Kenneth Boulding: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness by Robert Scott | Goodreads review, text

Kenneth Boulding: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness by Robert Scott | Goodreads

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Great Thinkers in Economics
Kenneth Boulding: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness


Robert Scott

4.00
1 rating1 review
This book summarizes the life and work of economist Kenneth E. Boulding. Boulding was a prolific writer, teacher and Quaker. Starting his career as an orthodox Keynesian economist, he eventually adopted a transdisciplinary approach to economic topics including peace, conflict and defense, environmental problems, human betterment and evolution.

GenresEconomics



219 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2014
Displaying 1 of 1 review


Stuart McMillen
Author 1 book10 followers

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July 30, 2018
A tenderly-written biography of economist Kenneth Boulding, which does a good job of conveying the scope of his life's work. Robert Scott's book ranges in scope from examinations of Boulding's enduring and loving relationships with his family members, through to overviews of his major intellectual contributions. For the first time, we see Kenneth Boulding's work as a peace activist and Quaker philosopher sitting beside his economics work.

At present, this is the only whole-of-life biography of Kenneth Boulding in existence, following his 1993 death. The other major biography to rival this is Creative Tension: the Life and Thought of Kenneth Boulding (1974) by Cynthia Kerman. Kerman's book is an expansive 344 pages, compared to Scott's restrained 187 pages. Because it was compiled during Boulding's life, Kerman gives a strong sense of being in the presence of the larger-than-life Boulding, with many observations about his personal style from his colleagues. The downside is that Kerman's biography feels more unfocused than Scott's well-structured book.

Robert Scott's A Voice Crying in the Wilderness charts the evolution of a unique and prolific intellectual, showing Boulding's evolution from economist into trans-disciplinary social scientist.
biography economics

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Kenneth Boulding, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Robert Scott
Associate Professor, Monmouth University, USA

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1. An Introduction to Boulding
2. The Day the Liberals Won
3. Mr. Boulding and the Americans
4. Cosmogenesis
5. Where the Buffalo Roam
6. A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
7. Boulding’s Place in Economic History 
8. Postscript

===

About this book

This book summarizes the life and work of economist Kenneth E. Boulding. Boulding was a prolific writer, teacher and Quaker. Starting his career as an orthodox Keynesian economist, he eventually adopted a transdisciplinary approach to economic topics including peace, conflict and defense, environmental problems, human betterment and evolution.

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Keywords

• Kenneth Boulding
• Interdisciplinary
• Economics
• Transdisciplinary
• Conflict and Defense
• Ecological Economics
• Elise Boulding
• Futurist
• Heterodox Economics
• Keynes
• Economic Growth
• Psychic Capital
• Quakers
• Oxford University
• conflict
• environment
• John Maynard Keynes

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Preface xi

Acknowledgments                             xv

 

1     An Introduction to Boulding    1

2     The Day the Liberals Won       9

Bouldings and Rowes                          9

Baby Boulding Boy                            12

Pacifist Born                                    18

Quaker Beginnings                            21

Mark of the English Gentleman          22

Good-Byes                                      29

New College, Oxford                         30

3     Mr. Boulding and the Americans       35

Quaker Writings                                44

Economic Analysis                            48

Quavering Pacifism                           49

  Elise                                              51

Elise in Brief                                    53

League of Nations                             57

   Fisk                                               58

The Hawkeye State                           60

The Draft                                        62

  North                                             64

Disarmament and Disillusion             64

Psychic Capital                                 66

From Hawkeye to Wolverine              70

4 Cosmogenesis                            71

Ann Arbor, Michigan                          71

Within a Budding Grove                     72

Boulding’s Cosmogenesis                  74

Religion, Ethics, and Society              78

A Causal Shift                                  83

A Golden State of Mind                      85

Image Is Everything                         86

Society for General Systems Research                     92

  Center for Research on Conflict Resolution        92

So Much Trouble in the World            95

x Contents

Bessie	97
Conflict Resolution in Action	98
Land of the Rising Sun	99
Spaceship Earth	100
A Final Move	107
5 Where the Buffalo Roam	109
Boulder Bound Bouldings	109
A Difficult Move	109
Institute of Behavioral Science	111
Peace Starts at Home	114
Grants Economics	114
Chicago or Bust	119
Presidential Address	120
Quaker Writings	125
The Artist	133
The Professor	134
Manifesto	136
Retirement	138
6 A Voice Crying in the Wilderness	141
Early 1980s	142
Technology Review	143
The World as a Total System	160
Human Betterment	169
What Went Wrong with Economics	171
Power	174
Futurist Studies	177
Golden Anniversary	179
Sonnets en Mass	180
Death	181
Last Diary Entry	182
Afterlife	182
7 Boulding’s Place in Economic History	185
Peace and Conflict Resolution	185
Spaceship Earth	186
Boulding’s Legacy	187
Postscript	189
Bibliography	191
Index	197

Preface

This book is a presentation of Kenneth Ewart Boulding’s (1910–1993) life, influences, thoughts, and philosophy. Of the hundreds of articles and dozens of books he wrote in his life, this book presents a mere sampling of his total body of work. Thus, this book by no means serves as a complete compendium to Boulding’s writings, nor should it be read as a single source of information. While not entirely exhaustive, it is the first biography to span his entire life. While some people have heard about Boulding and perhaps read a few of his writings, they will no doubt be surprised at how prolific a writer he was and how diverse and influential his thinking. The purpose of this book is principally to introduce those with little prior knowledge of Boulding to his life, economic thinking, philosophical beliefs, and creativity. It should also educate people more familiar with Boulding since it discusses many of the personal influences on his professional work, providing context to his content. Of particular importance is the influence religion played in Boulding’s life and work. Boulding was a devout Quaker most of his life, and he shared his thoughts publicly by writing dozens of articles in Quaker journals and magazines on a variety of topics. Little research is available that presents his Quaker writings along with his economic writings. Yet, the two are in many ways inseparable. To better understand Boulding’s religious beliefs is to better understand Boulding. As a result, discussion of many of his Quaker articles is interspersed throughout this book.

Boulding is not long dead, so his many books, articles, poems, and pamphlets are still readily available to those interested in delving more deeply into his original thinking. This book only scrapes the surface of a prolific intellectual. But if it whets the appetite of readers enough (and provides sufficient direction) to explore Boulding’s work more thoroughly, then its purpose is fulfilled. It offers an objective view of Boulding. I did not know him and did not become familiar with his work until after he was dead. Death makes it much harder to get to know a person. A biography is of little value if it is not free of allegiances; thus, as much as possible, Boulding’s own words are used to present his ideas with minimal influence from me.

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xii Preface

The first two chapters provide an introduction to Boulding’s early life and how he became an economist and a Quaker. They discuss the social, intellectual, and religious environment that he grew up in. Boulding came from a working-class family in Liverpool, England. But he was fortunate to be born to two loving parents who wanted their son to learn and grow. It was Boulding’s intellectual capabilities that helped create opportunities for him to attend much better schools than his parents could afford. These experiences created a firm scholarly foundation for him. He had many early influences that affected his thinking for the rest of his life—especially his pacifism that resulted from the experience of growing up during World War I. This early understanding of where and how Boulding grew up is critical to understanding the person and economist he becomes later in life.

In Chapter 3, Boulding is developing into a professional economist and quickly gains notoriety. It also tracks his emigration to the United States—first as a student, then as a full citizen. It is during this time that Boulding meets his wife, Elise, who had a tremendous influence on him, both personally and professionally, for the rest of his life. Elise was, in her own right, a world-class scholar of sociology (especially peace  studies)—though much later in life than her husband. Boulding had many ups and downs during this part of his career, but he persevered and received many accolades from the economics profession, including the John Bates Clark Medal in 1949.

Chapter 4 covers all of Boulding’s 18 years as a professor of economics at the University of Michigan. It traces the change in his writings from a more traditional Keynesian economist to a transdisciplinary social scientist. Boulding at this time became interested in how the social sciences were studying similar issues, but from different perspectives. He believed that by integrating the social sciences, a greater understanding of the world’s problems would be revealed. In some ways, this line of thinking also opened Boulding’s mind to the conflation of his religious views with his economic thinking. It is during this time that he starts writing about the influence of religion and ethics on economics and society. Also at this time, most economists were becoming more empirical and data-driven in their analyses, but Boulding was becoming broader in his theoretical approach. He became interested in general systems thinking, which made him something of a heretic among mainstream economists.

In 1966, just before becoming president of the American Economic Association, Boulding moved to the University of Colorado at Boulder, which comprises Chapter 5 and the next 13 years of his life. He considered his book Ecodynamics (1978) to be the pinnacle of his

Preface xiii

accomplishments during this time. It encompasses his general systems thinking and his evolutionary view of society—which he breaks down to a three-part system of threat, exchange, and integrative. From this three-part model, he is able to better understand the power and limitations of economics in society. Not only understanding how society got to where it is today, but where it might go in the future.

Chapter 6 summarizes the final 13 years of Boulding’s life, after retiring from the University of Colorado. He remained extremely active until the end of his life. It is possible these last 13 years were his most  productive—and perhaps produced some of his most interesting work. In these years Boulding applied his thinking to issues such as power, futurist studies, and peace. He was a poet his entire life. His favorite form of poetry was the sonnet, which was all he could write during the final months of his life. Boulding’s work lives on today and has gained relevancy in ways he could not have predicted.

The final chapter envisions where Boulding’s work fits in the history of economic thought. Boulding wrote on many subjects over many decades, but here I identify the areas where his contributions were original and prophetic. This chapter takes a big picture view of his intellectual output and what areas of this work have shown to serve as foundations of future thought and continue to interest scholars.

Again, my hope is that this book encourages people to read Boulding’s original writings and apply his thinking to current problems in economics and the other social sciences. It is not possible to capture the entire essence of Boulding’s thinking in such a short book, but as he often stated, “Don’t get it right, get it written.”

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Acknowledgments

As with any book, there are many people who made valuable contributions that made writing this book possible. First, I must thank David Hays, archivist at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries. Dave’s knowledge about the Kenneth Boulding archives and responsiveness to questions was unmatched. His enthusiasm for research is contagious and inspiring. Without his guidance, this book (minus all errors on my part) would not have been possible. In addition, he knows all the best hole-in-the-wall lunch spots within walking distance of Norlin Library. Also at the University of Colorado at Boulder, photographic archivist Jennifer Sanchez searched through pictures of Boulding for me, which led to the cover of this book. Ann Upton, Quaker bibliographer and special collections librarian at Haverford College played an essential role in helping me find all of Boulding’s Quaker writings (particularly the most obscure ones) and helped me navigate the vast Quaker resources at Haverford. Margaret Leary at the Bentley  Historical Library at the University of Michigan, where a smaller archive of Boulding’s work is located, helped me find several important documents. The Business Council at Monmouth University provided necessary funding over several years for this project, making my trips to Boulder possible as well as helping me buy Boulding’s more obscure (i.e., expensive) books for my research. Monmouth University also awarded me two grants-in-aid of creativity that supported my research as well. I presented this book in three parts over the course of two years at three different conferences and am indebted to all those attendees who gave me feedback on my work and information on Boulding and his work. Two of Boulding’s sons, Russell and William, were incredibly generous with their time talking to me about their father. They also both sent me boxes of books and other material by and about their father, which proved valuable. While I was visiting Boulding’s archives the first time in Boulder in August 2009, Vivian Wilson, Boulding’s secretary during his time at the University of Colorado, sat down with me at the archives and provided me a valuable perspective on Boulding as a

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xvi Acknowledgments

person, scholar, and teacher. She (and Russell Boulding) are the reason Boulding’s archives are so well organized, for which I am eternally grateful. Lastly I want to thank Palgrave Macmillan for publishing this book and Tony Thirlwall for including it in his Great Thinkers in Economics  series.

1

An Introduction to Boulding

Kenneth Ewart Boulding (1910–1993) had a charismatic personality. He published hundreds of articles and dozens of books on topics including economics, religion, peace, ecology, evolution, grants, and ethics. He also published three volumes of poetry and was a gifted painter. He grew up an only child in a working-class family in Liverpool, England. His parents were loving and devout Methodists. Boulding committed himself early in life to Christianity. Growing up during World War I had a significant impact on his beliefs. He became a pacifist at an early age. In high school, he discovered the Society of Friends (Quakers) and joined while in his first year of college at Oxford University—which influenced him both personally and professionally for the rest of his life (Boulding, 1992b, p. 73). Boulding’s humble beginnings did not limit his intellectual capabilities. He did develop in early childhood a severe stutter that remained with him the rest of his life. Regardless, he received scholarships to the best schools in Liverpool, which led to his winning a scholarship to Oxford to study chemistry. During his first year at Oxford he switched to economics.

Boulding was trained in a traditional way by reading Marshall’s Principles of Economics, Pigou’s The Economics of Welfare, Cassel’s The T heory of Social Economy, and Hawtrey’s The Economic Problem (Boulding, 1989b, p. 369). In his last year as an undergraduate (1931), he wrote a paper titled “The Place of the ‘Displacement Cost’ Concept in Economic Theory” (1932), which was published in The Economic Journal under the editorship of John Maynard Keynes. In fact, Keynes “accepted it after writing some extensive comments suggesting revisions. It was a most extraordinary piece of courtesy towards an unknown Oxford undergraduate” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 370). In 1931, Boulding read Keynes’s Treatise on Money and was thereafter a Keynesian economist. Besides Keynes, though, Adam Smith was Boulding’s intellectual hero. After graduating from Oxford with first class honors, Boulding spent another year on scholarship doing graduate work. Then he won a commonwealth

1

fellowship to the University of Chicago; while there he worked with Jacob Viner, Henry Schultz, and Frank Knight. Knight, in particular, had a profound impact on Boulding’s thinking. Knight also had an effect on Boulding professionally, when several years later he published a paper titled “The Theory of Investment Once More: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians” that commented on some of Boulding’s earlier work at Chicago. Boulding remarked that this paper put him in such good company he did not need to get a PhD—and he never did. After his first year in Chicago, Boulding’s father died. He went back to Liverpool to get his father’s affairs in order and to make sure his mother was well taken care of. When Boulding returned to America, he studied with Joseph Schumpeter at Harvard University. But after the first semester, Boulding fell ill with pneumonia and was hospitalized. After recovering, he returned to Chicago to finish his fellowship. Boulding stated several times that he learned much from Schumpeter and that Schumpeter had a great impact on him (Mott, 1992, p. 358). After his second fellowship year ended, Boulding returned to England, as was required by the fellowship. Teaching jobs were scarce in England at the time, and the only job he could get was at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He was not paid well and the environment was stifling compared to the progressive environment at Chicago. His time there was not a complete waste, however, because he learned about accounting, which changed his thinking dramatically in terms of consumption, production, and stocks and flows. This knowledge would permeate much of his later writing.

While in Philadelphia at the World Conference of Quakers in 1937, Boulding learned of a job at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York; he accepted it and stayed in America for the rest of his life. During his first two years at Colgate, Boulding wrote his bestselling textbook Economic Analysis (1941a), which would go through four editions and gain him considerable notoriety. In the same year (almost to the day) that his textbook was published, he met Elise Bjorn-Hansen at a Quaker meeting in Syracuse, New York. She was 21 (Boulding was 31). They married within three months of meeting each other. Boulding left Colgate to work for the League of Nations, but, after he and Elise published a Quaker pamphlet advocating pacifism, he was forced to leave. They ended up at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, for one year, where he wrote The Economics of Peace (not published until 1946). After that year, he received an offer at Iowa State College in Ames. He was hired to become a labor economist, which he knew nothing about, but he enjoyed learning about labor markets. It was during his time at Iowa studying labor markets that he realized economics alone could not answer many questions about social problems. It takes a mixture of all the social sciences (and other sciences) to tackle complex social issues.

Economic problems have no sharp edges; they shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field. Economics is the skeleton of social science; the backbone and framework without which it degenerates into an amorphous jellyfish of casual observation and speculation. But skeletons need flesh and blood; and the flesh and blood of economic problems can only be found in the broader fields (Boulding, 1946, p. 237).

Boulding believed this realization ruined him as a traditional economist because he could no longer focus solely on economics. In his last year at Iowa, Boulding wrote A Reconstruction of Economics (1950), which was the first presentation (to my knowledge) of the economy as an ecological system. Also during these years, Boulding became a US citizen. Soon after this, he accepted a position at the University of Michigan to further his efforts of integrating the social sciences.

After arriving at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1949, Boulding learned he had won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to an American economist under the age of forty who has made a significant contribution to economics. This was a major accomplishment and vaulted Boulding’s already high status in the profession. Interestingly, however, Boulding was already moving in a nonmainstream direction. In particular, more of his religious  thinking became imbued in his economic thinking—about which he wrote, “I have lived most of my life on the uneasy margin between  science and religion” (Boulding, 1974a, p. 4).

Boulding’s ideas about integrating the social sciences took over his mind, and he spent less time on pure economics and more time on understanding systems. It was Boulding’s introduction to biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy that led to their cofounding general systems theory along with mathematician Anatol Rapoport and biologist Ralph Gerard while they were all working at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1954–1955. While at Stanford, they agreed to establish the Society for General Systems Research (now called the International Society for the Systems Sciences), and Boulding served as the society’s first president (1957–1958). Also during this year, Boulding and Rapoport started the Journal of Conflict Resolution (still an influential journal), which further led to establishing the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan. This pioneering effort had a tremendous influence on the field of peace research. Thomas Schelling (winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2005) made significant contributions to this field, especially with his book The Strategy of Conflict (1960), which played an important role in his winning of the Nobel Prize. In the preface of the first edition of this book, Schelling wrote: “Three people have been most influential, probably more than they realize, in my continuing this work. They are Kenneth E. Boulding, Bernard F. Haley, and Charles J. Hitch” (p. vi).

It was the work of Boulding and Elise (then a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Michigan) that largely developed the field of peace studies. Much of this work was the product of the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution. Both Kenneth and Elise Boulding were nominated at different times for the Nobel Peace Prize (Boulding was also nominated for a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences).

After his year at Stanford, Boulding wrote The Image (1956) by dictating the book over the course of nine days (a chapter a day), which was “a sort of intellectual orgasm” (Mott, 1992, p. 362). This book argued that behavior is the result of image (or knowledge) that one has from one’s history, environment, influences, etc. It is a concept Boulding used in most all of his later works.

Boulding spent two more years away from Michigan at different times during his 18-year tenure. His second year away was during the 1959–1960 academic year and was spent in Jamaica. During this time, he wrote his influential book Conflict and Defense (1962), which helped him understand the nature (good and bad) of conflict and how it gets managed. In some ways, this work is tied to his ecological economic thinking, as he presented in his essay “Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” (1966). This was one of few papers he wrote on environmental issues, but it has garnered much attention since he first presented it and it remains an important component to the development of modern ecological economics (as presented by Herman Daly and others). So influential was this paper that the International Society for Ecological Economics (which publishes Ecological Economics) confers biennially the Kenneth E. Boulding Memorial Award to the scholar whose work most exhibits the spirit of Boulding’s transdisciplinary approach.

Boulding’s third year away from Michigan was spent in Japan (1963– 1964). This was Boulding’s first trip to Japan, and he instantly adored the people and the country (he returned several times throughout his life). From this experience, he wrote his book A Primer on Social Dynamics (1970a), which led to Ecodynamics (1978a) and Evolutionary Economics (1981a). After his return from Japan, he taught a summer seminar at the University of Colorado at Boulder and returned the next summer to teach more seminars. He felt at home in Boulder, and, after going back the next summer, he accepted a full-time job with the university.

In 1967, Boulding moved for the last time to Boulder, Colorado. This was a difficult time for Elise because she had started writing her dissertation for her doctorate in sociology at the University of Michigan (which she finished in 1969 when she was 49 years old)—and this was soon after she made an unsuccessful run for Congress as a Peace Party writein candidate. Boulding had secured a teaching position for Elise at the University of Colorado, but this compounded the difficulties because she still had three children at home (the oldest two were in college), and she now had to start teaching. It was a difficult time, but it proved successful.

The year after arriving in Boulder, Boulding was elected president of the American Economic Association.

He was billed by Business Week in 1969 as a “heretic among economists” who was chosen for the high post of president of the American Economic Association “more in recognition of his achievements as the fairly orthodox Keynesian he was rather than as the social philosopher he has become.” When I asked him if he thought of himself as an economist, he answered, “Oh, yes, I’m an economist—I  must be—I’m President of the American Economic Association!” (Kerman, 1974, p. 22).

Boulding regularly remarked that he always considered himself an economist. Regardless of the reason for his appointment, this was a prestigious honor and further solidified Boulding’s reputation. Boulding’s presidential address to the American Economic Association on December 29, 1968, was published as “Economics as a Moral Science” (1969). In essence, the article argues that “[t]he concept of a value-free science is absurd” (Boulding 1969, p. 4). Boulding was a moral philosopher in the tradition of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus. He believed this was the foundation of economics and should remain so.

Another important development for Boulding was his study of the grants economy. He used his three-part model of social systems (threat, exchange, and integrative) to further explain what he was modeling in Conflict and Defense (1962), which is essentially that there are  conflicts that produce valuable outcomes and conflicts that produce negative outcomes. He argued economics dealt with the exchange system, and political science (and other disciplines) attempted to understand threats, but the integrative system is unique. The integrative system (which Boulding at one point referred to as love) is driven by grants: one-way transfers in which one person gives up something to someone else for nothing measurable in return. Boulding speculated that an increasing share of the economy comprised grants and that neither economics nor any other discipline had yet attempted to understand the significance of this element of our social system. As a result, Boulding recruited Martin Pfaff and they started the Association for the Study of the Grants Economy.

The University of Colorado had a mandatory retirement age of seventy. Boulding tried to fight this policy because he wanted to keep teaching at Colorado, but he was not successful and had to retire in 1980. This ended up working out well for him. In 1978, Elise had taken a teaching position at Dartmouth College (and Boulding joined her for a year), and she stayed there until returning to Boulder in 1985. Boulding’s emeritus freedom let him travel and teach at other universities. His postretirement years were productive. Richard Beilock published a wonderful book Beasts, Ballads, and Bouldingisms (1980) that contains drawings, ballads, and quotes (or Bouldingisms) from Boulding’s work up to that time—though Boulding was a much better artist than is displayed in Beilock’s book. Comparing the drawings in Beilock’s book to Boulding’s drawings and paintings included in his archives at the University of Colorado, one would think they were made by two different people. Boulding’s paintings are colorful and vivid—peaceful and optimistic. It is a shame Boulding did not publish more of his paintings and  drawings—many would have gone well together with his sonnets.

From 1974 until 1982, Boulding published 63 articles in MIT’s Technology Review, many of which are interesting; but the most interesting may be “Defending Whom from What?” (1981b). Many people less familiar with Boulding’s work may be surprised to learn that for most of his years in America he was a registered Republican; but in this article in 1981, Boulding published his letter to President Ronald Reagan, which boils down to his following statement: “I have been a member of the Republican Party in my mature years, believing that it stood for true conservatism and a movement toward peace. I now see it as a party of dangerous and untried radicalism, destructive of evolutionary progress and leading us to eventual disaster. I have therefore resigned my membership in it” (Boulding, 1981b, p. 6). Boulding never seemed afraid of change, even in his seventies. When Boulding was diagnosed with cancer in the fall of 1992, he knew it would be his last illness. In the months leading up to his death, he wrote 143 sonnets, which were published posthumously as Sonnets from Later Life 1981–1993 (Boulding, 1994).

