Robbins saw wartime price controls as vindicating markets, not discrediting them

Evidence

Robbins reflected on the lessons that might be drawn from wartime experience, or “what economic policy can do for the advancement of human welfare.” Noting that free prices had been abandoned early in the war, he nonetheless expressed his belief in the efficacy of free markets in terms that recall Cannan’s remarks some twenty years earlier: … I am inclined to think that the experience of war vindicates completely the doctrine of the textbooks, namely, that with given goods and a given distribution of income and capital—please note this second qualification—there is nothing like the market mechanism for getting the goods into, roughly speaking, the right hands. … The conclusion that he drew from his wartime experience was not that the market was an ineffective mechanism for distributing goods, but that the problem lay in the “configuration of power to demand to which the market responds.” Inequities should be remedied not by interference with the market, but by acting directly upon them through taxes and subsidies. In this way freedom of choice in the market might be maintained, for “good government is no substitute for self-government and it is an essential function of the state to make as much self-government as possible available.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 412

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Robbins’s postwar position: inequalities corrected via taxes and subsidies, not market interference.
• XREF: connects to: Robbins blamed war on sovereign states, not capitalism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 257; Wartime state control proved economies are politically moldable — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 29; World War I proved production relations could be deliberately changed — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Wartime state control proved economies are politically moldable #contradicts (0.85) — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 29
• War exposed the market’s self-regulating capacity as inadequate for total production #contradicts (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 106
• World War I proved production relations could be deliberately changed #contradicts (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 174