LSE’s 1930s market advocacy grew from one contrarian teacher’s singular personality

Evidence

Cannan did not have the conventional attributes of an institution builder. Throughout his tenure at the LSE he maintained only a parttime affi liation, commuting to his teaching engagements from a residence in Oxford. His mastery of the discipline did not extend to readings far beyond the shores of En gland, and even his most devoted disciples were quick to acknowledge his distinctly parochial sensibility. His teaching focused on the critical analysis of his pre de ces sors’ doctrines rather than the elaboration and propagation of his own. He was also, as Lionel Robbins recalled, “a poor lecturer, apt to mumble into his beard or, when he spoke up, not necessarily in full control of the tonality of his voice.” Putting it gently, Robbins concluded that Cannan “made no concessions to the con ve nience of his hearers.” This assessment was not his alone. T. E. Gregory recalled Cannan’s “very diffi cult delivery” and his “habit of looking over our heads into a distant corner of the room, so that much of what he said was altogether missed by us, in both senses of the word.” These qualities served to narrow his range of disciples considerably and to lead his public infl uence to pale in comparison with that of Keynes, his younger and more dynamic counterpart in Cambridge. Nevertheless, Cannan was the most prominent remaining defender of economic orthodoxy in En gland, and to a small cadre of students his contrarian sensibility lent him a certain charisma. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 58

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: LSE market advocacy was built by importing Austrian ideas rather than innovating domestically — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 59

Broader Connections

• LSE market advocacy was built by importing Austrian ideas rather than innovating domestically #complicates (0.80) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 59