Two important works were published posthumously. First was The Structure of a Modern Economy (1993), which Boulding wrote to give a topographical view of macroeconomic patterns over time (seeing the forest rather than the trees). He believed that, from the perspective of enough macroeconomic data and over a long enough time span, it would be possible to spot trends (hiccups, irregularities, etc.) that are invisible in the short run but become clear from afar. Boulding argued economists use deterministic numerical methods that are too narrow, and that it is often necessary to take a step back and look at the big picture. The second book published posthumously was The Future, which Boulding and Elise wrote long before but did not get published until 1995. This is a wonderful book that includes five chapters by Kenneth Boulding followed by five chapters by Elise Boulding—all dealing with the future, peace, and society. The differences and similarities between their perspectives make for a fascinating read and provide better insight into two influential thinkers and lifelong partners.

Boulding left a vast legacy behind. He was survived by Elise, 5 children, and 16 grandchildren (at that time). Besides his many writings, Boulding taught thousands of students. The following chapters of this book map the many meanderings of Boulding’s life, leading to the person about whom Milton Friedman once said, “You may agree or disagree with what he says, but you cannot ignore it” (Deming, 1993).

2

The Day the Liberals Won

Austere describes the upbringing of Kenneth Boulding. In his words, where he grew up would probably be considered a slum by current standards. His parents were both from working-class families. He never shied away from this characterization. He embraced his family’s working-class roots and was always sympathetic to the struggles of that class. His childhood home at Four Seymour Street was in the middle of Liverpool, England, which, in the early twentieth century, was working-class cosmopolitan. This was endearing in many ways to Boulding. His neighborhood had Jews, Belgians, Irish, and a black family. He believed that this exposure to diversity trained him well for the American melting pot he would enter early in his professional life. There was no doubt why he felt at home in America. It both suited his personality and reminded him of home. Before delving into the specifics on Boulding’s life, it is necessary to better understand his family background—to dig into the roots of his family tree and see what genetic commingling led to his life.

Bouldings and Rowes

Boulding’s mother, Elizabeth “Bessie” Ann Boulding (1880–1961), was one of three daughters born to George and Mary Rowe. George was a blacksmith and a Methodist lay preacher. Bessie grew up in the little town of Chard in Somerset, England. Her parents were poor by most measures, but growing up in the rural agricultural community gave her family members a sense of freedom. George was one of ten children raised in Devon by farmers who died soon after his birth. He worked as a miner for several years before apprenticing as a blacksmith. Mary’s family was better off. Her father was a trained, but unlicensed, practicing veterinarian. He was also a tippler, which did little to improve the family’s financial situation. His name was George Austen, which led to a family legend that they were related to Jane Austen—though the evidence makes this appear unlikely (Kerman, 1974).

9

At 14, Bessie left school and apprenticed for three years with a dressmaker. She was usually too busy reading to accomplish much sewing. Bessie was a lifelong bibliophile and poet. While it is difficult to discern precisely from where Kenneth Boulding inherited his literary interests, his mother was certainly a significant influence. Since dressmaking failed to capture Bessie, there was a great struggle with her family until they decided to send her to live with an aunt in London. While there, she worked for a family, raising their children. She learned French with one of the daughters and attended Methodist church services.

It was at this time that William Boulding was sent on a plumbing call to the family’s house where Bessie was working. They met and had a bond. She recruited him to play organ at her church. He was a Methodist recently baptized. But he was resolute in his religious beliefs. He became a lay preacher and Sunday school teacher (similar to his stepfather). But because Bessie was 18 at the time (Will was 22), and Will did not have much money, her family would not support their marriage. Their courtship lasted four years before they finally got married in May 1902. In Bessie’s autobiography (1984a), she recalls that she wore a brown dress on her wedding day and that her sister, who wore a cream-colored silk dress, looked more like a bride than she did. Because of this memory, she wrote to her son when he got engaged to Elise (his future wife) that she should wear a light-colored dress on their wedding day. Judging by the wedding photo at the University of Michigan Archives, Elise did, in fact, wear a light-colored dress for their wedding (probably her own decision).

Boulding’s father, William Couchman Boulding, grew up in Liverpool. There is little information on Will’s family. Kenneth Boulding himself did not know much (as evidenced from interview transcripts) of his father’s family. His father did not talk much about his family—for good reason. What is known is that Will’s parents were married only a few weeks before his birth. His mother was 30 and his father 36 when he was born. When Will was one-and-a-half years old his father died of a kidney infection. His mother remarried an irascible, abusive drunkard and philanderer (he at one point had two wives) who served as Will’s male household role model until his mother died of a stroke when he was 12. Shortly after this time, his stepfather threw him out of the house; so Will had to leave school and start making a living. The headmaster at his school wanted him to try for a scholarship, but his stepfather would not let him. In truth, Will wanted to be a minister, but it never happened. In typical fashion of the period and place, he adopted his father’s (and stepfather’s and stepuncle’s) trade as a gas fitter. When gas lighting became less popular, he transitioned into hot-water central heating systems and general plumbing.

Bessie and Will had a devout marriage. Will spent most of his time ministering. He was particularly focused on helping the poor and downtrodden in the area. This was his real work, whereas plumbing was of secondary concern. This meant that they were not financially well off, but they were spiritually fulfilled. Where exactly Will’s faith and goodness came from is difficult to determine, because his childhood was hard. Given his history, one would not expect him to be a loving, devout protector of the poor and disadvantaged. According to his son, William was quiet and even tempered. By all outward accounts, Will Boulding was a well-adjusted member of society. About Will, Bessie wrote,

[He] believed the Truth he preached to others. The Love of God, salvation from sin through His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Power of the Holy Spirit to keep a man on the straight and narrow way, leading to Life Eternal. Through all the vicissitudes of life he kept this faith within him. He was not a good business man, in the sense that he made money, and when he died there was little he could call his own, but children loved him and young men wrote to me saying that anything which was good in them, they owed to him. His influence for good was wide and far reaching (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 30).

Will and Bessie enjoyed reading and discussing books. They enjoyed conversations about world events. In fact, this was a constant source of enlightenment and engagement for the young and impressionable Kenneth Boulding while growing up. His parents were people concerned about the happenings of the world around them. But they were perhaps most concerned with their religious life. Will and Bessie were considered model citizens in their neighborhood. But Bessie always missed the rural lifestyle she grew up in. She loved to read and write, and she enjoyed long walks outdoors, which she would take often. Liverpool was the antithetical environment of her childhood home. When her mother learned she was marrying a man from Liverpool, she said “Oh, you can’t do that. That’s as bad as going to America!” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 366). Nonetheless, Bessie was determined to make a good life in a place more congested and dirty than she was comfortable. She had strong resolve in her marriage and in their commitment to the church. She was more of an extrovert than Will and enjoyed getting outside in either nature or social settings. In Bessie’s diary she writes often of a feeling of constriction in her life. Making a home was not her strong suit. She was less interested in cooking and cleaning than in adventuring and reading. But Bessie was not without her domestic skills. She wrote in her diary,

Will and I started our married life in a back street in Liverpool. It was almost a slum, but we wished to be near the Mission in Cranbourne Street, where my husband spent all his spare time, teaching and preaching. Our house had four rooms and a kitchen and Will had furnished it so nicely for me. I remember so well our first meal there. We knelt at the table and Will thanked God for a home of his own, then he broke down and cried. He had never had a real home before, and he was so happy. Happiness can often bring tears more poignant than sorrow. He bought me a sewing machine for a wedding present. I could choose that or a bicycle. I chose the sewing machine and it saved many pounds in cash for me during the thirty years of my married life. I made all my own clothes (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 27).

After their first year of marriage, the firm Will worked for had financial trouble. He decided to start his own shop (a plumbing business) and opened it in his house. They soon moved to Four Seymour Street where they would live (except for a brief time) for the next thirty years. Here, Will was able to start his business, hire several workers, and maintain a shop, which he did until his death. This house would serve as a regular hub for the family. Eventually all of the family members (all of them Bessie’s) ended up living in Liverpool—either with Bessie and Will or in town.

Where she could, Bessie helped Will with his business. During their first seven years of marriage, she notes that she rarely left the house during the day since she was answering both the door and the telephone in case an order came in. At one point, Will bought a motorcycle with a sidecar to aid his travels during business trips around the area. He would take neighborhood children on rides on his motorcycle, and everyone enjoyed it— except Bessie, who, like many wives, was not pleased with his motorcycle. But these were their young married years, and the sense of freedom is felt in her writings. They would go on long walks in the countryside and have dinner parties with friends. They did not have much money, but their happiness at this period in their life was clear. But the greatest source of disappointment came from not yet having any children, which soon changed.

Baby Boulding Boy

Will and Bessie both loved children. But after their first six years of  marriage, they still had none. Bessie remembers praying for a son, and that if God would oblige then she would make a missionary out of him (but apparently God wants economists). Soon after her heartfelt prayer, she discovered she was pregnant. Bessie writes, “Does God answer prayer, I wonder, when we bargain with him?” After learning of her pregnancy she recalled, “I shall always remember hurrying home from the doctor’s, dancing along and hugging myself with delight. I wanted to proclaim the good news on the housetops” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 32). After telling Will, they sat together smiling and silent over the joy of the moment.

She had an easy pregnancy. Her mother (Mary) came to visit from Somerset two weeks before the baby was due. Bessie was exceedingly happy to have her mother around. Her first night in town, they talked until late at night and baked a cake. The following day, January 18, 1910, her son was born at 11 a.m.

The Parliamentary general election was at its peak that same day in England. Max Muspratt was the Liberal candidate for the Bouldings’ constituency, and Will was working to help get him elected. He had planned to work the neighborhood to get people out to vote for his Liberal candidate; but he took a break from his campaigning to enjoy the birth of his son. Bessie writes of Will’s excitement about his son’s birth, “I have never seen a man so proud and happy.” That evening the results of the general election were updated regularly on a board at the Adelphi Hotel. Bessie remarked, “It was a Liberal Landslide. Liberals were being returned to Parliament from all over the country. Our own man got in by a large majority. Lime Street was practically on our back doorstep, and I could hear the noise and excitement as I lay in bed admiring my black haired baby!”

About her new baby, she recalled earnestly, “He was the queerest looking atom of humanity, large ears right down in his neck and no chin to speak of! But we were mighty proud of him” (Boulding, 1984a, p. 33). Since he was born on the great day of the Liberal sweep, “Will wanted to name him William Ewart, after [William Ewart] Gladstone, the great Liberal Statesman, who was also born in Liverpool, only a few blocks away from the house we lived in” (p. 33). But Bessie did not like the idea of two Williams in one house, so they named him Kenneth Ewart Boulding. He was their only child. And neither of Bessie’s sisters had any children, so Kenneth was her parents’ only grandchild; they were always taken with him.

The following is a poem Bessie wrote titled “Little Son of Mine” (E. Boulding, 1984b, p. 53):

Heart of love as pure as snow

Shining through blue eyes aglow,

Darling dimples come and go, Little son of mine.

Sweetest mouth of rosy hue, Like a rosebud kissed with dew,

May your words be always true.

Little son of mine.

Chubby fingers holding fast

Toys whose golden days are past,

May you hold the things that last, Little son of mine.

Little feet that run all day,

Always busy at their play,

May they never, never stray, Little son of mine.

Heart and hands and lips so sweet,

Happy, dancing little feet,

Smiles and tears through life you’ll meet, Little son of mine.

Bessie’s life was different after becoming a mother. She took many long walks with her son but was still wedded to the house; though, she had help from a young girl who would visit the house. She would also spend part of the summer with her parents in Somerset. Now with a child, Bessie missed her rural childhood home more than ever while she was in Liverpool. She was in a stone/concrete jungle with noise everywhere. One of the few areas with trees was a graveyard behind an Anglican Church. She mentions that it was the highlight of their walks and when they’d get to the trees Kenneth would remark “tees, Mummie, tees.” She even suggested that tree was one of his first words. A poem she wrote titled “A Lament” (E. Boulding, 1984b, p. 40) is telling:

God’s country I adore,

Yet live I in the town

Where all the traffic’s roar Goes shrieking up and down.

No green thing grows near me,

Who love green things to see.

The Seasons as they come

Bring memories to my heart,

Of my dear childhood’s home, How bitter-sweet their dart!

Those carefree days of yore Are gone forevermore.

My child will never know The unalloyed delight,

Of watching sunset’s glow

On wintry fields of white;

Here, snowflakes whirling round, Soil ere they reach the ground!

When Kenneth was two years old, Will’s business was experiencing some success, so, on a recommendation, they rented out their house on Seymour Street and moved across the river Mersey to Wallasey. They were ten minutes from the Irish Sea seashore, which was a great place for a young child. They rented a nice home that felt remote compared to their suburban row house. Boulding remembers his mother telling him that when they moved in he ran into the backyard, lay down in the grass, and said “‘tars, ‘tars!” An amazing sight compared to the starless nights in Liverpool (E. Boulding, 1984a).

While in Wallasey (and Liverpool), the Bouldings had many visitors. They enjoyed a regular array of mostly family and friends in their lives. In Wallasey, Bessie’s sister Ada lived with them for a while to help raise Kenneth. During this time, Ada even married Will’s first cousin, Frank, who was an officer on a merchant ship. Frank was also a regular guest at the Bouldings’ when on leave from his ship. The Bouldings lived in  Wallasey for three years. These were happy years for Bessie, and she enjoyed raising Kenneth there. She said the sea air and friends helped him “grow up strong and well.” But once World War I began, Will’s business started shrinking and they had to move back to Seymour Street. At this time Kenneth was five years old. Returning to Liverpool was particularly disappointing for Bessie. She wrote in her diary that she

settled with a very bad grace, and was unhappy for three months or more. It didn’t help me either when Kenneth came in from a walk one day and put his little head in my lap and said tearfully, “Mummie, let’s go back to Wallasey, the streets are so dirty here, and the people so untidy.” It made [Will] unhappy too, and he gave me “A Good Talking To.” After that, I pulled myself together, and stopped wishing for the moon (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 38).

Liverpool was dirty and its people untidy because this was the age of coal. Boulding remarks that in winter they could hardly see the other side of the street as a result of all the soot in the air. It was a constant black fog throughout the city. This caused the buildings to become all black. “Clothes and curtains got dirty overnight in a constantly losing battle against the dirt” (Beilock, 1980, pp. 4–5).

The war years were difficult, but in Liverpool, less so. Bessie claims that she was very scared early in the war. She barely slept because of the fear for her son. But eventually the fear subsided and the family settled into a war-time life. She said there were limitations on certain foods, but realistically they did not experience serious hardship. She says they always had sugar and butter in the house. And Liverpool largely avoided  damage during the war—London receiving most of the G ermans’ attention.

During these years, Bessie writes that “Kenneth was growing up and finding life full of interest.” Kenneth had plenty of playmates and made the streets of downtown Liverpool his childhood park. He attended a school at the top of Seymour Street only four blocks away. Bessie did not remember when Kenneth started to read, but she states that it was very early and “he read everything he could lay his hands on.” She further remembers, “His teachers were very proud of his general knowledge. By the time he was seven he was explaining Kepler’s Laws [of planetary motion] to a School Inspector who had called to examine the scholars!” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 45).

During summer breaks, Bessie and Kenneth would spend six weeks in Somerset with his grandparents. “Kenneth loved his grandma and grandpa, and he enjoyed Chard almost as much as I did when I was as young as he” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 45). Will would stay behind to work, and Bessie writes that once on the train to Somerset, “We ceased to think much about him!” (ouch). Kenneth loved trains—especially the corner seat by the window. “It was the time of year when the English countryside was at its greenest and best, and after the streets of Liverpool we fairly reveled in it” (p. 45). And after arriving at the train station in Chard, “Soon we were falling into Grandpa’s out-stretched arms, laughing and crying, ‘How’s Mother?’ and in less than ten minutes we were kissing and hugging her, and she was crying, ‘Oh dear! HOW

Kenneth is growing!’” Of his grandfather, Kenneth writes,

[He] was a fine, tall, very erect man, with a fine white beard. I was a little afraid of him, especially as I watched him hammer out the red hot iron on the anvil with the sparks flying all over the shop, and then plunge it hissing into the water tank (Beilock, 1980, p. 6).

It was not a mother’s delusion that her son enjoyed these summer trips. He remembers that his grandparents had a “tiny house with no inside plumbing. These were happy times for me” (Beilock, 1980, p. 6). There were children he would play with in the rural countryside. He would go for long walks by himself and visit the town. Bessie remembers that Kenneth was “fond of exploring and would wander off by himself when I thought he was safely playing with the children next door. He never had any fear of getting lost” (p. 47).

Kenneth kept a daily diary (and continued to until just before his death). The new diary he started on his eighth birthday reads “1,257 day of the War, the King ordered everybody to go to Church twice today to pray for PEACE and I hope it will come soon” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 48). All of his diary entries at this time start the same way: X day of the War . . . Coming of age in wartime affected him in many ways that would follow him the rest of his life. It is easy to suppose that the war had a bigger impact on him than any other life event.

When conscription came, Will was exempt from serving due to some minor health reasons (no record exists about what these were); but Kenneth’s uncle Bert, Aunt Flossie’s (Bessie’s youngest sister) husband, was sent to war. Bessie recalls “not seeing her [sister] smile once after he had gone, until he came back again, safe and sound, after the Armistice.” Aunt Flossie lived with them for almost a year during this time. Bert went to France and was in the Battle of Passchendaele (think: “All Quiet on the Western Front”). This was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the war lasting from June to November 1917. When Bert returned, he never talked about it (or liked being asked about it). Bert came home on leave one time and Bessie remembers him going home, taking a bath straight away, and throwing his clothes out the window. Bessie took a hot iron into the yard and killed all the lice in his uniform. Bert was a fastidious person who was always clean, so, for him, one of the great difficulties of the war was living in trenches infested with lice and covered in filth (Boulding, 1984a, p. 39). Bessie has a poem “The Wounds of War” that sums up her thoughts (E. Boulding, 1984b, p. 46):

We mourn the clear-eyed boys who give their lives

To Satisfy the lust and greed of war,

But all their woes are over, Girls live on

With broken hearts and hopes, they nurse their grief,

A future bleak and bare looms up ahead, The Hope-chest’s lid is shut, for hope is dead.

                               __________

The only showers that fall are showers of tears,

A husband, home, someone to share her thoughts,

Babies to love, children to rear and guide,

A son to call her ‘Mother’, sweetest name,

And one it is a woman’s right to own, For loss of these things nothing can atone.

                               __________

Dreams of the future, precious, rosy, sweet,

Gone in the filth and dust of battle fields, Drowned in the sea, shot from the flaming skies, Shattered to shards by war’s unpitying hand. War! War! Thou are a foul and ghastly Thing, From thy red seeds a myriad sorrows spring. And young girls’ blasted hopes and breaking hearts Are not the least of all thy wounds and smarts.

Pacifist Born

Kenneth Boulding was deeply affected by the war. It had a profound influence on him that would direct both his spiritual life and his professional life thereafter. There is disagreement in both Kenneth’s and his mother’s writings on when this transition took hold, but there is no doubt they recognize this same period around 1918 as the time when Kenneth became a pacifist. According to Bessie, her mother’s sister Annie married a man named Cornish (who became Bessie’s favorite uncle) and they had four children: twin boys (Herbert and Archibald) and two other children who died in childhood. When the war came, Herbert and Archibald used a game of chance to decide who would join the army. Archibald lost (or won, depending on his perspective). Before the war, he had met a girl, Phyllis. They were married one month before he left for war. While he was away, she had a baby girl named Audrey. Bessie (1984a) writes,

While the baby was coming, Phyllis would sit at the window for hours, watching for the postman, longing for a letter from her husband. When the Armistice was signed Audrey was about eighteen months old. Arch was expected home soon afterwards, and Phyllis had a bag ready packed and new ribbons in the Baby’s dresses, all ready to take the train to Southampton as soon as she received a letter from Arch saying he was coming home and giving her times of the trains and where to meet him, and she opened a letter from the War Office saying he was dead. Phyllis never married again (p. 40).

Soon after this, Archibald’s father, Cornish, died, which left Annie so devastated she had to enter a mental home. Bessie writes that in the early days of her entering the home, she took Kenneth to visit Annie, and “it was one of her bad days and it was terrible. The incident made a great impression on Kenneth and I think the memory of it, later on, helped to make a Quaker of him. Wars make tragic the private lives of ordinary people.” Bessie does not provide details on the things Annie said; but it is clear that the experience affected her deeply, too. Kenneth Boulding never mentions this incident. Maybe he does not remember it, or perhaps it is a deep-rooted subconscious traumatic event; or maybe he was as affected as Bessie recalls.

According to Kenneth Boulding, it was the experience of seeing his Uncle Bert—with the lice—that most impressed upon him the vulgarity of war. He wrote (in 1989) that he was very fond of his Uncle Bert and that when he returned from the war he had “an expression in his eyes I can still see.” Further, he claims that his “closest friend and playmate lived next door, a Jewish Family. He had an older brother who was in the war. Upon learning of his death, his mother came over in hysterics. I even recall being horrified at a toy I got, with wounded soldiers in little stretchers” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 367). There were many other injuries and deaths of close friends and distant relatives. This information was a regular onslaught during the war and served as a sobering reminder of war’s savagery.

Kenneth Boulding’s pacifism was resolute. His pacifism led him to become a Quaker (which in turn led him to his future wife), which was his primary social circle during the rest of his life. Only once during World War II did he question his beliefs—seeing the atrocities of Nazism. But even then he believed good would not result when using evil to fight evil. He wrote the following after having a religious “vision” after taking a bath (Kerman, 1974, p. 119):

Hatred and sorrow murder me. But out of the blackness, bright I see Our Blessed Lord upon his cross.

His mouth moves wanly, wry with loss

Of blood and being, pity-drained.

Between the thieves alone he reigned:

(Was this one I, and that one you?) “If I forgive, will ye not too?”

My vial of wrath breaks suddenly, And fear and hate drain from me dry.

There is a glory in this place:

My Lord! I see thee face to face.

Work on peace and conflict would be present in Boulding’s economic writings; but it was especially present in his Quaker writings. He published almost 100 articles in Quaker publications throughout his life. Much of his work on peace was refined in the Quaker journals then doused with economics for presenting to a larger audience of readers. In Boulding’s Quaker publications, he is perhaps more honest about his feelings—that peace is the will of God and therefore a noble goal (see Boulding, 1944a; Boulding, 2004).

His views were similar to General Smedley Butler’s, whose classic “War Is a Racket” (1935) starts with “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” Boulding echoes Butler’s words with, “The Department of Defense . . . has sold national greatness and militarism at least as effectively as Madison Avenue has sold detergents and deodorants. Between the two of them they could probably purify the hands even of lady Macbeth” (Boulding, 1970a, p. 90). Boulding’s seminal book on peace, Conflict and Defense (1962) is still his most cited. In the preface, he writes,

The origin of this book in my own mind can be traced back to a passionate conviction of my youth that war was the major moral and intellectual problem of our age. If the years have made this conviction less passionate, they have made it no less intense (p. vii).

Boulding was a pacifist not only in a macro way but also in a micro way. He is remembered as being a nonviolent person his whole life. He writes in his diary of finding ways to dodge the neighborhood bully. At other times, he would talk his way out of trouble. As a prefect at his school he was responsible for maintaining order, but his friendly disposition and nonviolence made him ineffective at the job of managing unruly school boys. But his friends from the time remember him as that type of person. Not that he was afraid of confrontation; Boulding would regularly disagree with other students and teachers and engage in verbal debate.

Some people argue that Boulding failed to take a stand with regard to the Vietnam War (Lee, 2009, pp. 239–44). In March 1965, he helped organize the first teach-in on the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan where he spoke. But soon after this the Vietnam bombings started and 216 faculty members signed a statement in protest noting that they would call off their classes for one day to discuss Vietnam. Faculty called it a work moratorium, but the State’s Governor George Romney referred to it as a “strike” and wanted the faculty involved disciplined. The State Senate passed a resolution censuring them. Boulding never signed the faculty letter against the Vietnam War. And at this time Boulding was still running the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution that he established in 1959. Rather than sign the resolution, Boulding served as an intermediary between the administration and the protesting faculty group. He helped both groups reach consensus. And the protesting group asked Boulding to give the keynote speech at their rally, which he did.

