary food writer (he was an activist vegetarian, and promoted Little Land-tyoe experiments). He listed as his most influential teachers: fellow Philadelphian Henry George; the Penn economist Simon Nelson Patten who was his academic mentor; and Count Leo Tolstoy, who never even visited Philadelphia. (Tolstoy had, however, a passionate interest in the writings of Henry George, Benjamin Franklin, and Walt Whitman; clearly Tolstoy picked up that Philly “addi-tood.” More about Tolstoy’s Brotherly Love, here: https://www.rbth.com/arts/327555-why-was-leo-tolstoy-fond)

Quoth Wikipedia: ‘Scott Nearing was a staunch advocate of a “new economics,” insisting that

 “… economists part company with the ominous pictures of an overpopulated, starving world, prostrate before the throne of “competition,” “individual initiative,” “private property,” or some other pseudo-god, and tell men in simple, straightforward language how they may combine, re-shape, or overcome the laws and utilize them as a blessing instead of enduring them as a burden and a curse.”‘

 Scott Nearing, Social Sanity: A Preface to the Book of Social Progress. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1913; pp. 70–71. Cited in Saltmarsh, Scott Nearing, p. 28.

Nearing taught that human beings deserve an economy that works for us, rather than vice-versa. Further, he taught that we have all the tools we need, in our own co-operation and democratic organization, to built any kind of economy we choose, and escape the palsied clutches of Classical Economics, Private Money, and the Gold Standard. Unfortunately, these three ancient goblins and hags had just been enshrined in law as the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Upon pointing out the stupidity and inefficiency of trusting a reckless modern capitalism to these unworkable ghouls, Nearing was canned by the Wharton School. [In fact, Nearing may have helped sour the Wharton School on the entire discipline of economics. The department was long ago jettisoned from Wharton and demoted to the College, there to seduce the pre-meds and history majors with the sagging curves of supply and demand.]

‘Nearing’s aggressive social activism in the classroom and through the printed word brought him into conflict with his employers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, resulting in his dismissal and his emergence as a cause célèbre of the American radical movement. On the morning of June 16, 1915, Nearing’s secretary telephoned him to report that a letter from the provost had arrived, saying that “as the term of your appointment as assistant professor of economics for 1914–1915 is about to expire, I am directed by the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania to inform you that it will not be renewed.”

Penn’s board of trustees was heavily stacked with bankers, corporation lawyers, financiers, and corporation executives, and Nearing’s writing had not gone unnoticed. His tenuous situation had been exacerbated by an open letter to The North American in which he challenged the right wing evangelist Billy Sunday to apply the Gospel to the conditions of industrial capitalism, including “the railroad interests … the traction company … the manufacturers … the vested interests.” Reaction to Nearing’s dismissal from the academy was swift, with department head Patten and others issuing statements condemning the decision. Progressives in the Wharton School quickly compiled a summary of the facts of the case and sent it to 1500 newspapers, journals, and academics around the country. Even conservatives in the faculty were deeply troubled since, as one Wharton professor observed, “the moment Nearing went, any conservative statement became but the spoken word of a ‘kept’ professor.” Conversely, some radicals felt vindicated in their belief in the conservative nature of the American academy. Socialist writer Upton Sinclair told Nearing in an open letter that “You do not belong in a university. You belong with us Socialists and free lances . … Instead of addressing small numbers of college boys, you will be able to address large audiences of men.” Nearing’s dismissal was retrospectively called by one historian “the most famous breach of academic freedom” of the era.’

— Wikipedia entry on Scott Nearing

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/03/economics-global-economy-climate-crisis

(Click above for Andrew Simms in today’s Guardian, making a modern version of Scott Nearing’s — and Henry George’s, and Simon Patten’s, and Leo Tolstoy’s, Complaint. I wish the article mentioned them, but it didn’t, which is why I did. –Ed.)