This is a note I have sent to the Societies for the History of Economics in relation to the Harvard final year economics exam. It is based around a truly insightful comment by Roger.

I have put the Harvard final economics exam up on my blog and have had a quite penetrating issue raised. This is what was written:

Question 5 is a particularly interesting one, given it was set 60 years ago and we are now able to be a “future historian”.

This was the question he was referring to, most of which consisted of a quotation:

5. “Future historians may well write the epitaph of our civilization as follows:

From freedom and science came rapid growth and change.
From rapid growth and change came economic instability.
From instability came demands which ended growth and change.
Ending growth and change ended science and freedom.”

Discuss this alleged conflict between economic growth and measures to secure economic stability. In your answer refer to the views of some of the great economists, for example, Schumpeter and Keynes, on this problem.

I might add that the quote is from David McCord Wright, in his 1948 publication, Democracy and Progress (p 81). What interests me, as was recognised in the blog comment, is that we are now in the position as historians some 67 years since the quote was published, and 62 years since the final exam on which it was found, to provide at least a tentative answer to the question. It is certainly arguable that we are at the third phase – “from instability came demands which ended growth and change” – and it is not impossible to wonder whether we may be seeing the start of the fourth – “ending growth and change ended science and freedom”. I therefore wonder how we might answer this same question today.