It is unclear why he did not sign the protest letter. Dissenting faculty claimed it was out of fear of retribution (Lee, 2009). This may be right, but it is not consistent with his earlier behavior. When he was an economist for the League of Nations in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1941, he wrote a pamphlet with his wife (Elise) “A Call to Disarm” that promoted pacifism and nonviolence with regard to Germany’s Third Reich. When he showed the pamphlet to his supervisor, Boulding was told he could not distribute it. But Boulding did distribute it and was subsequently fired/resigned. Newly married, not an American citizen, and with no other job prospects, he was not concerned about retribution. Also, in 1958, he held a vigil at the University of Michigan lamenting the nuclear bomb tests at the time. He also attended a 1960 protest at the Pentagon and turned down a visiting lectureship in Hawaii because he would not take their strict loyalty oath. So the evidence is mixed on how much of an activist Boulding was regarding war.

Quaker Beginnings

When Boulding was 15 (or 16), his parents sent him to a Methodist summer camp. This camp had a profound impact on him and he became committed to Christianity. Interestingly, he was not enamored with the Methodist church, so he started looking at alternatives. At some point he came across John William Graham’s Conscription and Conscience (first published in 1922). This book explains the experiences of conscientious objectors during World War I. This book affected Kenneth Boulding deeply because it both discussed the struggles of being a conscientious objector and explained the Quakers’ philosophies on this issue. At this point he asked a friend, Robin Wall, who was a Quaker, about his religion. Robin took him to a meeting, and he attended the Liverpool Friends Meeting. He felt right at home with their silent prayers and deep convictions about pacifism. Boulding would become a Quaker later, officially, and remain one throughout his life.

Mark of the English Gentleman

While Kenneth Boulding was forging his pacifist beliefs, another lifelong trait emerged: stuttering (or stammering, as it was called at the time). Boulding writes that his stutter started during the atrocities of World War I, which he suggests was an effect of the war. The evidence is unclear about when or how his stutter began. It does not help that Bessie never mentions it in her diaries. This is strange because she mentions many other personal moments and is not shy about sharing information about Kenneth’s illnesses and what an awkward-looking baby he was. So the fact that she never discusses his stuttering has two effects: First, without a somewhat narrow timeframe of when he started stuttering, it is difficult to rule out causes. Second, it makes one wonder if she felt some guilt over his condition. Boulding remembers first becoming aware of his stutter when a family member (he could not remember who) yelled at him to stop. Recent research on stuttering has dispelled many myths about why people stutter (e.g., tickling an infant too much can lead to stuttering). In most people, stuttering begins at around 18 to 24 months when they are starting to speak and develop their speech patterns. But only 1 percent of children who stutter still do so into adulthood. Researchers today have identified four primary causes of stuttering: genetic (hereditary), child development delays (e.g., mental disabilities), neurophysiology, and family dynamics.

Starting with the first cause, people who stutter have around a 60 percent probability of finding a close relative who stutters. There is no evidence of other stutterers in Boulding’s family; but since little is known of his father’s side of the family it remains a possibility. The second cause is a mental disability, which seems unlikely given Boulding’s academic career and the fact he did not exhibit any of these symptoms (to our knowledge). The third cause is neurophysiology, which means that Boulding’s brain was wired differently (neural patterns), which lead to stuttering. The fourth cause is family dynamics. We know that Boulding was an only child (and an only grandchild, and an only nephew to his Aunts Ada and Flossie) who was no doubt doted on. Also, Boulding remarks in much of his writing that he grew up in an adult household. He was the only child, so conversations were among adults on adult topics. This environment could put considerable pressure on a child who is trying to keep up with the conversations. Add to this the fact that Bessie never discusses Kenneth’s stuttering in her diary and his own memories of how people reacted to his stuttering in the house, and it is easy to imagine that considerable pressure was put on him to be a perfect child. Any imperfection would be amplified. Modern research on stuttering, however, discounts the impact environment has on causing stuttering. Someone such as Boulding with a lifelong stutter most likely showed signs when he started speaking; thus his condition was most likely genetic—though this is a presumption based on the scant evidence.

In Liverpool in the 1910s, it is hard to say how Boulding’s uneducated parents would react to him having a stutter. His mother’s omission of his condition is interesting, but not definitive. One thing is clear, it had no obvious impact on his life. He became a successful professor and did not appear to have any problem giving public speeches, which he did on a regular basis. His travel calendar over the years included an impressive amount of speaking engagements, all over the world. Just reading his travel schedule would exhaust most people. Neither did it seem to affect his social life. He had many friends. All the schools he went to were all-boy schools, which might have helped him feel more secure. Maybe this gave him greater confidence. But as we can see from his diaries, and other sources, his stutter (which he calls his stammer) did not affect his self-esteem in a major way. And it may have worked to his benefit. Some people commented that the stutter gave him a likable quality that balanced out his British accent, which was more Oxford than Liverpool in style. His pacifism and his stuttering are two trademarks of his life— maybe that is why he conflated them in his mind.

Boulding started writing in 1955 using a dictation machine (his first dictation was The Image in 1956). He thought that it improved the volume of output but did worry about the overall quality of writing (Boulding, 1989b). Fortunately, he had excellent secretaries who transcribed his work. His secretary, Vivian Wilson, at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1966 until his death, told me that transcribing his dictation was difficult because of his stutter. She found it difficult both to understand him and to follow his thoughts in a fluid way (we all know how it is to talk to someone on the phone who starts and stops, making it difficult to concentrate). But she said her greatest difficulty was getting him to revise his work once she transcribed it. Boulding, like most of us, did not enjoy editing.

Writing (in whatever form it took) was Boulding’s primary mode of communication. Vivian Wilson told me that Boulding wished there was a Writers Anonymous he could join because he was addicted to writing. From an early age, he had a love of words. He stated many places that he could not remember a time he could not read. Reading was a joy to him and came naturally. Bessie was a great lover of books and writer of poetry, so she passed this passion onto him. Writing poetry was probably the strongest intellectual bond Kenneth and his mom shared. In 1917, when he was seven years old he wrote the following poem (scribbled on the paper is a note that said he thought this was the first poem he ever wrote), “Kitten” (Boulding, 1917):

We had such a dear little Kitten

Her coat is all shiny black

And she’s just like a little fur mitten Our dear little tiny black cat.

She is just as playful as anything

When she scampers about the floors

She is never sleepy a bit or a thing And has four little tiny black paws.

One day she raced about on brown paper And was frightened by the noise. And jumped nearly as high as a skyscraper And sometimes mistook string for toys.

We have only had it a day

I got it from Leslie my playmate. For in his house it mewed all day And gave his father a headache.

Be one day our Kitten got ill, Well we had to drown her.

We gave her everything except a pill

And I was so sad we had to drown her.

Sonnets were the most common style of poetry Boulding wrote. He published two books of poetry in his life (and another posthumously). When each of his five children married, he gave them a sonnet to commemorate the day. At the end of his life when he could not focus to write about economics, he wrote 143 sonnets. The last thing he wrote was a sonnet.

Bessie’s poetry was also wonderful and provides insight into her thoughts and feelings (e.g., “A Lament,” above). But my favorite is the one titled “My Birthday” from an unknown year (E. Boulding, 1984b, p. 44):

Another year has passed away, and I am sad, Although I have so many things to make me glad. This fleeting life is far too short, the years too few, And Oh! There are so many things I long to do!

I sometimes think my life is vain and thrown away,

Because my household tasks I ply from day to day, If only I could write a book and make my name, Or do some great heroic deed to bring me fame!

Instead of that I wash and bake and cook and mend!

‘Tis truly said a woman’s work is without end,

The shopping must be done each day, come shine or rain, And all the work I do, must be all done again!

My husband says I make life sweet and well worth while, My little son brought with his gift a beaming smile.

“A happy birthday, Mother dear,” he gaily cried,

Then whispered that he loved me more than aught beside.

And so although the years go by on flying feet,

And leave us feeling sad at times, yet life is sweet,

If I but train my little son to live aright,

T’will be a noble deed enough in God’s clear sight.

And when he grows to be a man, as grant he may,

Perhaps my son will win a name, some future day, And all the fancies of my brain, now vague and dim, May one day blossom into life, and live in him.

The peace year (1919) was the last that Bessie and Kenneth spent in Somerset. After this time, her parents left Chard and moved in with them in Liverpool. Will worked to fix up two rooms upstairs by installing plumbing and providing comforts so they would feel at home. Bessie writes, “If my husband had been their own son, he could not have treated them with more kindness or consideration.” One item they brought with them was a glass cupboard that was bought in Sticklepath (where Bessie was born). This cupboard was a centerpiece for the family. It held a shiny black teapot that her mother would keep the family savings in. Her father would make twenty-five shillings a week (a little over $100 in 2013 dollars) to support a family of five. He would take the money to his wife and she would manage the finances.

Grandma was happy living in Liverpool, but Grandpa less so. In Chard he knew everyone, but in Liverpool everyone was a stranger. He missed his church and his garden. No gardens in Liverpool, after all. Will and his father-in-law were, as Bessie writes, poles apart. But Will made a blacksmithing area for his father-in-law in their basement and paid him for his work. Bessie said this was kind of Will because he could have done the same work himself. Apparently having a blacksmithing workshop in the basement caused some discord with the neighbors—as one could imagine it would. One set of neighbors even moved to escape his hammer and anvil. One neighbor said, “She could stand the hammering of the anvil, but the two ringing taps Father always made on the anvil after each stroke of the hammer nearly drove her crazy” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 54). This went on for a few years.

Boulding’s education was important to his parents. Boulding recalls that to his knowledge no one in his family went to school beyond eighth grade. So the fact that his parents were so in touch with his education is either a reflection of the changing times or a testament to their understanding that the only real future for their son was if he was educated. It also helped that Boulding was an exceptional student. His first school was St. Simon’s. It was a Church of England school a couple blocks from Boulding’s home. It was known as a “slum school,” a school for the poorest children in the area. Boulding suggests he only went to school there a couple of years; but according to school records, we see he was there for more than two years. Strangely, he remembers the school well, but his mother does not mention it at all in her biography. Even though she mentions in grand (motherly) detail his later schooling years, not a word was mentioned about St. Simon’s. There is some disagreement about why. But Bessie apparently said that Kenneth did not stutter until he went to school—though many family members (and childhood friends) remember him always stuttering. So perhaps  Bessie transferred blame from herself to St. Simon’s about her son’s stuttering.

In Kenneth Boulding’s diary in January 1919 he writes that his parents tried to get him out of St. Simon’s and into a better school but he did not pass the interview because of his stutter. He then took speech lessons a few times a week. In Spring 1919, he was admitted to Hope Street School, which was an excellent Unitarian school. He was first in his class from then on and was praised by his teachers for his academic prowess and intellectual curiosity. Boulding makes it clear that the move to Hope Street School was the changing point in his education that would alter his life course.

In June 1922, Boulding won the Earl of Sefton Scholarship to Liverpool Collegiate School. Roughly 30 percent of secondary school students had scholarships, and that year less than a dozen were awarded named scholarships. This was a remarkable accomplishment since so few children from neighborhoods such as Boulding’s (poor and congested) ever got scholarships. In the 1920s, around 10 percent of school-aged children went on to secondary education. Such was the class system at the time (which still exists today to a degree). Boulding was one of the first among his class level to be given the opportunity to rise above the class level into which he was born.

Boulding remembers his years at Liverpool Collegiate as happy times. His mother called it an impressive building that looked more like a castle than a school. He worked hard and committed himself fully to his studies (based on the records in his archives) for those six years. But he also made good friends. His core of friends included Francis Hogan, Ronald Shaw, Ernest Dundas, and Bernard Ash. He enjoyed bicycling, writing poetry, painting, and hiking in the countryside. He and his friends spent a week or two during several summers in Wales hiking and cycling. During his time as a college student at Oxford University, he arranged at least two bicycling trips in Germany. Boulding was also known as somewhat aloof. He was a daydreamer and was remembered as being rather unkempt (unconcerned with his clothes and general appearance). His mother remembered him and a friend going out to play and Kenneth’s friend returning looking fine but Kenneth being covered in dirt and in all manner of dishevelment. But he also refused to conform. At school every boy was required to wear a jacket and tie—yet Boulding never did. He was told he would not become a prefect unless he conformed, but still he would not. He became prefect anyway and also sang in the choir—never wearing a tie.

An important transition for Boulding happened when he was going into his sixth form at age 15. He had to choose between classics and sciences. Boulding was receiving considerable recruiting pressure from the classics master. Maybe as a result, Boulding chose science. A classics master contacted his parents to get him to change his mind. A mathematics master also contacted his parents to say that choosing classics would be a waste of his talents. His mother remembers not having much influence one way or another. They let him decide for himself. Boulding remembers a mathematics master stopping by his house and convincing him to study science (Boulding, 1989b). During the 12 semesters at Liverpool Collegiate, Boulding was ranked first or second in all but one semester. He passed the Higher School Certificate (only one in nine secondary students in Liverpool got this certificate) in 1927 but failed to win a scholarship to Cambridge. He did win a scholarship for Liverpool University, but he decided to stay at Liverpool Collegiate another year and to again try for a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge. He made a good choice because the next year (1928) he won a science scholarship to New College, Oxford.

Amazingly, besides Boulding, his four other friends at Liverpool Collegiate (and all from rather poor families) earned scholarships to either Cambridge (Ronald, Francis, and Ernest) or Oxford (Kenneth and Bernard)—and all five of them stayed close friends. This was an endorsement of Liverpool Collegiate’s preparatory education and the mental acuity of the boys. It also speaks to Boulding’s social environment. He was not a loner living the intellectual introverted lifestyle. This is important, because it may explain why Boulding had such confidence throughout his life (despite potentially insulating factors such as his stutter and family’s working-class background). His friends were all intelligent and had respect for each other. A sign of this difference comes from a childhood friend (Leslie) who knew him during his early years at St. Simon’s as a quiet reserved person (more of a classic introvert). Another friend, Muriel, moved away and came back later when Boulding was at Liverpool Collegiate and remarked about how he had come into his own—more outspoken and confident (Kerman, 1974, p. 275). Maybe it was the academic success, but it is also possible that having close friends who were bright and challenged each other created a safe environment for Boulding to grow.

The year before Boulding won a scholarship to Oxford, Grandmother Rowe, who had lived with him for seven years, died from pneumonia. Grandpa Rowe was at a loss because his wife was his foundation. Bessie could not remember her mother ever saying a bad thing about anyone. Bessie thinks it was because her grandmother had a terrible temper that her mother kept hers under control. Will always had the deepest respect for his mother-in-law, referring to her as sweet and kind. She lived with the Bouldings from 1920–1927, so she was an ever-present figure in Kenneth’s life during these years. Soon after this Ada left Liverpool for Australia, which was especially hard on Flossie because they were very close. Also, Will’s business had not been doing well for years. It was lucky for the family that Kenneth won his scholarships because that was his only opportunity for an education. Some of his scholarship money even went to supporting the family.

Good-Byes

The spring before Kenneth went to Oxford University his grandfather was hit by a drunk driver. By Bessie’s account, the drunk “ran his car right on the pavement, caught Father up and carried him several yards, dashing him against some iron stauncheons [sic] at the end of Seymour Street” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 70). Amazingly, he did not have any broken bones, and after some rest seemed fine. Soon after this time, he went on a trip to visit some friends. They cabled Bessie and said he was not well, so he came back to Liverpool. Once in Liverpool he told her that he “wanted to get back to my little Bessie.” A few weeks later he died.

Not long after Grandpa Rowe died, Kenneth left for Oxford. This was a difficult time for Bessie and Will. Bessie had lost both her parents, who had lived with them for many years; Ada was in Australia; and Kenneth was soon off to Oxford to study science. When Kenneth was 13, Bessie wrote in her diary (E. Boulding, 1984a):

Will and Kenneth left me this morning to go to Colwyn Bay, the first time Kenneth has ever left me. I dread to think of the day when he may leave me to go out into the wide world, he has been all my world for so long, and he is so good and we love each other so much, but always the thought is there, “he will leave me one day,” I hope I shall not be selfish when the time comes, and make it hard for him.

Bessie then writes about when her son finally did leave for college:

The Autumn of that year, 1928, Kenneth went up to Oxford and HOW we missed him! And how much we looked forward to his letters. He loved Oxford and the surrounding country-side. “Words absolutely fall [sic] to describe the glory and loveliness of the country round here,” he writes. “It is the sort of country that makes you want to write poetry about it, and then if you try, you can’t” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 71).

New College, Oxford

“My first year at Oxford I think was one of the most unhappy times of my life” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 368). The transition to Oxford was difficult for Boulding, though his letters home belied the fact that he was having trouble finding his place within the cloistered class structure of Oxford. In one letter Bessie asked if he was homesick, to which he responded, “Well, yes, that is to say, rather. It sort of comes on in patches. Saturday afternoon, for instance, after lunch, I felt as if I would give all the mouldering monuments of this city for that glimpse of Liverpool you get just by Rock Ferry on the train, coming in, with the magic mists on Merseyside, and the River and all the smoke. Do you know, I positively PINE to see something Industrial and Ugly!” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 71). His life was changing in many ways. It was a difficult adjustment living away from his family, a core of friends and comforts of home. But perhaps more important was that he had spent many years at Liverpool Collegiate being the academic superstar and was now starting all over again at Oxford. But he wrote to his parents about the beauty of the surrounding area. No doubt this environment appealed to him—maybe similar to his summers in Chard with his grandparents. He wrote detailed letters to his family about his bicycling adventures, of which there were many. He also wrote fondly of perusing the secondhand bookstores of Oxford. Since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was one of his favorite books, it is easy to imagine his happiness at being at Oxford where Lewis Carroll also went to university (though at Christ Church, not New College) and who also had a difficult time adjusting to life at Oxford [Carroll also had a stutter and studied science (mathematics)].

During this year, Boulding achieved one notable success. He published a poem titled “Ode to a Gas Fire” in Oxford’s The Cherwell. This poem describes his cold dorm room in the fourteenth century stone fortress of New College. He was very proud of this publication and wrote to Bessie how he was now an author. He wrote regularly to his family and friends. About this, Bessie wrote:

I have positively hundreds of letters Kenneth sent me from Oxford. It is very difficult to sort them out, they are so interesting, every one of them. Dad and I got the greatest pleasure possible from each of them. One of the short ones said, “There is not much news today, except that I love you and that’s no news.” Letters like that gave me such a thrill (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 72).

Boulding never had much sense of fashion or concern for the superfluities that make the upper-class hum. He found it hard to adjust to wearing his gown all the time. He thought it made him look like a dark angel. At Oxford, leisure class niceties are heightened manyfold—proper speech, attire, silverware, manners. Never wearing a tie at Liverpool Collegiate provides good insight into Boulding’s feelings about such etiquette. Also his stutter, though known as the “mark of the English gentleman,” mixed with a Liverpool accent made Boulding more of an outsider than he already felt. He worked on his Liverpool accent to adopt a more Oxford-style voice—it would seem less out of the need to fit in (or meld into the Oxford culture) than as a defense mechanism to ensure that when he disagreed with people they would know it was not because he had come from a different place than them, but because he thought they were wrong or misguided. In a letter to his Aunt Ada, he wrote of his adjustment problems, “I suppose it is because I have not really fitted in with my surroundings and, somehow, I hope I never do. The studied inanities of the upper class won’t do for me.” But the class divisions were more apparent to Boulding at Oxford than at any other time in his life. He even felt this at the Quaker meetings at Oxford where almost all the Friends came from boarding schools (upper-class families); so, he spent more time with Methodists, because they came from the same class background. Boulding claims to have become a “convinced Friend” in 1928—official records do not show this happening until 1931. Regardless the time he officially became a Quaker, while at Liverpool Collegiate he regularly attended Quaker meetings.

Boulding was not alone for long at Oxford since he had an uncanny ability to make friends with people from a variety of backgrounds who provided him with a constant source of intellectual rigor. Where he was not enjoying intellectual challenge was in his field of study. He had little chemistry with chemistry. He found the laboratory a stultifying environment and not well suited to his well-read philosophical mind. He did not entertain these thoughts loosely, since changing programs was not something regularly done. Boulding had to maintain his scholarship, which added further stress to his decision. He wrote a poem titled “The Sands of Egypt,” that he submitted for the Newdigate Prize. He made a pact with himself that if he won this prize he would change his studies to humanities. He did not win. Upon learning of his loss he writes in his diary that he got on his bike and rode all day through rain and steep grades. As he rode his mood improved. When he got back to his dorm, cold, wet, and exhausted, he decided to appeal to change his studies from science to the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. He had no knowledge of these subjects, so it was a leap of faith. He wrote a letter to the warden of New College about his desire to change his studies and maintain his scholarship: As he writes, “With great generosity the College allowed me to do this” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 369). To his mother he wrote, “I feel like a dicky-bird let out of a cage.” He was energized by his change in studies and this period marks both a change in his attitude and a conflation of all his interests—writing, mathematics, and social issues: economics. The Great Depression was in full force in England, and, growing up in the inner-city of Liverpool, Boulding saw the full effects of the weak economy on real families (not just data points). He argued that chemistry was not likely to save the world and that “at that time the great problems of the human race seemed to be economic” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 369).

Bessie writes of this decision process in her biography:

The Master [one of Kenneth’s Collegiate teachers] who told us Kenneth would be wasted on Chemistry turned out to be right. Kenneth discovered it for himself soon after going up to Oxford. With the consent of the College, [. . .] he changed from Natural Sciences to Modern Greats, with Economics as his major study. [. . .] I remember writing to the Warden of New College (Mr. Fisher, the Historian) about the change in Kenneth’s studies and receiving a charming letter in reply. It seems the Warden was quite impressed by the letter Kenneth sent him explaining his position, because it was so ‘clear’. [. . .] How delighted he was to be free from “those stinking labs.” He was a born Economist anyway (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 75).

At the end of his first year, he went to the economics tutor, Lionel Robbins, and asked for a summer reading list in economics. Robbins recommended: Marshall’s Principles of Economics, Pigou’s The Economics of Welfare, Cassel’s The Theory of Social Economy, and Hawtrey’s The Economic Problem. He checked out these books from the library and trundled back to Liverpool. During the summer, Oxford students did not work. They were assigned significant readings and continued their studies. In addition, well-heeled students went traveling. Students of lesser means found other ways to adventure. Boulding spent much of his summer in the Picton Library in Liverpool (a large, round structure with a smart design). Here he learned the foundations of economics.

Boulding’s reading was successful because when he returned in the fall the new economics tutor, Henry Phelps Brown (Robbins left for the London School of Economics), gave him an exam in economics that he passed with an alpha. Within two years, Boulding got a top first in his class.

Despite Boulding’s success at Oxford, he never escaped its established culture. In his last year as an undergraduate (1931), Boulding applied for a fellowship at Christ Church (Lewis Carroll’s alma mater). The confidential recommendation letters were sent to him by mistake. Boulding writes, “They all said in effect, ‘This is a bright boy, but he is not one of us’” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 370). And he confirms that they were right, he was not one of them. Boulding never really fit in at Oxford socially. Intellectually, however, Boulding fit right in.

