Robbins recanted his earlier Great Depression extremism

Evidence

Robbins drew a clear line between the necessity of wartime regulation, where there was a pressing and an obvious objective, and the functioning of a peacetime economy, where no such objective existed and it was not government’s place to choose one. He was, however, moderate in his assessment of the strains of a transition period, and also in passing disavowed more extreme views expressed in his Great Depression, in which he had overlooked “deep-seated possibilities of disharmony.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 414

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Robbins blamed state interventions rather than market failure for the Depression — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 73; The Great Depression’s financial storms convinced intellectuals that humanity was one indivisible economy — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 294; Robbins blamed the 1930s depression on social insurance and managed money. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 398 (+1 more)