Brief von Tibor Scitovsky an Josef Steindl

Scitovsky, Tibor

The London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE Telephone: 01-405 7686 21 December 1977 Dear Josef, I am glad my p$one call cheered you up. That, in any case, is a more important function of the telephone than the exchange of information. I am very sorry, however, that you should have been so disappointed by Michael Harrington's book, because in that case you will be even more disappointed by the Bresson book. I thought we agreed in our disappointment by the highly polished and technical writings of most of the establishment economists; but the alternative to those, unfortunately, is not equally well written and thought out but original and imaginative writings but something much more humble and meagre. Namely, a good idea or two buried in a morass of irrelevance or downright confusion, from the midst of which those few good things have to be dug up like truffles. Since I phoned you, I have read further in Bresson and liked it less and less; but once I promised you the book, I sent it anyhow, with no obligation on your part, of course, even to look at it. To me it seemed to contain a few good building blocks out of which an able economist could write something worth while, though Bresson himself failed to develop them and is guilty of an awful lot of sloppiness and even downright confusion. As to the Michael Harrin^on book, those bound proofs are my only copy and the title page seem to have got lost somewhere on the way. Lafct August we had to go back to Stanford to receive our house back from our tenants and prepare it for the next tenant; it was during th a t fortnight that I sent you the book. I have no judgement on how good or bad the first part is; and I agree that the 2nd part is, indeed, on the gossipy side. But he presents the thesis that the capitalist system must provide high profits to work well; and that as long as you have that system and vait reasonably high employment and output, you have no choice but to provide those high profits. Britain's troubles seem, to quite an extent, due to rexluctance to provide those necessary high profits ; Harrington's discussion of what happened in the U.S. is a kind of symmetrical counterpart. I will send you a final copy of my paper as soon as the girls in the office get around to duplicating it. Surprisingly, or perhaps shockingly, that my take quite a lot of time yet. ^ith all the best, Yours ever, The London School of Economics and Political Science is incorporated in England as a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Acts (Reg. No. 70527) Registered Office as above

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