Boulding was less radical than many people might assume. While in college, he and his friends considered themselves socialists. Writing to one of his aunts, Boulding stated that at Oxford socialism was becoming almost respectable so he might consider becoming communist (Kerman, 1974, p. 99). He read Karl Marx and thought highly of his economics but disregarded communism for several reasons (ibid. p. 101). First, as a pacifist he did not approve of Marx’s use of violence as a way to overthrow capitalism. Second, Boulding thought that absolute power in the hands of few people was likely to create a dictatorship where the whims of a few elites dominate—much better to have a democratic division of power. While at Oxford he wrote to his mother that he was sorry the conservatives and socialists met on the same day at the same time because he would like to attend both meetings. Boulding was a registered Republican in America until 1981 when he left the party because of Ronald Reagan’s economic and military policies (more in Chapter 6).

Boulding was forever a Keynesian. In November 1930, Boulding heard John Maynard Keynes speak (for the only time as far as records indicate), then the following month he read his Treatise on Money, which changed his thinking significantly. He wrote that Keynes was

the only man who really thinks he knows how Things ought to be run. [. . .] You see, this was a feeling that now the world made sense; history made sense for the first time; here was a mind really at work, who was a much greater man than Marx, that is, a man who really had astonishing perceptions as to how you preserve the values of a free society and at the same time prevent this crippling unemployment. This was a—I would say it was a spiritual experience as well as an intellectual one (Kerman, 1974, pp. 104–105).

Unbeknownst to either, both Boulding and Samuelson quoted Wordsworth upon reading Keynes (for Boulding, in The Treatise on Money [1930], and for Samuelson [roughly five years later] on The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money [1936]): “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!” Originally, Boulding incorrectly quoted Wordsworth (using Great instead of Bliss), but the effect is the same. Boulding later wrote it probably had as much to do with being 21 years old (which both he and Samuelson were when they recited Wordsworth) as it did with Keynes (Boulding, 1989b, p. 370).

When Boulding graduated in 1931, 130 students qualified in politics, philosophy, and economics. Of these students only ten received first honors from all the Oxford colleges; and the “best ‘first’ in economics went to Kenneth” (Kerman, 1974, p. 234). Boulding argues this established his future in academia and also helped him avoid the painful requirement of obtaining a doctoral degree. Unfortunately, the day before graduation, Bessie slipped on some stairs and broke her ankle keeping her from attending the degree ceremony, which was dreadful for her. Though Boulding drew sketches and wrote about the whole event to his mother—downplaying all the pomp and circumstance. That year he won the Webb-Medley Scholarship in Economics that let him study for another year, which he did as a graduate student. During that year, he wrote a short article “‘Displacement Cost’ Concept in Economic Theory” that he sent to The Economic Journal edited by John Maynard Keynes, which Keynes published after providing Boulding with considerable comments. That same year, Boulding won a Commonwealth Fellowship (essentially a Rhodes Scholarship in reverse to study economics at the University of Chicago).

Over a dozen friends and family went to the docks to see him off on his journey to America. “[A]t the last minute, his father rushed back into Woolworth’s to buy each of them a yellow duster to wave as the ship pulled out” (Kerman, 1974, p. 236). This was the last time Boulding saw his father.

3

Mr. Boulding and the Americans

Kenneth Boulding’s Atlantic crossing on the SS Laconia en route to the University of Chicago had at least one unintended effect on his time in America. By happenstance, Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter from Harvard University was traveling on the same ship. Since the trip took nine days they became well acquainted. Boulding had a copy of his Oxford thesis, which Schumpeter took the time to read and they discussed at length. That thesis was lost at some point, which Boulding suggested was of no great loss to the profession. Schumpeter convinced Boulding to visit him at Harvard while he was in the United States. On his way to Chicago, Boulding traveled through New York and westward through Indiana. He was surprised by the forested landscape of America since his impression of the country came largely from cowboy movies.

The University of Chicago was an exciting place to be at this time, and a natural fit for Boulding. He wrote to a friend that Chicago was “Jam with Nuts on It” (Kerman, 1974, p. 236). He felt right at home in America and loved it immediately. His diverse childhood in Liverpool conditioned him to be accepting of people from all backgrounds and appreciate their different viewpoints. He also appreciated the fact that in America no one cared who his grandfathers and great-grandfathers were, but rather who he was. America was a place where one’s ability trumped one’s lineage. There was still a class system, but it was very different from the one he grew up with. Interestingly, he said that the University of Chicago had many elements of Oxford’s architecture. He wrote to his mother, “There are bits of Oxford lying all around the place” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 88). Boulding wrote many letters about his time in America and all of them gave a positive, happy picture of his life (very different from his letters while at Oxford). The only disagreement he seemed to find with Chicago was over the weather, which he called “abominable.” He also writes about how the talk of gangsters at this time was overblown by the media because he never saw anything resembling the Chicago Mob while he was there.

35

Boulding’s advisor at Chicago was Jacob Viner, who “flipped through [his thesis] and said, ‘Oxford, no footnotes’” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 371). Viner then tried to convince Boulding to take a PhD at Chicago. After he explained the requirements (courses, exams, etc.), Boulding decided he would rather spend the next two years on his terms—reading, studying, and writing what he wanted rather than what the university wanted him to learn. The restricting structure of American graduate school was different from what he was used to. After all, his one year of graduate study at Oxford required him to meet with his advisor every couple of weeks (with little influence other than a good cup of tea) and the rest of the time was spent studying what Boulding wanted. This independent research philosophy is still common for Oxford today. He wrote to his Oxford friend (Fred Watts), “Many more quarters of the stuff that passes for education (Hee Haw) in this place would reduce my mental capacities to nil.” His real criticism was that the American system encouraged people to learn limited information only to pass exams and not retain the material learned. In today’s vernacular, we would say it is the difference between surface learning and deep learning.

This does not mean Boulding did not understand the value of having a degree associated with his name. In 1939, he applied for an MA from Oxford, which only required waiting several years after graduation and submitting a fee, which Boulding did and got his masters. The doctorate degree at Oxford was similar, only it did require a thesis (of sorts). No clear requirements for the degree existed. The degree decision was rather arbitrary. The contribution (thesis) had to be original and have an influence on the learning of science; and at least one-year had to have passed before it could be submitted for a degree. Whoever the judges decided should get a doctorate got a doctorate—simple as that. So, in 1943, Boulding submitted his book Economic Analysis along with £10 to Oxford University. But, in January 1944, he heard his application was denied.

Boulding took classes and was heavily engaged at Chicago. He probably learned more by adopting his Oxford-style education to the Chicago structure. There were a group of graduate students who held a seminar, where each week they read and discussed Keynes’s work, which Boulding very much enjoyed. He also remembers learning a great deal from Henry Schultz about econometrics and who arguably had a lasting impact on Boulding’s view of statistics. Boulding writes,

Those were the days when it took a whole afternoon to work out regression and correlation coefficients on what we still call ‘adding machines.’ I remember Professor Schultz coming around us, sympathizing with our labors, and saying, ‘I know this is very boring, but you are getting familiar with the data,’ which we were. Today, of course, the computer gets familiar with the data but nobody else does. [Henry Schultz’s] econometric skills never diverted his attention from the real world, and he always looked on econometrics as a servant rather than as a master (Boulding, 1989b, pp. 371–72).

As a response to this experience, Boulding later wrote that “computerized and numerical models, especially those with fancy diagrams and print-outs, are almost certain to produce illusions of certainty and may therefore easily lead to bad decisions” (Boulding, 1974b, p. 8). His 1948 article published in the Journal of Political Economy “Samuelson’s Foundations: The Role of Mathematics in Economics” is an excellent presentation of the value and limitations of mathematics in economics.

Boulding also benefited from courses with Frank Knight. By this time, unfortunately, Knight had largely abandoned his work on risk, uncertainty, and profit. This was disappointing to Boulding who would have found Knight’s concepts refreshing for the time. He still enjoyed his classes and found them “enormously stimulating, though . . . rather disorganized” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 371). He and Knight would have heated discussions about economic theory (and no doubt many other topics). When Boulding arrived in Chicago, he printed a copy of his only published paper (on displacement costs) and sent it to Knight, who wrote back to him “Professor Knight thanks Mr. Boulding for his paper, which he thinks is as wrong and confused as it is possible to be” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 72). Boulding felt “that got our relationship off on a very good level and I became very fond of him. I am sure my thinking has been much influenced by his teachings” (p. 72). Boulding enjoyed the back-and-forth discussions with Knight and they communicated on a regular basis while Boulding was at Chicago. In fact, three of his first four published articles on economics came from his disagreements with Knight. It is fun to imagine an influential thinker such as Frank Knight intellectually sparring with a 23-year-old stuttering non-degree-seeking student from Liverpool about the factors of production—and Knight taking Boulding seriously enough to discuss the issues continually and even publish his own thoughts on these matters is perhaps more a testament to Knight’s character than to Boulding’s.

The University of Chicago was a different place in the 1930s than it is today. Back then there was no Chicago school of economic thought, because, as Boulding recounts, none of the influential scholars there shared an ideology (Boulding, 1989b). Nonetheless, the intellectual curiosity of everyone at Chicago at the time created an exciting fervor— fertile ground for Boulding. This was 1933, and the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression. It may be understandable that Boulding did not seem to notice the Depression because he had been living through England’s Great Depression for many years before arriving in America. He did notice, however, that the Depression was nearly missing from discussions at Chicago. He notes that people referred to it as the “‘economic blizzard’ as though it was just meteorology” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 372). He further commented that there lacked not only acknowledgment of the problems, but also rigorous analysis about the causes and consequences of the Great Depression, which he found strange. He was also surprised that people did not discuss Irving Fisher’s work. Boulding considered Fisher the greatest American economist. He read his work at Oxford and found it first-rate; especially his analysis of interest rates, which certainly had implications for the Great Depression in both Great Britain and the United States.

During the summer of 1933, Boulding and two of his friends traveled across America in a Buick convertible. Again, this was the depths of the Great Depression (Dust Bowl—e.g., Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath). Boulding and his graduate student friends, however, were insulated from the Depression in many ways. First, they were intellectually protected by looking at economic problems much as a virologist looks at diseases. Second, Boulding’s commonwealth fellowship paid quite well. Boulding made $3,000 a year (roughly $55,000 in current dollars), and, with no dependents, deflation and so forth meant he was living very well. He wrote that after the fellowship ended, it was many years before he felt as well-off financially.

On July 27, 1933, while visiting the Grand Canyon, Boulding got word that his father had died. Will had been ill for several months. Bessie’s biography (1984a) states that in 1932 she and Will were driving to London with a friend and were hit by a car that shook them all. She states that Will never really recovered from this accident. We find, however, that Will had suffered from diabetes since 1930. In fact, he was on a strict diet to control it (boiled cabbage and biscuits). As most people would, Will grew tired of this diet at times and would go out to eat for a decent meal. He had been growing increasingly tired. While on a business trip, he got hot and collapsed. He went into a coma and died just as Bessie got to the hospital in Worcester.

When Boulding learned his father died, he went back to Chicago and, through a series of bad luck, did not arrive in Liverpool until three weeks after his father’s death. Bessie had many friends and family around to help her, though. Will had been having financial difficulties. As Boulding had supported his family before, while at Liverpool Collegiate, he signed over his bank account in Liverpool to his father and also sent him $150 from his commonwealth fellowship stipend. They found, however, that Will was insolvent and had been for many years. His liabilities exceeded his assets by one-and-a-half times. This was an important learning experience for Boulding; he was surprised the bank would let his father stay in that kind of financial trouble. The bank kept Will’s business going on the assumption that next year would be better. They sold the house, most of the furniture, and other items. Eventually they settled with the creditors and Bessie moved in with a relative. Bessie was obviously concerned about money, and, when she told him so, he “put his arms around [her] and said ‘Never mind, Mother, I’m as good as an investment’” (E. Boulding, 1984a, p. 89). Boulding went back to America after a month and was listless over all that had happened.

In the fall, Boulding studied with Joseph Schumpeter at the red bricks of Harvard University. He never wrote about his feelings of Harvard. Because he was still grieving over his loss and concern for his mother, he did not really get the same thrill out of Harvard as he did at Chicago. Though Boulding (1989b) did write that he read much about the Austrians and Bohm-Bawerk, “concluding, I am afraid, that they were another example of the failure of equilibrium theory to deal with economic reality” (p. 373). At the end of the fall, he fell ill with pneumonia and had a collapsed lung. As she had all his life, his mother came to be by his side and take care of him, travelling all the way to America. Boulding had been sick regularly as a child and his mother would always nurse him back to health. Bessie had never been to America (nor did she ever think she would visit it), so despite the circumstances, she was excited about the trip. It also probably took her mind off her own grief. “Professor Frank Taussig, then in his last year at Harvard, found lodgings for her and paid the bills out of his own pocket, all this for an unknown graduate student” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 373). Once Boulding was healthy, they found an apartment together and he resumed his studies at Chicago— though with less enthusiasm than before all the life changes.

Until his time in Chicago, Boulding did not give much attention to women. He had some childhood girlfriends, but none with whom he shared a romantic interest. Once in Chicago, he seemed to mature and find an interest in women. Boulding worked hard in school and had little opportunity for carousing with girls. It seems that Bessie’s influence over her only son (and only child) was large enough to dissuade him from receiving feminine wiles. Both Bessie and his Aunt Ada encouraged the idea as Boulding was maturing that the future held considerable time to get involved with women. While in Chicago, he wrote and acted in a short play for Chicago’s International House. Boulding played a philanderer with two women cast as his love interests. One of them was Lucinda, an American, who was the social secretary at International House. Boulding saw her in Elizabethan dress and was besotted (which is odd because clothes for women at this time were not, by most standards, alluring—think: Queen Elizabeth I). Not long after the play and before returning to England, he proposed to her. Already engaged, however, Lucinda turned him down. Boulding had known her for two years, and yet he did not know she was betrothed. This story may speak to Boulding’s inattentiveness or perhaps his yearning for a woman. He was devastated by the failed attempt at securing love. Though he wrote to a friend, “The little god with the arrows scored a bulls eye in those last few weeks at Chicago, though I am afraid on the whole he has bungled the business very badly, and I have crossed him off my visiting list from henceforth” (Kerman, 1974, p. 241).

The commonwealth fellowship required Boulding to return to England, even though he wanted to stay in America. He and Bessie returned to Liverpool and lived with relatives. Boulding wrote at the time that he had returned to the “dirty hick town of Liverpool . . . close, cabined, and confined” (Kerman, 1974, p. 241). He had fallen in love with America and felt its lure of potential and freedom from all the social and physical constrictions he had felt most of his life. At this time (1934), England’s economy was still in depression and he had difficulty finding a job. There were few teaching jobs advertised that summer. He was offered one of them at the University of Edinburgh for $250 a year (subsequently, the same amount of money he was given at Oxford to support himself). Since that was his only offer, he took it and he and Bessie moved to Edinburgh.

The three years Boulding spent in Edinburgh were not happy ones. First, the economics department was far removed from the intellectual vibrancy at Chicago. There was a strict hierarchy among professors, which meant very little communication between colleagues. Second, the teaching was regimented and strictly enforced. The exciting work Boulding learned at Chicago was not allowed in the Edinburgh classrooms. This stuffiness felt tighter than a tie at Liverpool Collegiate.

One bright spot was Lucinda coming back into his life. Her engagement was disengaged in 1935. Boulding wrote to her blissful that she was a single woman again. She went on a trip to England with her father and visited Boulding in Edinburgh. She only spent a weekend with Boulding, and he did not get the chance to spend as much time with her as he wanted. Worse yet, he proposed again, and she said no, again. They continued to communicate, so Boulding held hope of his perseverance breaking her resistance.

In the summer of 1935, Boulding applied for two fellowships at Oxford and got neither. He was especially discouraged because a friend at Oxford had encouraged him to apply for one of them. He had to take an examination, which he considered ridiculous since he had published articles and was already teaching. But he acquiesced and after this entire hullabaloo still did not get the fellowship. This experience reinforced Boulding’s opinions of Oxford’s class structure, which he believed cost him a fellowship. He wrote a rather heated letter stating his grievances and got his travel expenses reimbursed. Though, after this experience, he was done with stodgy Oxford and ready for a new environment to grow in.

Edinburgh was not a complete intellectual waste for Boulding. An important step in his education occurred there when he met William Baxter an accounting professor who taught him about balance sheets (and who later became a professor at the London School of Economics). Boulding had never studied balance sheets—which he later remarked seemed strange because it was so important to many of the discussions going on in economics. This knowledge changed his thoughts on both the theory of the firm and the theory of capital. Essentially he saw firms as reacting dynamically to changes in their balance sheets over time; and changes in technology, competition, and demand would alter firms’ balance sheets in ways that changed their decision making. He also realized that economists were confused about concepts of stocks versus flows. Essentially Boulding saw capital as a stock and “income being additions and subtractions from capital, that is, a flow” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 374). (This realization, and his subsequent writings on the issue places Boulding, in part, in the Post Keynesian economics camp, which will be discussed in Chapter 4.)

In 1935, Boulding was professionally elevated by Frank Knight’s article published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics titled “The Theory of Investment Once More: Mr. Boulding and the Austrians.” This article was based on several papers Boulding wrote while at Chicago. Boulding often remarked that this article put him in such good company that he did not need a PhD. Knight’s article was born from his arguments with Boulding over the factors of production and what we today call opportunity cost. Boulding immediately wrote a reply to Knight, which helped jump-start his career. Boulding remarked, years later:

[The controversy] centered around the concept of the period of production, as to whether it means anything really. I now think it probably doesn’t, but I was very much on the side of the period of production at that time and Knight was very much against it. It’s a controversy which crops up in economics every generation, it has a thirty-year cycle . . . it never comes to anything (Kerman, 1974, p. 27).

This discussion revolves around the idea of the time elapsed between receiving raw material inputs and the output of final product (period of production). Knight believed capital in most cases is homogeneous (fixed durable goods). Boulding, however, saw capital as having varying levels of value depending on its age and usefulness at different points through the production cycle. He applied this concept to population theory, which, given the concept of life cycles, is a sensible application.

What is interesting is that the Cambridge “Capital Controversy” in the 1960s was an extension of the argument between Knight and Boulding. Only with Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow (at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts) playing Knight’s role and Joan Robinson and Pierro Sraffa (at Cambridge University in England) playing Boulding’s role. This time, however, the “Capital Controversies” produced both heat and light that dismantled the neoclassical view of capital and its subsequent application to theories of growth, trade, taxation, and other subfields (see Bharadwaj and Schefold, 1990). Sadly, neoclassical/mainstream economics has moved on as though the controversy were an irrelevant footnote; too few textbooks explain the fluidity of capital (all those misleading production functions go on without clarification).

In Spring 1936, Boulding was asked to speak at a student conference. He thought this was an informal presentation with students. However, a newspaper reporter was also present and wrote in the paper The Scotsman an article titled “Scottish University Sitting on Haunches for the Last Fifty Years.” The article highlighted Boulding’s comments that the University of Edinburgh was a static intellectual environment. He argued that much of the dynamism and future of education was occurring in America and that Edinburgh should take note of these changes—or risk becoming obsolete. This article did not make Boulding popular among his colleagues. The professor of his department (akin to a chair, dean, and provost rolled into one) was Sir Alexander Gray, who Boulding, in typical fashion, had several arguments/discussions with about economics and the university during his time there. Boulding was a lecturer, which was a lowly position on the academic hierarchy at Edinburgh, so his argumentative style was ill-received. Of course, when Gray read the article in The Scotsman he was upset and wrote Boulding a stern letter holding little back. Boulding replied offering Gray his resignation. Gray sensibly calmed down and explained that would not be necessary and that Boulding should keep his job. In 1937, Boulding’s three-year contract at the University of Edinburgh expired. His contract was not renewed and Sir Gray commented to Boulding that he did not think he should be a teacher, “especially as [Boulding] had a speech defect” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 73). It is doubtful Boulding was disappointed not to have his contract renewed. But at this time, as was the case for the past several years, teaching positions in England were scarce.

In August 1937, Boulding attended a conference of Quakers in Philadelphia to which he was sent by the Scottish Friends as a delegate. A friend from Chicago called Boulding about a job at Colgate University in upstate New York. With no other options, after the conference he went to Hamilton, New York, and interviewed for the job. The teaching load was heavy (9 hours of classes and 12 hours of tutorials), but his summers would be free. He said no to the job offer because the salary was $2,000 a year and he did not think he and his mother could live on that—but he had no other prospects, so it is surprising that he declined the offer. They soon called him back and raised the offer to $2,400. Boulding was pleased to be wanted enough to warrant a 20 percent increase in the offer, so he accepted. Boulding wrote, “I never went back to Britain. I emigrated unexpectedly with one suitcase and a return ticket, a single event that changed my whole life” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 73). After a year, Bessie joined him and she stayed there for most of the rest of her life.

For Boulding, Hamilton, New York, was not only a return to America but a place to lay down roots and start his professional life. Boulding wanted to be noticed. When Frank Knight wrote his article attacking Boulding’s work, it gave him a thrill because he was competing in the arena he felt he belonged—conversing with influential economists in a well-respected venue. Shortly after arriving at Colgate, he wrote:

If it wasn’t for [g]nawing ambition, I could settle down in this transatlantic arcady into a very charming and comfortable rut . . . I shall have to decide whether to seek security and oblivion in Hamilton, hiding away in the unbreakable peace of these frozen hills, or whether I ought to break out of it (Kerman, 1974, p. 268).

Boulding and his love interest, Lucinda, saw each other on a casual basis several times. On occasion, he would again make a proposal, but it never worked. Now that he was in America (and on the East Coast), in 1940, he and Bessie visited Lucinda and her family in Maine. Apparently, Lucinda’s family was exceptionally affluent. Her family home was opulent—with a maid and all. After this visit, Boulding felt the chasm between his background and Lucinda’s. The old English class system feelings bubbling to the surface again left him deflated. Providing some insight into Bessie’s feelings on her son’s romantic interests, she wrote in her diary (E. Boulding, 1984a) after one of the days while in Maine, “Lunch at Lucinda’s in great grandeur. Lovely ride afterwards along coast. (Cried nearly all night!).”

Quaker Writings

Boulding was not only trying to establish himself as an influential economist, but also he started making a name for himself in the Quaker community. Boulding’s friend Anatol Rapoport, an atheist, writes about a conversation with Boulding that revealed “[Boulding] believed literally in Jesus’s resurrection and miracles” (Rapoport, 2013, p. 485). In 1938, Boulding published several articles in Quaker publications. His first Quaker article published in American Friend in September (1938a) was titled “Making Education Religious” and discusses that wholly educated people must not only have book knowledge but also a sense of their place in the world. “One of the most impressive things about America is the remarkable quantity of education activity. What the cathedral, the church, and the castle were to Medieval Europe, the school and the university are to us” (Boulding, 1938a, p. 408). He then goes on to laud the government in America for allotting sufficient funding to ensure quality education. His concerns are with intent:

We look to education to solve most of the problems of the day. We look to education to build up a new society, to establish true democracy, to hasten the kingdom of God. That this is so is a fine and beautiful thing. Nevertheless, the very faith which we repose in education lays upon us the constant and heavy responsibility of justifying that faith. It is not enough to turn aside a difficult question of social or political life by saying, “Oh, education is the answer.” We must seek to know what we are educating for, what kind of education we want, what kind of people we want to produce as a result of our education. This question is particularly important for religious people, for to be religious implies that we have at least some idea of what man ought to be, and consequently some idea of the type of person which we want our education to produce. Education is nothing less than the production of adults (Boulding, 1938a, p. 408).

Boulding then argues that education revolves around three stages. First is the accumulation of skills. Next is the stage of orientation— understanding where we exist in the universe. The third is when one not only knows where one stands in the universe, “but accepts and identifies himself with that universe” (p. 409).

What part, then, in this process of orientation does religious education play? The assumption behind most of our public education is that it plays no part at all—that beyond the inculcation of a few simple ideas and the exercise of a certain amount of national religion (e.g. flag worship) education should be purely secular. [ . . . ] The distinction between Sunday School and Weekday school has become sharp, and all too frequently what is learned in one is related in no way to what is learned in the other. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that this situation has been disastrous both for religion and for education. On the one hand, religion has tended to lose its relation to other branches of human experience, while on the other hand the branches of knowledge have been regarded as isolated “subjects” in a curriculum rather than as aspects of a unified body of truth (Boulding 1938a, p. 409).

Boulding goes on further to write:

Our world is dying for lack of men who can identify themselves with the world’s suffering. [ . . . ] The three stages of education, then, are stages in the development of the religious man, and one who stops short at any of them is only a half-finished product. [ . . . ] It is perhaps even more important that teachers in public schools should be genuinely religious people (Boulding, 1938a, p. 409).

His second Quaker article was “An Experiment in Friendship” (1938b) and discussed the immorality of anti-Semitism in Germany. Here Boulding laments the lack of concern shown for the suffering and persecution of Jewish people in Germany and how it is the responsibility of all people (Quakers especially) to speak out and act out against the atrocities. This was before much was known about the suffering of Jewish people in Germany; but Boulding could sense what was coming and wanted to raise people’s awareness of the potential for disaster. The Quakers have a long history of wanting to right the wrongs of the world. They were instrumental in moving slaves from the southern states of America to the northern states via the Underground Railroad (secretly transporting slaves from the southern United States to the northern United States, where they were free). And while pacifists, many served as medics and other noncombatant roles during wartime.

The third Quaker article Boulding published in 1938 was “In Defense of the Supernatural” published in Friends Intelligencer. Here we find that Boulding is a devout Christian who does not hide his love and belief in God. He asserts that in science there exists certain natural laws that are repeatable and subject to the scientific method. For infrequent events, however, science is of little use.

History unlike chemistry, does not repeat itself. Every human being, as a whole personality, is unique. In the social sciences the element of sheer chance becomes so important that to the student of the business cycle, for instance, the faith that the universe is governed by natural laws seems positively naive. In theology the absurdity of the faith in a universe run by natural law is even greater. So anthropomorphic are we in this country that we think of God as a good citizen and imagine the Kingdom of Heaven is a Constitutional Monarchy, in which God, like the President, must obey the Constitution (Boulding, 1938c, p. 677).

Boulding also published “Worship and Fellowship” (1938d) in Friends Intelligencer; and, in 1939, “In Praise of Maladjustment” and “A Pacifist View of History” (1939a) in Fellowship. He then published four Quaker articles in 1940, two of which are particularly interesting; both were published in Friends Intelligencer. First, “In Praise of Selfishness” (1940a), he makes the case that an element of selfishness can produce good outcomes for both the individual and society. Here he uses Adam Smith’s notion of laissez-faire and the idea that sometimes when people act in their individual interest all of society benefits. Further, “It can be argued with considerable force that both in the economic and in the political sphere it is the unselfishness, not the selfishness, of mankind that causes the most trouble. It is when the individual sets aside his personal interest in favor of a group that conflicts become acute” (Boulding, 1940a, p. 131). He gives as an example,

In the political sphere war is unquestionably a result of two forces— the unselfishness of individuals and selfishness of groups. Individuals do not generally go to war for personal ends. Indeed, if people were selfish and unashamed of being so war would be impossible. Not many alive would go through the horror of it were he not impelled in some degree or other by unselfish motives—the love of country or of ideals—which he feels must be defended by violence. The miserable wage of a soldier and the doubtful reward of a pension are wholly inadequate compensation for the risks of war (Boulding, 1940a, p. 131).

Boulding’s second Quaker article in 1940, “The Pacifism of All Sensible Men” discusses his concern that many Quakers view the government as an overarching power. Being a good Keynesian, Boulding does not see the government as bad, by default. Certainly he finds fault with many aspects of the government (military power, cronyism, and so forth), but government serves many public good works, too (education, infrastructure). Boulding believes it is a misunderstanding of power, of which he sees two large varieties: power of fear and power of love. He admits “Most national policies are based on the power of fear. We hope to prevent the foreigner from injuring us because of our ability to injure him” (Boulding, 1940b, p. 801). But power of love is stronger. He presents Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance as an example of love conquering fear. “Fear breeds hate, and hate is a political poison capable of killing any body politic on earth” (p. 801). And fear can, and should be, resisted.

We cannot go to our enemy with one hand outstretched in friendship and the other holding a revolver behind our back. Only by the complete abandonment of the power of fear can the world be saved, for the power of love is the only irresistible power. Only love can make the last citadel of the human heart; only love can neutralize the poisons of hate and suspicion; only love can bind mankind together into one family. [ . . . ] So those who have the vision of God which is revealed in Christ obey His voice not for fear of any punishment, here or hereafter, but for fear of driving one more nail into the crucified body of God Himself. So those who take on the joyful burden of love must suffer, that the hearts of those who inflict the suffering may be stirred . . . (Boulding, 1940b, p. 801).

Boulding then published “The Economics of Reconstruction” (1941b) in American Friend. This article was written during a time when Boulding was quite aware of the effects of World War II on his homeland. Rather than focus on the Sisyphus-like efforts saying “give peace a chance,” he instead looks to the future. This article argues that in light of the destruction that has already occurred in Europe (and the destruction yet to come), it is necessary to start thinking about reconstruction now. “If we know anything about the future it is this: that at the end of the war there will be appalling shortages of almost every conceivable kind of economic goods, shortages that in many parts of the world will reach famine intensity” (Boulding, 1941b, p. 177). Boulding essentially argues that focus must be placed on agriculture. World powers must ensure that the agricultural sector is rebuilt quickly in order to provide sustenance for people. He saw this as the primary objective of immediate reconstruction after the war. Idealists may disagree, but realists certainly would not.

Economic Analysis

Boulding was told at one point that writing a book would be of far greater value to his economic career than journal articles, so that is where he focused most of his energy while at Colgate. The academic semesters were busy, but with the summers free and no money to travel he took advantage and wrote. He set a schedule for himself writing ten pages a day throughout each summer—graphing his progress on a twodimensional chart (typical economist). In two summers, he was able to write an economics textbook Economic Analysis (1941a) based on his lecture notes. Boulding writes that he “saw economics as a kind of landscape, indeed in the first drafts I had a little introductory paragraph of a chapter about the nature of the scenery, which the publisher made me take out” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 73). He sent the manuscript to Harper & Brothers on a whim, and they published it without delay.

The first edition of Economic Analysis (1941a) was based largely on the work of Irving Fisher (who, as written earlier, Boulding thought was probably the greatest American economist) and John Maynard Keynes’s Treatise on Money (1930). Keynes’s General Theory of Employment Interest and Money was published in 1936, and Boulding who was a great admirer of Keynes read the book, but he admits that he had not yet absorbed it. The first edition of Economic Analysis did not sell well—mostly because this was during the start of World War II. The second edition (published in 1948) was entirely Keynesian—adopting concepts from The General Theory and improving on his analysis. Boulding stated many times that he took supply and demand about as far as they could go. Eventually the book garnered attention and became one of the core textbooks used in colleges in the United States (and eventually around the world). Though, Boulding remarked that so many students being introduced to economics by his textbook made him feel like “a wet-nurse to this generation of economists” (Kerman, 1974, p. 30).

Boulding was pleased with the attention his textbook received. This book helped cement his reputation in the field. It was the bestselling book he ever wrote. It eventually lost significant market share to Paul Samuelson’s Economics: An Introductory Analysis, which was first published in 1948. (Subsequently, Samuelson was an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago while Boulding was there—though there is no record they ever spoke until later in life.) One reason, Boulding speculated later, that his textbook did not maintain its position was because the fourth edition (1966) was published as two volumes. This no doubt increased its price and made it cumbersome for students to carry around, so it is a sensible hypothesis.

Quavering Pacifism

Boulding was feeling the simmering of Hitler’s ambition protruding whenever he visited England and its surrounding European countries. He was concerned for his family and friends in England. In 1939 and

1940, Hitler orchestrated invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. It was around this time that Boulding had, after his bath, his religious vision of Jesus (see Chapter 2) and became convinced divinely that his pacifism was correct. In May 1940, he wrote (Kerman, 1974, p. 119):

I feel hate rising in my throat.

Nay—on a flood of hate I float,

My mooring lost, my anchor gone,

I cannot steer by start or sun,

 . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .

Black are the fountains of my soul

And red the slime on which they roll.

 . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .  . . .

I hate! I hate! I hate! I hate!

I hate this thrice-accursed State,

I’ll smash each bloodshot German face That travesties the human race!

This was the only time Boulding remembered his pacifism  quavering— seeing the atrocities of Nazism. He said that Hilter was the only person in his life that he ever hated. But even then he believed in loving your enemy and turning the other cheek. Boulding’s pacifism during World War II cost him friends and some people’s respect, but he remained committed to his ideals. For the rest of his life his pacifism only grew stronger; because of threats, such as nuclear war and modern warfare, Boulding found evidence that his convictions were correct—war was never a solution.

At the Race Street Meetinghouse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1942, Boulding delivered his William Penn lecture The Practice of the Love of God, in which he exclaims the value in the practice of religion and, mostly, love (Boulding, [1942] 2004). He writes, “And to be ‘religious’ only, in the narrow sense, to be shut up in a little world of the purely personal, is to be a Pharrisee” (pp. 19–20). He goes on to write, “We can only truly express our love for God, then, in expressing our love for God’s family, for all creation” (p. 20). Against the secularism of the modern age, Boulding stated, “Dare to love God! Dare to practice that love everywhere in God’s family, seeing the divine likeness in everyone mixture of earth and heaven though we be!” (p. 3). Boulding uses Keynes’s concept of the widow’s cruse from his Treatise on Money (1930) to explain that, “Love indeed is a widow’s cruse, for the more its fragrant oil is poured forth, the fuller flows the stream. It is a realm where the laws of economics do not hold and are turned quite upside down, for what we carefully mete out will wither in our hands, like the manna of old, while what we squander recklessly abroad will multiply until we can hardly contain our riches” (Boulding, 2004, p. 7).

Boulding’s vision of love for God is brimful in his declarations. Underneath his strong religious beliefs is a deeper sense of optimism for humanity. During this time, Europe was in turmoil and England was in particular distress over the war with Germany. Boulding was personally affected by World War II, as were many of his family and friends. There can be no doubt that this writing in 1942 is a reflection of his deep sense that the only way to move from war to peace was to adopt not only pacifism, but active pacifism with a focus on loving your enemy. Boulding argues in this pamphlet that this is incredibly difficult when the enemy is so hate-filled and destructive, which is why he uses God as a mediator through which our feelings must be filtered. Although we may want to hate our neighbor, Boulding states we can love God, and in loving God find a pathway to peace. While Boulding was a Christian, it is not entirely clear that his dogmatism was attached to religion as much as it was to humanity. But he does not call on God to fix problems; he believes only people can do that job. God is not a referee or overlord; rather, He is to serve as inspiration for what is possible. Above all else, Boulding sought peace.

Elise

In May 1941, Boulding got the first copy of his book Economic Analysis (1941a), which had a dedication to his mother, Elizabeth Ann Boulding. The day before his book arrived, he was at a Quarterly Meeting of Quakers (a regional meeting for Quakers to discuss business and spirituality) in Syracuse, New York. At this meeting he met a tall 21-yearold Norwegian-American girl in her first year of graduate school, Elise Bjorn-Hansen. She was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1920, and at three years old her parents moved their family to a Scandinavian community in Newark, New Jersey. Elise does not remember ever discussing religion in her family (other than some random Bible readings). Her family never went to church, which she notes was common in her community. Elise, however, had spirituality. With limited guidance it took her many years before she settled on a religious home. She dabbled with the Catholics and even the Christian Scientists, but none of them resonated with what she believed and wanted to experience spiritually. In college, she found the Quakers and enjoyed the meetings. At the beginning of Quaker meetings there is silence, and Elise felt this mimicked almost precisely the way she had experienced religion through her childhood. Thus, she felt at home with the Quakers and at 21 decided to join the Society of Friends. It was this decision that led her to the quarterly meeting in Syracuse. Her application was going to be considered at the monthly Quaker meeting in Hamilton, New York. As a result, Boulding, whose attention she had gotten, invited her to stay with him when she was there. Elise did not know who Boulding was and later felt rather confused not knowing if he was married, single, or a psychopath. She did remember that he sat across from her at the meeting in Syracuse and gave a declaration she did not agree with.

Boulding found various ways to spend time with Elise during the weekend after and the next. They spent every day together the following week. And his crowning achievement, Economic Analysis that he dedicated to his mother, became a love gift to Elise complete with a sonnet he wrote to her attached to the inside cover. What started as an homage to his mother ended up as peacocky plumage for Elise. We can only speculate on how this was taken by Bessie. We have no record of her thoughts in her diary. There was probably strong ambivalence. Within 17 days of first meeting, they were engaged to be married (though Kenneth Boulding’s account was 18 days), and in three months they were married (Morrison, 2005). Boulding was 31 and Elise was 21. Elise commented in a letter to her husband on his seventy-fifth birthday that she was just a child and felt like a child at the time—insecure and uncertain. She even wrote how people at the time called Boulding a “cradle robber” since she was ten years younger (Morrison, 2005). As a result of her age, perhaps, she wrote how Boulding had been her “teacher” throughout their lives. This may be due to the fact that she was starting to develop her spirituality with the Society of Friends as her foundation. Boulding was already established (both spiritually and mentally) within the Society, so he served as her teacher and religious adviser. World War II affected Elise in much the same way World War I affected Boulding. Their pacifism was strong and served as a common denominator for their ideologies.

Boulding wrote many sonnets for Elise early in their relationship (and all their years together). Most of these early sonnets he compiled and published privately with the title Sonnets for Elise (1957a). One was the sonnet he included in his textbook for her as a first gift (p. 1):

On mountain flanks the bubbling infant brook

Drips darkly through the moss, and does not know

To what bright sea his tiny waters flow

Nor what worlds live beyond his present nook:

So I the low arcadian meads forsook,

And on high rocks of truth, where no flowers grow,

Found one pure patch of undiscovered snow And warmed it with my days, to make this book.

Foolish, I thought the warmer love to flee

And on these cold and abstract heights to dwell:

Ah, little, as I labored, could I tell

That all my work would lead so soon to thee,

And little did I know that I should find

In thee, high truth and warmest love combined.

One more sonnet (“III”) from this collection emphasizes Boulding’s feelings at the time (p. 1).

I’ll count the strands of your soft-flowing hair

And say, as each one slips my fingers through

I love you dearly, you, and only you, For only you my weight of love can bear.

Then into your reflecting eyes I’ll stare

And see my own back-shining from the blue,

Yours mine, mine yours, until, though lost to view, Deep thought sees infinite reflections there.

But if for each of these infinities

I said “I love you,” still I could not speak

Good words enough, for words are all too weak To map the bounds of love’s still, shoreless seas. Strange miracle! That love should have no end, For all the more remains, the more we spend.

No presentation of Kenneth Boulding’s life and work would be complete without a fuller account of Elise Boulding’s life. They were married over 50 years, had 5 children and 16 grandchildren, and were active scholarly coauthors. Her influence on Boulding’s life is immeasurable, as was his influence on her life and work. Her convictions were resolute and she lived her beliefs.

Elise in Brief

A book about Kenneth Boulding must, in some ways, also be a book about Elise Boulding. Elise was born in 1920, the oldest of three daughters. Her father, Josef, was an engineer with a quiet demeanor—though he was the more affectionate of Elise’s parents. Josef and Birgit were second cousins from the southern islands off Norway. Josef’s family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, when he was a child; they even spent time in America. Josef did not have a good childhood and did not lament the distance from Norway. Most of Elise’s family were seafarers of various types. Elise, by her 1990 account, was probably conceived a month before her parents married (Morrison, 2005, p. 26). Elise’s two sisters were 10 and 12 years younger than her. In 1923, Norway was suffering an economic depression. Josef was worried about losing his job, so he moved the family to New Jersey to work for Carrier designing air-conditioning parts. Birgit did not want to leave Norway. She thought Americans were “terribly crass and materialistic” (Morrison, 2005, p. 21). One of Elise’s earliest memories was of her mother crying at the window of their New Jersey home. Elise said she viewed the world through her mother’s eyes, and, as a result, thought of Norway as her home, too. The family only made one trip back to Norway. Elise was ten and the trip left an impression that did not differ from her mother’s memories. Since most of Elise’s family was still living in the same southern island, she felt a great sense of community and security when she visited.

Elise always felt that she belonged to two cultures. Her parents only spoke Norwegian until her first sister arrived when she was nine years old. This, combined with the fact they lived in a Scandinavian community, left Elise feeling much more a Norwegian immigrant than an American. She believed her sisters were much more American than she was—because her family had assimilated to American life by the time they arrived. But Elise’s mother made her repeat her schoolwork in Norwegian, which Elise found cumbersome at the time, but later she wrote:

I don’t remember disliking it, but I remember being impatient, because I wanted to go out and play. But I did it, and I am very, very glad that I did. Because I think growing up bilingual is so much better than growing up monolingual. I wouldn’t be able to read and write Norwegian now if she hadn’t done that when I was a child. The fact that I grew up seeing the world through my mother’s eyes, and it was primarily my mother, you know, she was always telling me how good everything was in Norway. The medicine was better, people were healthier, they were more moral, you know . . . and that America was a materialistic country where people were, she never used words like degenerate, but you know now that I think of it, there was sort of the flavor of that (Morrison, 2005, p. 27).

During the Great Depression, Josef lost his job for a while, so Birgit started working as a therapeutic masseuse. Growing up, Birgit was a classical pianist and dreamed of studying at the Oslo Conservatory, but because of financial constraints she studied nursing and therapeutic massage. Elise then took greater responsibility caring for her younger sisters. Elise remembered her mother as a popular masseuse. For example, clients would have her and Elise over for dinner in their homes. Elise remembers her mother being a socially conscious person. As a young person, Birgit was politically active and argued for the rights of all Norwegians. Later in life, however, she became interested in creating a more comfortable life for herself and her children. Elise commented that when it came to her life, her mother wanted her to have the best opportunities: best education, social environment, and so on. Knowing her mother’s early history, this always confused Elise.

Birgit insisted Elise learn piano and cello. Elise did not care for piano but did stick with the cello. She played it regularly through college and her early adult years. Birgit’s early musical interests flowed onto all her children who were required to play an instrument. In later life, Elise recalled that this insistence from her driven mother had a profound impact on her younger sister Sylvia. She was a pianist and her mother pushed her to achieve the dreams she never realized, which Elise believed caused Sylvia’s suicide in 1981. In truth, Elise’s mother and extended family showed signs of serious depression. Elise inherited some of this and would often fall into dark depressive states when she struggled with life. Elise was a driven person and would push herself. When she did not achieve all she expected, she would feel a great sense of defeat that she overcame with self-harming behavior. Later in life she had the freedom to lock herself away for long periods of time to work through these periods (see: Born Remembering [Elise Boulding, 1975]).

Elise always felt Norway was a safe haven growing up—the image instilled in Elise’s mind by her mother as a land untouchable and remote with caring people. When Germany invaded Norway in 1940 during World War II, Elise’s Norwegian island of peace dissolved. She realized at that point that nowhere was safe from war and violence. This lesson was an important one for her to learn and would have the greatest influence on her intellectual output and areas of study.

Elise’s parents were not able to afford college, so when Elise won a full scholarship to the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College, part of Rutgers University), her family was excited. Her father especially hoped that his daughters would have opportunities in America. He, unlike Birgit, had no negative feelings against America or Americans. He believed America was a land of opportunity and wanted his children to have the chance to be successful. Before Elise won a full scholarship, she was going to work her way through college as a waitress, but her parents would not let her work a job where she waited on other people. Again, this goes back to their new perception of social hierarchy. Josef, however, had saved some money and provided this to Elise so she could focus on her studies. She did earn some money playing cello in quartets and in various venues. She finished college in three years and studied English with minors in German and French. She had planned to study Scandinavian literature in Oslo, but the German invasion of Norway in 1940 (her last year of college) ended that dream, which was a significant disappointment. While in college, however, she ignored her spirituality, believing it was a weakness in her rational mind (Elise Boulding, 1975). She always enjoyed school and imagined studying the influence the Viking invasion had on English literature. She thought teaching high school English was the end goal.

Her first job out of college was at a publishing company in New York City. She did not enjoy the banal city life and office work, so she went to Syracuse where her parents had moved. But in New York City she was exposed to people with strong religious beliefs (of many different denominations) and learned about social programs for the poor and blacks. These experiences affected Elise deeply and provided her with a sense of purpose to pursue a life focused on spirituality (experience) and social betterment (action). Once in Syracuse, she started attending Quaker meetings regularly. She was introduced to the Society of Friends by people she had met in high school and college. Here she met people who shared her spiritual beliefs and convictions for pacifism and social equality. She also found people who were deeply passionate about their religion. In college, she had absconded herself from religion, so once opening herself up to it again, she felt centered and relieved to be living a more honest life. Also while in Syracuse, she met Kenneth Boulding, of which she wrote:

While in one way I had been preparing for the world [he] introduced me to all my life, in another way this was a new world to me. Kenneth’s own deep spirituality released the last of my own inhibitions about the religious dimension . . . When he spoke in Meetings the tears often rolled down my cheeks in love and joy and compassion for this extraordinary man who was to be my husband (Elise Boulding, 1975, p. 12).

Elise and Kenneth had a traditional marriage in many ways. Elise stayed at home while her husband worked. Much of her later work was spent studying the role women play in the family and what role the family plays in society. She saw the family as a microcosm of society. She also believed (as did Boulding) that achieving peace in the home was the first step to achieving peace throughout the world. She wrote that families are the “practice ground for making history” (Elise Boulding, 1989). Consequently, their home was a place of peace.

Of course, true to the time, Kenneth Boulding did not play much of a role in household functions. He was not involved in raising the children, and when he was home often spent his time in his office with the door closed. In every account of Boulding as a father, Elise and he offer the same strange story of him playing with building blocks with his children. So often is this memory shared in many different publications (and retold to me during my interviews) that it makes one wonder if this was the only time he did play with his kids—such an impression it made. Boulding wrote later to his children that he was sorry he played little role in their development growing up. He relied on Elise to assume these responsibilities with their five children. It is not surprising that Elise would later focus on family as the reference point for her studies of peace and society. She spent much of her life speaking to Quakers and other groups about how a peaceful, loving family was necessary for nurturing children who would grow up and spread the message of peace throughout the world. Of course, in her later work, her thoughts evolved to the point where she argued for greater equality between women and men regarding household activities.

It is entirely possible that Elise Boulding was a more interesting person than her husband. She was a housewife for the first 18 years of marriage, though she still completed her masters in sociology at Iowa State University and eventually a doctorate from the University of Michigan. Her areas of study were peace and women’s studies. She is referred to by many as “the matriarch of the twentieth century peace research movement.” She produced over 300 publications including several books and pamphlets. Her work was influential enough to get her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 1990 (won by Mikhail Gorbachev). More of Elise’s work and influence is explored in later chapters.

League of Nations

Soon after their wedding, the Bouldings moved to Princeton, New Jersey, so Kenneth could work at the League of Nations Economics and Financial Division to study European agriculture. The change seems rather sudden and strange to go from teaching and writing to applied research. Before meeting Elise, he had already decided to leave Colgate. It is unclear what his motivations were for leaving and why he chose to go to the League of Nations. The salary was good and the division he worked in was interesting, but whether there were any other motives we do not know. He was newly married, so perhaps he wanted an opportunity to move away from Bessie to establish a life with Elise—though this is speculation. We know he was involved loosely with the League while at Oxford. But it is more likely his research on British meat and milk problems, an unpublished work in 1937 (Kenneth Boulding Papers, Archives, University of Colorado Libraries, box 37), which he wrote during his last year at Edinburgh for Rowntree Trust, established connections that helped him get the League of Nations job.

His research at the League of Nations was on the agricultural economy of Europe after World War I. He discovered interesting anomalies, such as the fact that most agricultural production came from industrial regions. Also, national boundaries made little difference regarding agricultural production. Boulding was part of a team whose work helped lead to the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Boulding and Elise published a Quaker pamphlet titled “A Call to Disarm,” which led to his leaving the League of Nations—though he recounted the situation as being fired (which is closer to the truth). They made waves in Princeton early on because the Bouldings had a black family over to their house for dinner. Many of his white colleagues thought this was inappropriate.

Fisk

From Princeton they moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in the fall of 1942, so Boulding could teach at Fisk University, which is a predominately black college founded in 1866. He got the job because a friend and Quaker, Thomas Jones, was the president of Fisk. Boulding enjoyed his time in Nashville. He and Elise lived on campus. Boulding wrote of enjoying Fisk and gaining an appreciation of the struggles of black students in the United States in the 1940s. None of these feelings are particularly present in his published work, so it is difficult to say how deeply he understood or related to their problems. The white/black divide in Nashville at the time should have been glaring. Perhaps it is because he was not in Nashville long enough to fully appreciate the inequities, because after one academic year he left Fisk for Iowa State College (now Iowa State University).

While at Fisk, Boulding wrote his second book The Economics of Peace (1946). This book was born from his work at the League of Nations. It primarily focuses on the reconstruction and development of countries and regions postwar. Boulding was more focused on the period following World War II (in 1942) than focusing on the war itself. The Economics of Peace was a Keynesian treatment of postwar macroeconomics explaining how to handle the boom-and-bust economic cycle caused by the boom-and-bust of war. The book was not published until 1945 and did not garner popular attention. He used a descriptive illustration of a bathtub to explain how deflation and consumption work. His “Bathtub Theorem” essentially explains that “the rate of accumulation is equal to the rate of production less the rate of consumption” (Boulding, 1946, p. 7). More descriptively, a bathtub filled with water (capital) has the spigot turned on (income) and starts to overfill (inflation); one can pull the plug (consumption), turn off the spigot (austerity), or “hack a hole in the side” essentially wasting the capital stock with war. (He used this “Bathtub Theorem” in many of his later works—particularly apropos in A Reconstruction of Economics in 1950.) Besides his Keynesian economics, the book contained strong moralizing about how economics should have greater compassion and understanding of humans and their struggles. Boulding believed staunchly, perhaps naively, that the fastest way to achieve peace was for each of us to treat one another with empathy, respect, and love.

Economics of itself is too rational a science to be realistic, for reality in the human sphere is very far from rational. It is not enough, therefore, to give an intellectual solution for the world’s economic problems; we must indicate how, from the existing state of war and confusion, men may pass to a better world by steps which are possible under the present framework of beliefs, ideas, and organizations (Boulding, 1946, p. 237).

The Economics of Peace (1946) may be one of Boulding’s most underappreciated works. In it he explains not only the vagaries of war and cost of war on economic progress and human development, but he also paints an ethical portrait of how wars come about and some ways they can be prevented. In this sense, Boulding is a realist:

It is no exaggeration to say that responsible government is the key to the whole political problem, in internal as well as in external affairs. We have seen how the development of a responsible foreign policy is the way to the creation of a world order. It is equally true that in domestic politics the achievement of responsible government is the basic problem and is still far from full attainment. Democracy, significant as it is for human welfare, is not an end in itself. It is important mainly as a means to responsible government (Boulding, 1946, p. 251).

Boulding argues the problem is slightly more ambiguous, however:

In the last resort, the problem of responsible government is more than a political problem; it is a moral problem, affecting the thought and conduct of every individual—even the reader of this page. It is true that environments and institutions modify the character of individuals, yet change in institutions only comes about as a result of changes in the individuals whose character the institutions reflect. It is as true today as in Plato’s day that the nature of the state is determined by the nature of the individuals that compose it. Responsible government, whether on a world scale or even on a national scale, can never develop unless there are responsible citizens (Boulding, 1946, p. 253).

The Hawkeye State

Iowa State College offered Boulding a better position (more freedom and time to write) in a department with a good reputation. His friend from the University Chicago, Albert Hart, was at Iowa and helped Boulding get the job (though he left that same year for Columbia University). The chair of the Economics Department was Theodore Schultz (winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in economics and American Economic Association president in 1960), who once stated, “Most people in the world are poor. If we knew the economy of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matter” (Schultz, 1981, p. 3—Investing in  People). Schultz had the idea of bringing in a general economist and giving that person a year to study labor issues in order to specialize in labor economics. Boulding appreciated the idea of spending a year to learn an area of economics he knew little about. He spent that year traveling around the country, going to labor conferences, meeting with labor economists and activists, and visiting various trade unions. He recounts visiting roughly 85 head office of different labor unions during that year and all the unions in Iowa (Boulding, 1989b, p. 374). He credits this experience with opening his mind to the understanding that economics alone cannot provide answers to social science questions. He argues that all social sciences are studying the social system—though from different perspectives. So, to gain an understanding of labor problems, one must study sociology, political  science, anthropology, and economics (and today, psychology, considering some fruitful relationships such as between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky). He argued many times that his experiences at Iowa State ruined him as a traditional economist because he could no longer view economics as an insulated discipline.

Although Boulding taught labor economics at Iowa, he never considered himself a labor economist. But his understanding of labor economics helped him with his work on the Committee for Economic Development that helped form policies for post–World War II economic growth in the United States. Boulding knew of the tendency for a lull in the economy after war because spending slows and people’s expectations of the future are more uncertain. He knew it was important to develop strategies to combat the postwar bust by social investment. Unfortunately, none of the policies were as socially beneficial as those in Europe (state-run health care, for example).

Liquidity Preference

While at Iowa, Boulding published what he often referred to as his most important economics article, “A Liquidity Preference Theory of Market Prices” (1944b). Boulding was right to think this article was special. Essentially, this article highlights that Keynes’s liquidity preference theory is more precisely a theory about the determination of asset prices. His final equation is:

_P = MRw = M (1 – Rm)

                            WRm   WRm

where P is the general price level, W the total stock of all valuta (minus money), Rw is the general commodity preference ratio, and Rm the liquidity (money) preference ratio. Boulding explains the formula in the following passage (Boulding, 1944b, p. 62):

This price-level formula has an important contribution to the understanding of the crisis of late capitalism in which we seem to be living. The most striking feature of the past twenty years has been the strength of the deflationary forces in the western world. [Equation (1)] gives an important clue to this mystery. We see immediately that the total value of the stock of goods (PW) is equal to the quantity of money, M, multiplied by the “preference factor”, Rw/Rm. It follows that if the quantity of money and the preference factor are constant, the total value of the stock of goods cannot change, for every increase in the quantity of goods will result in a proportionate decline in their price. In such a case investment, in the financial sense, is absolutely impossible, for by investment we mean the increase through time of the total value of goods. (By “goods”, of course, we mean all physical capital.) Investment is only possible if either the quantity of money increases or liquidity preference declines, no matter how rapid the accumulation of physical capital. The rate of investment therefore depends, paradoxically enough, directly on the monetary situation, and only indirectly on the rate of accumulation of goods. It follows immediately that if there is no change in the preference ratios the rate of investment is equal to the rate of growth of the monetary stock. In the absence of a growth of the monetary stock or a fall in liquidity preference the accumulation of physical capital must inevitably result in a deflationary movement of prices.

This article (combined with his ideas in A Reconstruction of Economics [1950]) predates much of the work by Post Keynesian economists (see Wray, 1990) about the endogenous approach to money (more on this below). Boulding’s emphasis on balance sheets led him to understand that, as Wray (1990, pp. 17–18) stated,

A decline in preferred liquidity ratios will affect spending, prices, and the quantity of money. However, an asymmetry exists with regard to rising liquidity preference: attempts to reduce spending and increase hoards may cause prices and income to fall, but are not likely to increase the money stock. Therefore, an increase in the desired liquidity ratios must lead to deflation until the value of non[-]money assets falls sufficiently that the actual quantity of hoards stands in the desired relation to total assets.

The important message from this work is that we cannot assume the quantity of money is fixed; rather, it is dynamically affected by the liquidity preference (demand) of people and banks.

The Draft

At this time Boulding was not a US citizen, but for some reason he was still eligible for the draft. According to the transcripts, Boulding received classification as a Conscientious Objector (CO). At this time, COs were assigned to a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp. Boulding believed his work was more important than the “lands and forest projects” the CPS would have him do. He understood that refusing to go meant jail or deportation. Even with his mother and wife in support, his decision was firm. He agreed to take the physical exam, which required him to travel by bus from Ames, Iowa, to Minneapolis. Staying up all night he had enormous energy from the thoughts about whether he would be put in jail or not. Part of the physical exam was a psychiatric evaluation. Naturally, the psychiatrist asked Boulding about his reasons for not wanting to fight. Boulding explained, as best he could, the Quaker belief in the “Inward Light.” This doctrine confers on people the right to live their lives as they see right and proper. Of course, one must wait for guidance from the Inward Light. In the transition to the Liberal Quakerism of the twentieth century, Quakerism moved from a cataphatic (outward) worshipping of God, by wearing simple clothes and so forth, to an inward worshipping. This approach meant one would meditate on issues and wait to receive guidance—or be lead to a particular decision. Boulding tried explaining this to the psychiatrist, who became too befuddled and resorted to taking him to the chief psychiatrist. After being introduced, the chief shrink leaned on the table and roared at Boulding, “Do you ever hear the voice of God?” Boulding had a hard time answering this question, but he said “Well, not in a physical way.” Boulding again went into the explanation of the Inward Light leading his decision making and the chief eventually could not take anymore and said “Get out of here” and put a big X on his paper and issued him a 4-F, which meant he did not have to serve in World War II or go to jail.

Quaker Poet

Around this same time (1945), Boulding wrote a popular Quaker book, There Is a Spirit (The Nayler Sonnets) for which he thereafter was often referred to as a Quaker poet. While there is little in this book on economics (except about greed), it emphasizes his commitment to Quakerism and his capabilities as a poet. This book contains 26 sonnets, each a meditation on the final dying words of Quaker leader James Nayler in 1660. Nayler was one of the early leaders of the Society of Friends. The final years of Nayler’s life were transforming:

In 1656 [Nayler] was led into certain excesses of conduct by the hysterical enthusiasm of some of his followers, and allowed himself to be led into Bristol on a horse while his followers strewed garments in the way and shouted “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.” For this blasphemy, as it was considered, he was cruelly punished by an illegal action of parliament, being severely whipped, branded with the letter B on his forehead, and having his tongue bored through with a red hot iron. After his punishment he was imprisoned in one of the horrible “holes” of the time, but he recovered his judgment, was eventually reconciled with Friends and came to condemn his previous behavior. He was released from prison in September 1659. In October 1660 he set off from London northwards on foot, intending to visit his wife and children in Wakefield. On the way he was robbed, and found bound in a field. He was taken to a Friend’s house, where he died. The passage which forms the basis of these sonnets was spoken by him about two hours before his death (Boulding, 1945, pp. vii–viii).

The 26 sonnets are each interesting and reveal something of Boulding’s inner beliefs. But only one is presented here to represent a unique perspective of both Nayler and Boulding.

XXII. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings Can grief be gift, love’s gift, Divine Love’s gift?

Not gentle grief over imagined loss,

But vital-tearing agonies, that toss

All bodily organs into a bottomless pit

Of choking pain? Ah, dare we, dare we sift

The abyss of suffering, truly take our cross

To the insane pit of pain, and there emboss Love’s symbol on a door Hope cannot lift?

Thou sayest it—and yet the very tongue

That mouthed these words was bored with blackening Flame,

Seared with twice-bitter tasting pain and shame.

No greater song than this the saints have sung:

That there is joy, greater than Joy can know,

Through suffering, on the far side of woe (Boulding, 1945,  p. 22).

North

In 1946, Boulding and Elise spent one year at McGill University in Montreal, where he was chairman of the Economics Department. Boulding was contemplating becoming a Canadian citizen (possibly as a result of Canada’s more pacifist-friendly congenial environment). They enjoyed Canada and especially Montreal. Housing in Montreal was particularly limited when they were there, and, as a result, they had to live with another family. Elise was pregnant, and during the year went to Syracuse to have their first child, John Russell. The Bouldings still had their house in Ames, Iowa, and Boulding decided that administration was not for him, so they went back to Iowa. He never took another traditional administrative role. He was approached many times for various administrative positions, but his response to these requests was almost always the same: that he was ill-suited to administration.

Disarmament and Disillusion

Boulding decided to become an American citizen. He started the process for citizenship during his time in Hamilton, New York. He had one hurdle to overcome, which was the part of the oath a naturalized citizen had to make about the promise to bear arms for America. Boulding’s pacifism did not allow him to make this promise. It was not clear whether Boulding could delete this part and still become a citizen. They hired two lawyers and expected to be bumped up to the Supreme Court. In a lower court, on December 14, 1948, Boulding gave a speech explaining the Inward Light and how it may be impossible for him to promise to bear arms, when in reality that might be a lie (committing perjury) since he would not likely comply. Boulding was questioned about a legal issue, which was not applicable to him, and then the judge ruled in his favor. The legal fees totaled $533 (over $5,000 in current dollars). He also had to get permission to extract “So help me God,” according to Quaker beliefs. The judge approved, and so, according to Boulding, he became an American citizen “without the help of God” (Kerman, 1974, p. 124):

This country is wonderfully kind to heretics and I was apparently able to convince the judge that at least I was not a dangerous heretic! It was, I think, one of the happiest and proudest moments of my life, and I hope I can prove worthy of the trust implied.

During the Vietnam War, Boulding grew increasingly embittered by the actions of his adopted country. He later wrote the following sweet little ditty:

Don’t love your country any more

She’s a bitch, she’s a bastard, she’s a whore

She burns up babies, she roasts them slow (Kerman, 1974, 

p. 126).

No need to interpret what he was thinking here. Boulding’s pacifism affected his economics in many ways. In particular was his inability to adopt the ideas put forth by Karl Marx. Having read Marx’s work in college, he found its economics sophisticated and intriguing. His disagreements did not arise from a failure in Marx’s logic; rather it was the dominance of violent revolution as the impetus for change that alienated him from Marxism. In college, Boulding was part of the Socialist Party and even considered joining the Communists (because the Socialists had become too popular). The idea that a violent uprising was necessary to overthrow the ruling elites seemed a tautological Orwellian revolution displacing one ruling power-elite with another (perhaps worse) elite. When reviewing the first four volumes of Boulding’s collected papers, Robert Heilbroner wrote that Boulding was a Libertarian Socialist (Heilbroner, 1975, p. 76). Boulding was fiercely independent yet knowledgeable enough to know that the nation-state serves a vital role in helping to regulate the economy, protect citizens (from unreasonable domestic abuses), provide access to education, and so on. Boulding maintained his views adopted from Keynes throughout his life. Boulding was much less a socialist than Elise was when they were married. Boulding was against the command-and-control style economic structure employed by Russia, because, to him, it had failed.

Boulding held complicated views on the role of the economy in achieving social justice, which he saw as important for peace.

The crux of the matter lies in the reflection that socialism involved, in any of its forms a concentration of power, particularly of economic though also of political power—into the hands of a single man or a single committee; and this is a thing which with I have come to detest. Now, as an economist of course I must recognize the unfortunate fact that capitalism refuses to work without groans, shrieks, depressions and constant and ever increasing breakdowns. The only thing wrong with capitalism is this regrettable fact that it doesn’t work. I believe very strongly in the diffusion, not the concentration, of power; and this is nearly achieved in a system of ideal capitalism. The horrid truth of course is that I am an individualist; I believe in the infinite worth of the human soul and I regard the personification of the states as the most criminal heresy that ever raised its horrid head (Kerman, 1974, p. 104).

Throughout his life, Boulding discusses both the pros and the cons of right and left social systems, but usually falls left of center when pushed.

Psychic Capital

In 1948, Boulding started writing A Reconstruction of Economics (1950), which served as both the height of his career as a mainstream economist and as his bridge from, in his words, “being a pure economist to being a rather impure social philosopher.” Using his balance sheet approach from accounting principles he learned at Edinburgh, and which he first applied in The Economics of Peace (1946), he expanded these thoughts into a more complete analysis in A Reconstruction of Economics. Ralph Turvey (1951) wrote a review of the book that pointed out some errors in his analysis. Boulding replied to Turvey’s comments with corrections that, in Boulding’s mind, completed this work and made it a more solid contribution. These corrections were included in the 1962 reprint’s appendix. Many people (including me) think Reconstruction was Boulding’s most underappreciated work. This is a book of depth and complexity, so this short summary does not do it justice. In the interest of space, some of the most relevant components are discussed; for thorough summaries see Bruce McFarling’s (2002) paper as well as L. Randall Wray’s (1990).

Boulding states clearly in the preface that this book “is the product of my growing dissatisfaction with the present state of economic theory as generally received and taught, and an attempt to establish some patterns of theory which will be more consistent conceptually and more useful in interpretation than the existing corpus of doctrine” (Boulding, 1950, p. vii). Boulding had for many years been discontented with elements of economic theory such as equilibrium analysis, which assumes static states of parameters that are clearly dynamic (this is evident in his earliest published writings). His approach to solving these problems was unique and his presentation original. His dissatisfaction stems from a few sources. First, “the failure of economics to integrate itself into the general body of social science. [ . . . ] I have been gradually coming under the conviction, disturbing for a professional theorist, that there is no such thing as economics—there is only social science applied to economic problems” (Boulding, 1950, p. vii). Second, while a devout Keynesian in many respects, Boulding does see weaknesses in Keynes’ analysis that he thinks should be fixed. For example,

[O]ne of these weaknesses is a general failure to distinguish between two very different processes in economic life, the exchange or payments process on the one hand, by which existing assets, including money, are circulated among various owners, and the processes of production, consumption, income and outgo on the other, by which assets are  created, destroyed, and accumulated. These two processes are, of course, related, but are entirely different, and it serves no good purpose to confuse them, as Keynes does, for instance, when he identifies “consumption” with “consumers’ expenditure” (Boulding, 1950, p. ix).

Boulding further finds that, “Another weakness of the Keynesian economics is its failure to provide any ‘macroeconomic’ theory of distribution commensurate with its theory of employment” (p. ix). Specifically, Boulding is concerned with distribution of social income. For Boulding, “it is clear that the microeconomic theory of distribution, which is excellent, for instance, in dealing with problems of relative wages and relative profits [see Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations], is not adequate to deal with problems involving the general levels of wages and profits and the determinants of the broad aggregates of the distributional structure” (Boulding, 1950, p. 245).

In Reconstruction there are many interesting ideas and approaches, but three, in particular, are worth highlighting. The first is the beginning of the book when Boulding likens the economy (and social system) to an ecosystem. In 1950, Boulding was far ahead of his social science peers in thinking about the dynamic nature of society as behaving in ways similar to biological ecosystems. Today, we think this is obvious, but at the time this thinking was innovative. Boulding uses the concept of populations existing in a larger ecosystem. Each living, dying, and sustaining oneself in a dynamic process of inputs and outputs that only reaches equilibrium for short periods before the system becomes unbalanced (discontinuity) and a new equilibrium is reached (likely different from the first level of equilibrium). Boulding calls this homeostasis, where there are many equilibriums within the dynamic system—Boulding also calls it ecological equilibrium.

This analogy leads to Boulding’s second interesting insight, which is about balance sheets. The concept of balance sheets was well known to accountants. As mentioned above, Boulding learned the value of balance sheets from William Baxter at Edinburgh.

The simplest theory of the firm is to assume that there is a “homeostasis of the balance sheet”—that there is some desired quantity of all the various items in the balances sheet, and that any disturbance of this structure immediately sets in motion forces which will restore the status quo. [ . . . ] On [this] assumption the firm’s production, and indeed the production of the whole society is a necessity imposed on it by the fact of consumption. [ . . . ] Hence consumption directly “causes” production in such a system, and, be it noticed, without any intervention of a price system or any assumption about maximizing profits or any other variable. [ . . . ] The theory of homeostasis and the concept of an “asset structure” or balance sheet can be applied with varying degrees of significance to any social organism. [ . . . ] Thus the balance sheet is to a firm what its “state” is to a body: it describes the structure of the firm in terms of the various quantities of its parts. Anything that happens to a firm can be described in terms of a “dynamic” balance sheet—i.e. a movie of the balance-sheet changes (Boulding, 1950, p. 27).

And then, in an important statement, Boulding makes a broader claim:

The type of theory represented by the static marginal analysis does not, however, throw a great deal of light on some other social forms. In the attempt to construct a model of a labor union, for instance, labor economists have not found the principle of maximization particularly useful. [ . . . ] The reason for this seems to be the weakness of any forces tending to bring the policy of a union into line with these equilibria. Maximization theory is useful only as long as reasonably strong dynamic forces are set up when the variables concerned diverge from the values which yield a maximum of the maximand. It is no use postulating any equilibrium unless we know something about the strength of the dynamic forces which tend to bring the variables back to the equilibrium value, once a distribution has taken place (Boulding, 1950, pp. 35–36).

The third (but by no means last) original idea presented by Boulding is psychic capital. In particular, he uses this concept with regard to consumption.

We must first distinguish clearly between the consumption and the utilization or “enjoyment” of capital. Consumption in its literal sense means destruction: if we ask destruction of what, the answer is destruction of capital, i.e. of real assets. When we eat food, burn fuel, and wear out clothes we have a smaller stock of these things than we had before the act of consumption. Economists have frequently written as if consumption was the desideratum, the end product of all economic activity. Such, however, is not the case. It is true that there are some commodities which must be consumed in the utilization, such as food and fuel. This, however, is a technical accident. For most commodities consumption is merely incidental to their use and, far from being a desideratum, is to be avoided as much as possible. [ . . . ] Consumption comes when [ . . . ] the good depreciates or is destroyed. [ . . . ] When psychic capital is taken into consideration, however, it may be doubted whether there are any really non-durable goods. Even the things usually labeled as services, which as movies, in fact produce psychic capital with a limited rate of depreciation. [ . . . ] This mental state is the commodity which we purchase with the price of admission: it is a commodity which depreciates like every other commodity. [ . . . ] Oddly enough the mental state of having gone to a bad movie may depreciate at a slower rate than having gone to a good one! (Boulding, 1950, pp. 135, 140).

Boulding’s Reconstruction is in many ways as fresh today as it was in 1950, and perhaps more so. With hindsight we have the privilege of seeing today what he saw many decades before. Maybe more surprising is that many of his critiques about static equilibrium, consumption, debt, and government power have been completely ignored by mainstream economists—yet the evidence that his insights were largely accurate understates why Boulding felt like a “voice crying in the wilderness.”

From Hawkeye to Wolverine

Although Boulding enjoyed his time at Iowa, he was never converted to a labor economist. And, in fact, it was his experiences of studying labor issues that convinced Boulding that he wanted to integrate the social sciences, because in his mind all the social sciences were studying the same issues only from different perspectives. So, Boulding reached out to a number of universities looking for the right environment to explore his ideas. In February 1948, he wrote the following passage to a potential employer (Kerman, 1974, pp. 42–43):

My long range research interest lies mainly in the field of developing a coordinated and empirically tested theory of the “social organism”: I am particularly interested in applying the techniques of sociology and anthropology to economic phenomena; I am interested also in applying the methods and insights of economics to other social sciences, particularly political science. Indeed, I find that I can no longer be content with being an economist, and would much rather be a professor of “Social Science” than of economics narrowly conceived.

Boulding was able to almost set his terms with the University of Michigan, and therefore he created his own environment (within an already well-established collegial environment) in which to explore his broad vision. Soon after Boulding’s move to Michigan in September 1949, he found out that he had won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to an American economist (Boulding having become a US citizen in 1948) under the age of forty who had made a significant contribution to the field of economics. This was only the second time the award was given; at the time it was awarded every two years. Boulding stated, “I’ve always said that I got away with a lot of things because Economic Analysis (1941a) was so respectable. Sort of, as I say, as pure as the driven snow. But I suppose that’s what got me the John B. Clark Medal of the American Economic Association” (Mott, 1992, p. 356). Boulding also often joked that I. Leo Sharfman, who was chair of the Economics Department at Michigan at the time, was also on the selection committee for the Clark Medal and that he knew Boulding was getting the award so in anticipation he made a particularly appealing offer to Boulding to come to Michigan (Kerman, 1974, pp. 5–6).

4

Cosmogenesis

Ann Arbor, Michigan

This chapter covers Kenneth Boulding’s most creative (and possibly productive) period of his life. From 1949 to 1967, Boulding wrote (or edited) 11 books and 187 articles. In addition, he wrote a dozen articles for Quaker publications. Even more important than the amount he wrote was the originality and breadth of subjects on which he wrote. While at the University of Michigan, Boulding helped found the Society for General Systems Research, the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. More important, his attempt to formulate a General Theory of Conflict and Defense and his involvement with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University marked the beginning of Boulding’s formal study of peace research. His article “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” (1966) was written at a time when economists were not focused on environmental issues, such as sustainability. Spaceship Earth serves as a precursor and foundation to modern ecological economics—and it is as relevant today as when he wrote it. On a personal note, Michigan is where Boulding and Elise raised their five children and further planted their Quaker roots. Also, Elise, who received her master’s degree in sociology right before leaving Iowa, also started (and eventually completed a couple years after leaving Michigan) her PhD in sociology. Elise in many ways discovered her research interests organically and overcame many obstacles to realize her goal. Her achievements in academia are remarkable in their own right. The fact that she started in academia late and had to juggle five children and a husband who was busy and not very involved in child rearing is a testament to her perseverance—and her research had interesting effects on Boulding’s work in return.

71

Within a Budding Grove

People think of Boulding as either a traditional economist or a heretic bent on slaughtering sacred economic cows, such as equilibrium theory, profit maximization, and analysis of income statements, preferring the analysis of balance sheets instead. For many people today, it is Boulding’s work after this, at Michigan, what is called in this book “cosmogenesis,” that they are most familiar with. Of course, many of these people think that Boulding was always a heretical radical. As we have learned up to this chapter, Boulding was less radical than many people might think. His mainstream textbook Economic Analysis was largely responsible for his John Bates Clark Medal in 1949, which consequently serves as the curtain call to his traditional economics career. His experiences and education at Iowa convinced him that the social sciences were not heterogeneous but rather homogeneous in their goal of understanding society. Thus, if he (or anyone) wanted to study issues such as peace, poverty, environmental pollution, or income inequality it is essential that all the social sciences be studied for their perspectives and approaches. This thinking led to an integrative approach (i.e., general systems theory) to social problems that better inculcates issues and leads to more reasonable (and effective) solutions. Boulding eventually called this general systems approach transdisciplinary. Today, people such as Ken Wilber (2001), also in many ways a general systems theorist and evolutionary theorist, call it postdisciplinary because it more than merges disciplines; it creates an intellectual space where the lines are so blurred between disciplines that the commingling makes them inseparable and wholly unique.

Before Boulding went to Michigan, he was already thinking in terms of integration (eventually general systems). He had become focused on how other disciplines looked differently at the same problem. Trying to understand income inequality using only economics is limiting. It requires sociology, history, political science, and psychology. The University of Michigan was an excellent environment for Boulding to explore these ideas and start constructing a larger theoretical framework from which to study social issues. His employment contract gave him support and time to write.

Boulding and Elise found an active Quaker community and engaging colleagues. One of their Quaker Friends and next door neighbors, Cynthia Kerman, would become Boulding’s secretary for two years and later got her doctorate in sociology writing her dissertation on Boulding (Creative Tension [1974]). Elise and Kenneth’s son, Russell, was two years old when they moved to Ann Arbor, and their second son, Mark, was born only a few months after they arrived. They had three more children: Christine (1951), Philip (1953), and William (1955). The combination of a favorable academic setting matched with a happy home life resulted in an increase in Boulding’s scholarly output. But his work at Michigan was different from his earlier work. It is important to note that the economics profession up to 1949 only knew one side of Boulding’s personality. His Quaker writings were only known to other Quakers at the time (and, arguably, have been downplayed until this book). From his Quaker writings, it is clear that Boulding was focused on social and human betterment all along. Morality was critical to his thinking and served as a strong foundation for all his later economic writings. He successfully kept his two personalities (pure economist and Quaker moralist) separate, but once settled at Michigan, the two collapsed into one another causing a Boulding cosmogenesis that continued expanding during the rest of his life. Perhaps most important, the conflating of Boulding the economist and Boulding the Quaker made him a more honest scholar and a more content person. Freeing himself from the confining static models of economics led to his broad outlook on history, society, and spirituality.

Boulding negotiated with Michigan that he would teach a seminar on the integration of the social sciences. Through this experience he learned that the social sciences were not easily integratable. His integration, therefore, evolved to include not only social scientists but also engineers, physicists, and biologists. The biologists in particular piqued Boulding’s interests because of his early work blending ecology and economics (see Boulding [1950]). On this topic, Boulding wrote (Boulding, 1968, p. 85):

The crisis of science today arises because of increasing difficulty of such profitable talk among scientists as a whole. Specialization has outrun trade, communication between the disciples [sic] becomes increasingly difficult, and the Republic of Learning is breaking up into isolated subcultures with only tenuous lines of communication between them—a situation which threatens intellectual civil war. [ . . . ] One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.

Interestingly, in many ways, science and the social sciences became even more isolated in proceeding years. This is likely one reason that Boulding did not receive many accolades from economists for his later work as he did for his earlier work. Not writing strictly within the economics discipline, he gained greater notoriety in fields such as sociology and political science, which are the areas that cite Boulding’s work more than any other (including economics). Boulding’s fame as an economist gave him credibility in the other social sciences. Unfortunately, he largely made that journey alone. He marched into general systems with a “follow me, economists!” attitude. But after trudging gallantly, when he turned around almost no one was there with him. Rather than go back to his home base, he set up camp in the netherworld of transdisciplinary space. He expected others to come along eventually. In reality, economics was becoming increasingly narrow. And as the discipline’s myopia grew, Boulding continued to broaden his scope. This approach meant he was moving farther away from integration with economics and toward something different.

Boulding’s Cosmogenesis

Boulding acknowledged knowing when his cosmogenesis began. It was in September 1948 at a symposium on “Sciences of Society” at the Centennial Celebration of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. This presentation, according to Boulding, “catches me, as it were, in the moment of transition, defending both the purity of economics as a discipline and the necessity for moving forward into a more general social science” (Boulding, 1968a, p. v). The presentation is titled “Is Economics Necessary?” and in it he explains why economics is not as successful as the hard sciences at predictions and static observations. Similarly to Reconstruction (1950), he stated:

The concept of an ecological system, which was developed first in the biological sciences—i.e., of a system of populations of various things, in which the equilibrium size and the movement of each population are dependent on the size of other populations—is an interpretive principle of the utmost value in the social sciences. Just as a pond develops an equilibrium population of frogs, fishes, bacteria, algae, and the life, all in subtle competitive and cooperative relationships with one another, so society is a great pond, developing equilibrium populations (Boulding, 1968a, p. 7).

Boulding goes on to talk about the integration of economics within other disciplines in a few ways. First, he noted that out of microeconomics and the study of oligopolies, “Where we are concerned essentially with problems of strategy—i.e., situations in which the choices of each person or organization involved depend upon their expectations regarding the choices of the others” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 9).

Second, concepts such as the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of aggregation are not unique to economics. Many other disciplines suffer from these fallacies (and others) and learning how each discipline copes with these problems will provide greater insight. In particular, Boulding focuses on the macroeconomic paradoxes as a source of inquiry. Keynes’s (1936) paradox of thrift is one example of the fallacy of composition, where one can limit one’s spending (saving the money instead) and the economy is not much affected. But if a large group of people all limit their spending and hoard their money then the economy will shrink (and reduce the money multiplier that results from more consumption and less saving)—fewer jobs, lower wages, and other ripple effects that move through the economy. These paradoxes create problems when making macroeconomic predictions or policies. It is impossible to abstract from the individual case to the larger social impact. Like Boulding looking at an ecological system, if you see a bee in your house and kill it there is little impact on the larger ecosystem. But if a large portion of the population of bees disappears there could be a worldwide imbalance that threatens many other species—including humans. Seeing the connection between bees and humans is not obvious at first, but it exists. It is impossible for us to fully understand the delicate interrelatedness of ecosystems and have confidence in knowing what certain actions, such as species extinction or climate change, will have on the larger system.

Boulding goes on further to explain that it is important to look at the interconnectedness of social phenomena such that any ceteris paribus assumptions are at best limited and at worst completely wrong (but appear accurate and feel accurate because people internalize the result, feeling that their experiences can be translated into the larger system and have the same effects). The best example is his observation that ceteris paribus

has its dangers, especially of overgeneralization from the particular to the general case. Thus the fact that a fall in the wages of carpenters is likely to lead to a rise in the amount of employment offered to them by no means implies that the remedy for general unemployment is general wage reduction (Boulding, 1968a, pp. 9–10).

Physics is split into (1) subatomic quantum theory and (2) Newtonian mechanics. The laws governing celestial bodies do not apply to subatomic particles and vice versa. String theory and other expositions are trying to unify the two fields, but so far a “theory of everything” has proved elusive. After Einstein developed the general theory of relativity, he spent most of the rest of his career (unsuccessfully) trying to unify these two seemingly separate states of mechanisms. Similarly, it seems, in many cases what is observed among individual households is not observed on a macroeconomic level among all households.

Third, Boulding defends economics (or the discipline that studies economic issues) and the studying of economics for the “state of mind it produces”:

In the old Cambridge tripos, economics—or to give it its grander title, political economy—was listed as a Moral Science. For all the attempts of our positivists to dehumanize the sciences of many, a moral science it remains. Its central problem is the problem of value: and value is but one step from virtue. [ . . . ] In a world of technicians, it is the economist who raises the cry that the technically most efficient is not necessarily, or even usually, the socially most efficient; that the best cow is not the one that gives the most milk; the best business is not the one that makes the most profits; the best army is not the one that creates the most havoc; and, above all, that the best training is not the best education (Boulding, 1968a, pp. 12–13).

The idea that economics is a moral science was not new—e.g., Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)—but Boulding’s open acknowledgment was an important part of his cosmogenesis. Economics, however, was moving away from this thinking and aligning itself with the hard “positive” sciences rather than normative propositions. “Market morality” was supplanting the human morality that Boulding was advocating. Making all economic questions answerable to the market eliminates any requirement of economists to think in bigger terms or to consider the human implications of their theories, and it also devalues the necessary roles that government plays in providing public goods and other public functions. A concept such as profit maximization absolves companies of the impact their decisions have on people, the environment, or the global economy.

Perhaps because of this, Boulding became involved with the General Committee of the Department of the Church and Economic Life of the National Council of Churches. His experiences led to the book The Organizational Revolution (1953). This book is Boulding’s attempt to understand how, why, and to what ends over the past century the number, size, and power of various organizations has grown. He is particularly interested in both the growth of economic organizations, which arguable includes most of them, and the ethics of organization. On the second issue, Boulding writes,

No matter how complex a society, it remains true that most of the moral problems which face an individual deal with person-to-person relationships. The personal virtues of honesty, truthfulness, kindliness, sincerity, sobriety, self-control and so on are still the sign of a morally mature spirit and are still the virtues which hold the world together, no matter how complicated it may become. The individual is ultimately the only bearer of moral responsibility; even when an individual acts in the name of others, or in the name of an organization, it is still the individual who acts, and who ultimately must bear responsibility for the consequences of his acts (Boulding, 1953, p. 9).

As to why the “organizational revolution” occurred—producing more, larger, and powerful organizations—Boulding points to many possible explanations. But one of the more interesting is the following: A feature of the life of organizations which also plays an important role in determining growth, or at least the pressure for growth, is the positive value which is placed in much of Western culture on growth itself. [ . . . ] Thus, it is an important part of the folklore of business that a business cannot stand still—it must either be advancing or it will decline (Boulding, 1953, pp. 29–30). And this growth was made possible by certain technical changes in the ability to organize “both changes on the physical side in the improvement of transportation and communication, and on the structural side in the forms and skills of organization itself” (p. 49).

The way to move toward better (not just more) organizations is diversity. There needs to be a spreading of power and focus on sustainability in the long run.

The theory of organization, then, points clearly to the type of organization of society which is most likely to be effective in the righting of wrongs and in developing progress toward the ideal. It should be “polylithic” rather than monolithic; i.e., it should consist of “many stones,” many quasi-independent organizations, with considerable turnover among these organizations to permit constant experimentation with mutations. There should be many centers of power rather than one. Nevertheless, there is need for an over-all organization with limited powers to act as a “governor”—to keep an eye on the aggregate variables of the society which are not under the control of any one of its constituent organizations, and to have power to act “counterwise”; that is, to act so as to move the aggregates in the opposite direction to which they are going as they approach the limits of toleration (Boulding, 1953, p. 81).

The book was sent to about thirty people for comments. The only interesting response came from Reinhold Niebuhr:

[who] was so outraged by the book that he wrote a whole chapter in reply, to which I wrote a chapter in reply. [ . . . ] Niebuhr at that time was a quasi-Marxist. I think perhaps the contrast in our philosophies could be summed up in a sentence at the end of my reply to him, where I say that “Niebuhr is afraid of freedom, seeing behind it always the specter of anarchy, whereas I am afraid of justice, seeing always behind it the specter of tyranny” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 78).

Religion, Ethics, and Society

One of Boulding’s most interesting Quaker articles during this period was “What About Christian Economics” (1951). He starts by reminding his readers that he is not a socialist—and by claiming he does not believe in Marxism. He does, however, state in more practical terms that neither is he a laissez-faire-promoting capitalist. He writes:

A more subtle, but very important defect is that a system based essentially upon the institution of the market and the freedom of exchange does not develop adequate loyalties. In a very real sense it can be said that the main thing that is wrong with capitalism is that nobody loves it [ . . . ] The inability of capitalism to command loyalty and devotion probably arises from the fact that exchange, especially monetary exchange, is one of the least emotional of human relationships, and a society built around the institution of exchange therefore is likely to be sadly deficient in emotional vitamins. Man does not live by bread alone, or by buying and selling (Boulding, 1951, p. 361).

Boulding fills an important niche that is very much in-line with Keynes’s thinking. Government serves a valuable role in the market and the pathologies of the market will persist with less government intervention, but too much government intervention will potentially inhibit innovation and development (and personal freedoms). So a delicate balance is needed for a mixed-market economy to exist. For Boulding, understanding this mix is of utmost importance.

Nevertheless our very proper fear of socialism must not lead us to abstain from the prophetic criticism of all societies. In a very real sense Christ stands above all human societies, and sits in judgment on them. It is perilously close to form of blasphemy to attempt to identify the Kingdom of God with any form of society, for this is clearly a problem which man has not yet solved (Boulding, 1951, p. 361).

Religion and ethics were closely associated for Boulding. Once beyond his orthodox economics cocoon, he freely blended religion (with ethics) and economics in mainstream publications, which is one reason he wrote “I have lived most of my life on the uneasy margin between science and religion” (Boulding, 1974a, p. 4). Nowhere is this better represented than in two papers. First, the “Religious Perspectives in Economics” ([1950] 1968a, pp. 179–97), presented at a symposium on Religious Perspectives of College Teaching; and, second, “Religious Foundations of Economic Progress” ([1952] 1968a, pp. 198–211), published in the Harvard Business Review (articles reprinted in Beyond Economics [1968]). In these articles, Boulding argues that throughout much of history there are many examples where religion influences the economy, and vice versa. This is visible at places such as the Vatican, Egyptian Pyramids, and relics throughout Rome. Religion, in its early stage, can act as a “revolutionary force” that often occurs at the same time as rapid “economic development” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 178). As a religion matures, progress slows and a more conservative stance takes hold. Contrary to Karl Marx’s historical materialism that asserted religions stand on foundations of economics, Boulding presents the work of Max Weber and his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (first published in English in 1930) as a study of the Protestant Reformation and how it helped foment the development of capitalism (in a similar vein to Sir William Petty). It, therefore, reversed Marx’s causation setting religion as the foundation upon which the economy is positioned. The Protestant influence promoted work and diligence over consumption. This, in Boulding’s estimation, promoted the accumulation of capital and also production. It also minimized leisure and maximized wealth accumulation. Boulding applies this logic to the Industrial Revolution and how the change to Protestantism allowed for less time meditating in church and more time out being productive (sold as God’s will).

On the opposite end of the social scale, Protestantism regards poverty as unholy. As hard work, wealth accumulation and avarice were laudable goals; the poor and downtrodden were seen as the Godless unwashed masses. As a consequence, donations to the poor were seen as enabling their laziness. The only proper course of action was to make the poor miserable so they would become productive citizens adding to the nation’s bounty.

Boulding then reverses the argument stating that Marx was not entirely wrong that economics can affect religion. Of this, Boulding writes,

Indeed, one can say with some confidence that when the tide of religion runs strongly in the minds of men it draws them away from worldly power, wealth and security, and offers them in return a power, a wealth and a security which are not of this world, not dependent on the favor of other men, but are secured by a secret inward covenant between the soul and its heavenly Lord (Boulding, 1978a, p. 184).

Perhaps most perceptively, Boulding states in various ways, “[t]he nature of the dominant religion, therefore, is determined in an appreciable degree by the economic opportunities that are open” (Boulding, 1978a, p. 184). Boulding writes that in areas where population is large and land scarce the withdrawn mystic life is held in highest regard (minimalism). Contrast that with a more open American landscape, where economic freedom is praised and hard work and wealth accumulation is honored and the mystic is vilified, and one ends up with materialism and mass consumption as the dominant cultural fabric. Thus, Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class ([1899] 1994) is the standard exposition.

It is difficult to say whether economic behavior leads to religious emergence or vice versa. Boulding explains that, “religions breed civilizations, and civilizations breed and spread religions in a continuous pattern” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 185). Finding any causality in these social movements may be impossible. It is a little easier to spot invasions occurring within society (i.e., deregulation and the rise of financialization) and mutations (i.e., technology and the rise of government spying). These invasions and mutations are constantly changing the social structure. Without these adjustments society would settle into a recognizable equilibrium. Instead, we have an evolving ecosystem that both acts upon and is affected by these changes. Accordingly, “we cannot, therefore, understand economic processes in time without reference to the whole universe of social phenomena, of which religion is a vital and significant part” (p. 186).

Of particular concern to Boulding then is that,

The student of economics in our universities can easily get through his course and can be turned out as a full-fledged teacher of the s ubject, without any awareness of this interconnectedness penetrating his consciousness [ . . . ] The economist, by reason of the peculiar history of economic thought, is especially in danger of being indifferent to religion (Boulding, 1968a, pp. 186–87).

Boulding argues that part of the reason for this is because Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations serves as the foundation of the study of economics. He notes that Smith was friends with David Hume who personified the eighteenth-century intellectualism; and “[b]oth regarded religious enthusiasm as a serious break of good taste” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 188). Yes, Boulding finds that,

It is indeed curious that no economist since Adam Smith seems to have dealt at any length with the economics of religion—perhaps it was felt that Adam Smith had said the last word on the subject! (Boulding notes possible exceptions such as Simon Patten and Richard Ely, but none of them had the effect of Smith.) (Boulding, 1968a, p. 188).

There exists a thin line between religion and economics; and, therefore, temperance must be exhibited to separate the normative from the positive. Boulding, reflecting on his own experiences, writes:

Many people are attracted into the social sciences, and especially perhaps to economics, because they feel a concern for the ills of society or wish to learn how to reform them. This is a proper motivation, yet it needs to be disciplined by a strong sense of scientific integrity and by a willingness to acquire real skill in the abstract disciplines before venturing to make applications . . . goodwill is in no sense a substitute for scientific competence—nor, of course, is scientific competence a substitute for goodwill (Boulding, 1968a, p. 190–91).

Boulding further notes that institutions of higher learning are so focused on scientific inquiry that there is little opportunity to lose one’s way with fruits of religious fanciful thinking. In fact, for Boulding,

It is the opposite danger which threatens [the economist]—that of becoming so engrossed in the refinements of scientific abstraction— and in the substantial rewards, which in these days often accompany proficiency in such abstractions—that he forgets the ills of society and becomes deaf to the cry of the hungry and blind to the misery of the oppressed. [ . . . ] Those who have knowledge have a peculiar responsibility to be sensitive to the ills of the world, for if they are not then it will be the ignorant who will be the movers of events, and the value of knowledge will be lost (Boulding, 1968a, p. 191).

Boulding states that for teachers of economics, the division between religion and economics is a little broader. He argues that models and theory are tools no different from a screwdriver. There is no need for a Christian screwdriver when building a church—any screwdriver will do and no distinction is necessary. It is the purpose to which a tool is used more than the tool itself that determines whether it is “good” or “bad.” Teaching economic history, however, “the contact between religious and economic life becomes clear and significant” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 192). So no economic history course can adequately purge (or ignore) the effects of religion. (Perhaps this is why economic history courses are rarely required at top economics departments?)

The other aspect of economics that lends itself to considerations of religious influence is public policy. Here the ends and means can be affected by religious influence. When studying unemployment, pollution, or public finance, it is difficult to look at these issues in an objective way without seeing the effects on people:

For the sake of his own spiritual and intellectual health the economist must face the challenge of prophetic indignation: on the other hand the prophet also must be prepared to submit his moral insights to the rigorous discipline of intellectual analysis when it comes to translating these insights into policies (Boulding, 1968a, p. 197).

The economy is a social entity, so, when studying exchange, value, and production, we are ultimately studying decisions made by people. Boulding argues that where scientific abstraction is perhaps most dangerous is found in the study of labor markets. The pure “rational economic man” sees workers as commodities producing output (an automaton). Boulding, however, (similar to Marx) sees the value in each worker and each worker’s output. This is where an economics teacher’s acquaintance with religion is important (and maybe more than an acquaintance). Boulding writes, “To seek God is to find man” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 194). For Boulding, Christians see each person as special and important since each is made in God’s image. Treating people as chattel that capitalists throw their yokes upon and whip into productive fervor is as much immoral as it is dishonest, since no person is reducible to their economic output. If this were possible, it would likely resemble a diastrophic Orwellian nightmare in which people are more robotic than human.

These examples also highlight why Boulding believes so strongly in a transdisiplinary approach to social problems. An integral approach will consider the psychological, social, historical, physical, political, and educational effects of “economic” decisions on people. It is a daunting task to consider this larger macrocosm. After all, it is much easier to apply ceteris paribus and look at one or two factors ignoring everything else. But this oversimplification masks the real value in studying economics, which is to study social issues. Only in the larger, broader view are we able to see if our observations are valid and if they have the potential of a lasting impact. Nowhere is this more challenging than for the religious economist who balances the scientific and the mythical ethic in terms of value and morality. About this, Boulding wrote:

Communication between the intellectual and the religious subcultures is perilous in the extreme. It depends almost entirely on the doubtful abilities of a few individuals who participate in both. Society owes an enormous debt to those marginal men who live uneasily in two different universes of discourse. Society is apt to repay this debt by making them thoroughly uncomfortable and still more marginal (Boulding, 1956, p. 146).

A Causal Shift

We know when Boulding’s thinking started to change from pure economist to impure social philosopher, but besides his religious background there was perhaps another cause of this change in his thinking. While at Iowa, Elise decided to enroll in graduate school again. This time, rather than focusing on teaching English, she studied sociology. She graduated with her master’s degree in 1949 and wrote a thesis that involved “interviewing Iowa farm families about the effects of wartime separation” (Morrison, 2005, p. 50). This research focused on parenting and family life and would serve as the overarching theme of most of her later research. But her studies of sociology were shared with her husband and they discussed the value of integrating the social sciences. In part, Elise’s studies helped broaden Boulding’s outlook. It is not surprising that they would later collaborate on many research papers, books, and projects. Their shared interest in peace studies culminated in the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution. No doubt this made arguments at the Boulding house far more interesting. More important, the period of Elise’s studies perfectly matches the emergence of Boulding’s wish to integrate the social sciences. It is also possible that Boulding’s thinking influenced Elise, but the order of events suggests that it was Elise’s desire to study the sociology of families that influenced Boulding.

After moving to Ann Arbor, Elise enrolled as a doctoral student. She even took her “baby Christine with her to classes until this became too much for her. Two years later, Elise had all but given up the idea of work on a Ph.D. and, instead, named their fourth child Philip Daniel, as her Ph.D.” (Morrison, 2005, p. 55). Although Elise was a traditional homemaker of the day, she was also active in the community and especially at Quaker meetings. Her experience as a mother focused her attention on the values of good parenting, so she talked on this subject almost exclusively for many years. She believed that good parenting was necessary for raising good children who could promote peace in the world. The core focus is on family and ensuring a safe, productive, and free environment in which people can make their own decisions. In the Bouldings’ annual letter to friends and family, they wrote that they wanted to “ create an island of healthy social tissue in the diseased body of the world.”

All the Boulding children recall being given great latitude in their lives—never feeling pushed or directed by their parents (Morrison, 2005). This is best exhibited in the eventual careers of all five children. Russell became an environmental engineer and farmer; Mark started an artistic display company; Philip, who never got a college degree, became a musician and instrument maker living in Seattle, Washington; Christine co-owns (with her husband) a contracting company outside Boston, Massachusetts; and William, the only one to become an academic, studied economics at Swarthmore and then got a PhD in marketing from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and is now Dean of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

As stated in the third chapter, Boulding was not very involved in the raising of his children. At Boulding’s eulogy, his youngest son (William) remarked that his Dad never took interest in his sporting activities— only attending, to his knowledge, one of his baseball games as a kid. Boulding said many times that when he gets the urge to exercise he lays down until it passes. So the idea of family as a source of peace may have had much more to do with Elise than her husband. As was typical of the time, Boulding traveled a great deal focusing on his work, and the family was more a result of Elise’s homemaking and parenting. This is not to say Boulding did not love his children; there is no doubt he did. In fact, for Boulding, love was a driving force of his life. But Boulding once wrote, “If we were to seek the one thing on which all those who count themselves Christian agree, it is that the greatest of Christian virtues is love. Love is the heart of the Gospel, the essence of salvation, the most precious attribute of God” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 212). Love is the most consistent component (the lowest common denominator) of Boulding’s thinking. At the conclusion of William’s eulogy, he commented that his father loved everyone. Boulding remarked several times in later years that he regretted not spending more time raising his children.

A Golden State of Mind

For one year (1954–1955), Boulding took leave from Michigan and moved his family to Palo Alto, California. He was invited to study at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. (The center had nothing to do with studying behavior, per se, but the original name had social instead of behavioral, and the founders were concerned they would not get funding because it might be interpreted as Socialist—this was, after all, the McCarthy era.) This year was remembered by Boulding as the most intellectually stimulating of his life. The center had started the year before, so it was in its vibrant infancy. Boulding’s seminar at Michigan integrating the social sciences had expanded to include anyone, and, as a result, he made acquaintance with the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy (founder of general systems). As a result, Boulding ended up at Stanford the following year with Bertalanffy and several other interesting scholars: Clyde Kluckohn, an anthropologist; Anatol Rapoport, a mathematician; and Ralph Gerard, a physiologist. It is not surprising that Boulding called this period “one of the most creative years of [his] life” (Boulding, 1989b, p. 77). He was finally tasting the transdisciplinary soup he had been making for years. Now he had like-minded scholars of high capability to both discuss his ideas with and expose him to new ideas.

Three important events occurred while at Stanford that would have a lasting impact on Boulding (and his wife, Elise), personally and professionally. First, soon after arriving at Stanford, Boulding, Bertalanffy, Kluckohn, and Rapoport were sitting around the lunch table and discovered they were all studying general systems, but from different angles. So they decided to start an association, and the Society for General Systems Research was born (now called the International Society for the Systems Sciences). Boulding became the society’s first president (1957–1958).

The second event (closely related to the first) was a change to focus on research associated with conflict and peace. It was surprising to many of the interdisciplinary scholars at the center that war and peace were the critical issues of the day, but almost no one was studying them in a rigorous way (other than historical accounts). So, after Boulding got back to Michigan, he and several others, including Elise Boulding, started the Journal of Conflict Resolution. (Since the journal’s founding it has kept a high standard in academic scholarship on conflict and peace.) The journal also had the unintended effect of creating by way of momentum the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan (more on this below). Elise was also actively involved in starting and helping to run the center at the University of Michigan.

The third event, an outcome of Boulding’s time at the center at Stanford, was the completion of his book The Image (1956). He had recently started using a dictaphone for all his work. This was the first book he dictated, and did, almost verbatim, over a span of nine days (these tapes are still at Boulding’s archives at the University of Michigan). He believed the dictaphone significantly increased the volume of his work but worried about the impact on quality. The only problem with this approach was that he did not like editing his work once his secretary had transcribed his notes. Boulding’s secretary at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that he liked to lay in his hammock and dictate his notes. His stutter made transcription difficult at times, as did the fact that while in the hammock he would go to sleep for various periods and awake randomly to dictate some more. This image of Boulding conjures a peaceful feeling.

Image Is Everything

The Image was a revelation for Boulding because it encompassed much of his thinking since starting at Michigan by showcasing his integral perspective, which, of course, he further developed among colleagues at Stanford; this, he remarked, influenced him for at least the next ten years. In Boulding’s opinion, The Image was his most influential book. More than any of his other books, it may capture most clearly the inner workings of his mind. We ride on top of Boulding’s thoughts as a raft floats on a steadily moving river. Boulding was making a veiled argument against behaviorism, which he believed placed too much emphasis on external stimuli affecting behavior. Instead, his view argues that behavior is largely influenced by one’s image (i.e., knowledge stock) of the world. Our image of reality may be affected by outside forces, but those alone will not necessarily change our image.

Scholars such as John Dewey (Human Nature and Conduct [1922]) and William James (Principles of Psychology [1890]) argued that environment has the primary influence on behavior. They argued that people are (mostly) a blank slate and adopt habits by mimicking the habits of those around them. Boulding’s proposition is more inclusive—more akin to metaphysics. He agrees that environment can influence behavior to a degree, but environment alone only plays a marginal role in determining behavior, and, more important, it is how someone interprets the environment that determines how it affects them. It is one’s image (knowledge) that affects behavior. Boulding sees knowledge as an organic process that changes over time based on both what one experiences and how one filters those experiences. The image people have is constantly changing based on many factors. The image someone maintains might be inaccurate when compared to “reality.” People pick and choose, based on their filters, what they accept that changes their knowledge. Boulding regularly wrote (and said) “nothing fails like success” and “nothing succeeds like failure,” which is a different way of saying that you learn from failure, not success. This is something most successful people believe. In the context of learning, Boulding believed that disappointment was the root of learning.

When people are presented with information, they will either accept or reject it. They reject the image if it fails to meet their value system or lacks clarity. This is one reason why Boulding argues that traditional school learning is less effective than it could be. Most students forget much of what they learned shortly after their classes end; they have not allowed their image to change because the information was not learned in a way that causes a change in a transformative way to their image. A good example of this is, for example, students who have taken a modern physics class and who leave the class believing they understand how physics works (on a Newtonian level), but when tested with simple examples, they rarely do.

Where one’s image is most likely to change is as a result of watching a strongly held belief fail. The recent global financial crisis that started in 2008 has resulted in changing some people’s belief that financial market deregulation results in greater efficiency and lower costs. Even free market zealot Alan Greenspan admitted in a 2008 Congressional hearing that he incorrectly placed too much faith in the self-correcting free market model. But in the same hearing, and during the downward spiral of financial markets, he argued that mortgage markets should not be regulated. He argued, as always, that these companies had learned their lesson and would from here on operate in ethical and legal ways. Even with the experiment failing in front of him, Greenspan’s image failed to adjust (at least in any way he would admit publicly). It may be unfair to pick on Greenspan because everyone has aspects of their image that are wrong—but some people’s incorrect images have a larger impact. This may suggest that it is people who adapt their images to new evidence that are the most “advanced.” A quote attributed to John Maynard Keynes is that “When the facts change, I change my mind. Why, what do you do, sir?” And one of Boulding’s mentors, Joseph Schumpeter, argued that businesses that do not evolve are subject to “creative destruction.” The same may be true of people.

People can have communal knowledge, or a shared image, that gets created through shared experiences. Their value systems and understanding must be closely assimilated in order to share an image. The best example of this might be religion. People of the same religion, sharing the same value systems (generally speaking) can have a shared image. The devout people will approach problems or triumphs in similar ways. They will also share similar habits—prayer, church attendance, volunteerism. Of course, the same sharing of images can happen among students at the same university or even people studying the same subject.

According to Boulding, the universe is in a constant flux where chaotic, entropic states are normal (Boulding’s brown soup). Organization, although improbable, does occur in a number of ways. Organizations have eight systems levels with images serving as the magnet that attracts them together. These levels of organization, as in systems theory, function as hierarchical building blocks. Each level contains all the characteristics of the one below it. But no level can be completely understood by all the levels below it.

The first level is the static structure that is a basic physical object with some form. Examples of a static structure can be as simple as an atom or as expressive as Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night. The second level is the clockwork, which is “a predetermined dynamic structure repeating its movements because of some simple law of connectedness between its parts” (Boulding, 1956, p. 20). The cycles of the moon or solar eclipses fit into this category. Newtonian physics represents the macroworld of this system and quantum mechanics the microworld (subatomic). The third level is control mechanisms. Today, we know this as a feedback system, where information is fed into the system that is balancing between no reaction, positive reaction, or negative reaction. The homeostasis is the fluctuation of the system over time. Boulding uses a furnace as an example, where, if the temperature drops too low, the furnace turns on and heats the house, and, once warm enough, turns off. Other examples include the vitamins and minerals within a human’s body (fluctuating up and down depending on diet, environment, etc.). It is at this third level, Boulding argues, that a basic form of image emerges. There is an interaction and an understanding between the mechanism and the feedback—the furnace’s thermostat must measure temperature and thus has a model of the outside world.

The fourth stage is biological and includes the cell—the simplest lifeform. A cell has all the previous organizational levels and also is an open system where it takes inputs from the environment and produces outputs (effluvia). A cell does collect information in ways that can change its image, but not in a dramatic way. A cell’s knowledge of its world is limited. At the fifth stage is the botanical level. Here we get more complicated conglomerations of cells and a more complex image forming about their environment that more dramatically affects their behavior. For example, a plant has a sense of time: when to flower, for example. The sixth stage is animal. At this level, the image becomes more pervasive and behavior is manifest in a more complex way by various stimuli.

At the seventh stage, we reach human. Humans, as animals, have many of the same characteristics. Our senses are the same, the world we inhabit is the same, and we have similar physical capabilities and limitations. Boulding argues that a human’s image is more complex than any previous stage because of our ability to assimilate patterns and a better understanding of time. Animals have no sense of time in a conscious sense—especially with regard to history. An animal such as a cat has no sense of history or grasp of time. Humans are also better capable of self-awareness. Humans are capable of making decisions (i.e., altering our behavior) based on logic rather than immediate stimuli (or, at least, most humans possess this capability—not all exercise it). Humans are also capable of thinking of all the potentialities that exist. This trait gives rise to imagination. It is imagination that makes all the artistic and technological developments of human’s possible—literature, Mozart’s Jupiter, religion, the computer.

The eighth stage is social organization. Social organizations are unique because they are made up of “parts of men.” Think of a corporation that lasts for one hundred years, where the employees have changed many times over a century but the organization persists (at least containing some part of its earlier genetic structure). A religion fits this role well.

Think of Christianity with its two thousand-year history. Evolving over time, but also maintaining certain core beliefs. Lastly, a baseball team often gets different owners, players, and managers over the years, yet a baseball team’s fan base remains. Thus, the institution (or social organization) often outlasts the individuals composing it.

Evolution plays an important role in Boulding’s thinking. It is a selective evolution. For example, technological invention and innovations lead society to new forms of activities, and it is rare (maybe impossible) to undo the effects of their invention. A step forward in mathematics leads to more advancements. Boulding calls this a “ratcheting effect” (similar to Thorstein Veblen). Some of these ratchets occur fast and others more slowly. All the while the image is both effecting change and being affected by exogenous factors—in a constant feedback process where sometimes nothing happens (external stimuli are rejected) and other times change occurs (stimuli are accepted, thus integrated into the image).

Boulding’s image accepts that behaviorism/environment explains some of how people look at reality. Experience does matter. The important question that Boulding addresses is, in what way does experience actually result in changing perception (or, how do we perceive the same experience in different ways)? It is not a guarantee that if you expose people to the same stimulus they will react in the same way—or internalize it the same way. This is the unknown element of human psychology that Boulding’s image attempts to capture. This view in many ways respects the individual and acknowledges the value of each person’s image as unique, so it is difficult (except among some shared images) to homogenize people so you can predict the outcome of stimulus–response interactions. As Boulding states, “the only true solipsist is the hopeless schizophrenic, the person who has cut himself off from all feedback, whether from nature or from man” (Boulding, 1956, p. 167). The Feedback [Boulding quoted in Beilock (1980, p. 64)]:

The Feedback lives upon its tail,

A source of food that cannot fail,

For Messages that bear repeat’n Will grow as fast as they are eaten.

Small groups of people with a shared image can have the biggest impact on the shared image of larger groups. It is the small startup business that can develop the idea that upends the larger more established businesses. The same can also be true of an innovator who changes the landscape of an image in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Boulding argues that this is one reason the future is so difficult to predict. Innovations can create wild discontinuities. This unpredictability shows up in much of Boulding’s work. It is with genuine fascination that Boulding writes of “system breaks” that disrupt normal society, pushing it in new directions. Arguably it was the Industrial Revolution that gave rise to modern economics (à la Adam Smith), because no “modern” economy had yet existed. It was the steam engine and division of labor that brought the masses into the cities from the farms. So, it may be argued that economics is nothing but the study of these “system breaks.”

Boulding uses Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s term noosphere (based on lectures by Vladimir Vernadsky) to explain the sphere of human thought. This is an important concept because it fits nicely into Boulding’s concept of image-directed behavior. The noosphere is always growing, (dynamically) moving toward greater social consciousness. For Boulding, this is best explained as a shared image that grows in acceptance as value systems align. The greater the sharing of knowledge, the more likely the noosphere will grow and the more integrated our thinking becomes. On the other hand, Boulding argues,

We cannot rule out the possibility that under some circumstances, ignorance is bliss, and knowledge leads to disaster. [ . . . ] The slightly chilling remark that man may be an unsuccessful experiment in curiosity veers a little too close to the cold winds of reality for comfort. [ . . . ] We have now reached the point in human development where the end of the earth brought about by human knowledge is a real possibility. Curiously enough, however, our very inability to survive would be remarkably good evidence for the truth of our images—if anybody was there to notice it (Boulding, 1956, p. 169).

Boulding’s idea of image is not only an exercise in understanding behavior (or understanding why we do not understand it) as it is an abstraction, but, in his words, “The images that men have of themselves and of the society around them—because of their impact on human b ehavior— are an important, indeed, almost a dominant element in the course of social evolution” (Boulding, 1968a, p. 243). After all, Boulding writes:

According to the theory of the image, our very message input depends to a considerable extent upon our existing value structure. What this means, in a sense, is that the way in which the total image grows determines or at least limits the directions of future growth. In this growth process, however, the factual and the valuational images are inextricably entwined (Boulding, 1956, p. 174).

Society for General Systems Research

Ludwig von Bertalanffy is considered the father of general systems theory—but Boulding, Rapoport, and Gerard are generally considered cofounders of the field of general systems. As mentioned above, Boulding was the first president of the Society for General Systems Research (1957–1958) and helped develop and advance general systems theory. The society started publishing General Systems: Yearbook of the Society for General Systems Research in 1956. Bertalanffy and Anatol Rapoport served as editors. The lead article in the first issue was by Bertalanffy, and the second article was Kenneth Boulding’s “General Systems Theory—The

Skeleton of Science.” In this article, Boulding states,

Two possible approaches to the organization of general systems theory suggest themselves, which are to be thought of as complementary rather than competitive, or at least two roads each of which are worth exploring. The first approach is to look over the empirical universe and to pick out certain general phenomena which are found in many different disciplines, and to seek to build up general theoretical models relevant to these phenomena. The second approach is to arrange the empirical fields in a hierarchy of complexity of organization of their basic “individual” or unit of behavior, and to try to develop a level of abstraction appropriate to each (Boulding, 1968a, p. 87).

Boulding believed in the transdisciplinary approach of systems theory and worried that disciplines were becoming too isolated and entrenched. Worse still, Boulding believed that knowledge could expand faster if all disciplines worked together. If it is possible to avoid reinventing the wheel and to learn new techniques that others have found successful (or unsuccessful) then that has tremendous value by freeing up research time for work on other problems. So, Boulding applied systems theory to much of his work throughout the rest of his life.

Center for Research on Conflict Resolution

Prior to Boulding’s year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, he had developed a deep interest in peace studies. As early as 1948, he wrote, “The problem towards which I feel particularly drawn is that of the general theory of national defense” (Kerman, 1974, p. 67). He even wrote on national defense issues as early as 1937 with a pamphlet titled “Paths of Glory,” which discussed nonviolent methods for national defense. It was published by the Northern Friends Peace Board in the United Kingdom, which Boulding served on as a committee member (Kerman, 1972).

In 1950, psychologists Herbert Kelman and Arthur Gladstone, started organizing the inauspiciously titled Bulletin of Research Exchange on Prevention of War. A few years later two graduate students at the University of Michigan (Robert Hefner and William Barth) took over editorial duties. They had almost no budget and produced the Bulletin in the simplest way possible. Interestingly, even though Boulding was at Michigan at the time and working on peace issues, he was not involved in this early work on peace research. It was not until his year at Stanford that a junior scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stephen Richardson, shared with Boulding his father’s (Lewis Richardson—a mathematician and Quaker) work from the 1920s that quantified historical data on war and war industries. Lewis Richardson had developed models on weather forecasting and eventually, because of his pacifism, applied similar models to understanding what caused wars and how we might best avoid them altogether. Boulding and other scholars at the center read through Richardson’s work with enthusiasm, realizing that his techniques offered a more rigorous analysis of conflict than any previously developed. Around this time, Herbert Kelman had solicited help from scholars at the center to consider the future of his Bulletin. Of course, Boulding and others immediately saw the potential of developing an interdisciplinary academic journal, publishing research that applies Richardson’s methods to addressing problems of conflict and defense. Having an academic journal would establish the field of peace research and serve as an attractor to like-minded scholars.

In the 1950s, the nuclear threat was looming and the possibility of World War III was foremost in the minds of those at the center. They decided to house their efforts at the University of Michigan, with Boulding, Kelman, and Rapoport (soon to arrive) already working there, it was a logical choice. At a meeting in Ann Arbor in 1955, the journal was given the name Journal of Conflict Resolution. Boulding took a leadership role and solicited almost all the articles for the first issue of the journal. Unfortunately, the journal had difficulty finding a home. Still overcoming the McCarthy era of fear mongering, the journal was given greater scrutiny. Eventually the Journalism Department agreed to house the journal, and the first issue was published in March 1957. One of the contributors to that issue was Thomas Schelling, who won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2005 for his work on game theory, studying issues of conflict resolution.

Boulding wrote in the editorial to the journal’s first issue:

It is to be anticipated that Conflict Resolution will, in successive numbers, contribute to the development of such a discipline and that, in turn, the developing discipline will contribute to the just and peaceful resolution of international conflicts (Boulding, 1957b, p. 5).

The journal only had funds available to publish the first two issues and took subscriptions for the first year. After three issues they were insolvent and needed funding. They struggled and just when all was deemed lost, William Barth helped secure a foundation’s final $1,000 gift for the journal. Then, also due to Barth’s hustle, they were given $65,000 (a donation made after an inheritance) earmarked for peace research at the University of Michigan. This money secured the journal and, more important, gave them negotiating leverage to establish at the University of Michigan a center to study conflict resolution. In 1959, they established the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution.

The donation funded the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution for the first three years. After that the university would pay the assistant director’s salary and half of the director’s salary. After the three years, the center secured funding for secretaries and supplies from various sources, including the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the National Science Foundation. Boulding and Robert Angell served as directors of the center for most of its life. William Barth served as assistant/associate director.

Elise’s work at the center coincided with her doctoral work, and she worked in every facet of the organization. She eventually became so engaged that in 1966 she ran as a write-in peace candidate for US Congress second district. She ran exclusively on her resolve of ending the Vietnam War. She did not win, but the point was to raise awareness more than to win (arguably, losing likely confirmed their fears). She ran on a platform that had four specific objectives: (1) a program for the rapid withdrawal of all non-Vietnamese forces from the country and a return to the Geneva Accords of 1954, the right to self-determination by the Vietnamese people; (2) the abandonment by the US government of the “superpower” position and a return to a more modest role in the world community; (3) long-term program for a peaceful settlement of the existing tension, listing specific measures to be adopted, including supporting the role of China in the world community; and (4) a strong drive to abolish poverty and discrimination in the United States and the possibilities for each member of the world community to meet one’s potential (Morrison, 2005, pp. 82–83). Elise did not win, or even come in second.

In 1967 the Bouldings were part of the Michigan delegation of Quakers who defied U.S. Law by bringing money and supplies to Canada for the aid of the Vietnamese people, both in the North and in the South, in violation of the embargo under the Export Control Act. [ . . . ] Elise [ . . . ] had been one of the key organizers of the Michigan delegation. The actual transmission of funds to the Canadian Quakers occurred in Detroit, but the group marched across the International Bridge to Windsor, Ontario, with a symbolic dollar bill inserted in a Bible, opened to the passage, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him, if he be thirsty, give him a drink.” The money was then given to the Canadian Quakers. According to Elise, the “real” money was driven across the border by Kenneth and others underground (Morrison, 2005, p. 84).

So Much Trouble in the World

Boulding’s second year away from the University of Michigan was to be the visiting head of the Economics Department at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica. He took his family there for the 1959–1960 academic year. During this year, Boulding wrote Conflict and Defense (1962). The book is a dense tome that investigates, mostly, international conflict. This book made an important contribution to the field of conflict studies. It both influenced (and was influenced by) the work by Thomas Schelling, who was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on bargaining and strategic behavior. Perhaps the most important outcome of this book is that it got Boulding interested in understanding the power structures of society, which served as a basis for much of his later work.

He begins with a study of the nature of duopolies and how conflicts emerge and can get resolved between two parties. Boulding’s argument rests on the difference between shortsighted and long-sighted behavior. Parties with shortsighted behavior (and interests) can create inefficient outcomes (a noncooperative equilibrium point). Shortsighted behavior assumes a party understands the basic strategy of their opponent, which they use to adjust their own strategy in a way to gain advantage. But it is as likely to achieve cooperation as not, and outcomes can quickly devolve into disadvantaged states that create fuel for greater discontent (what Boulding calls the theory of viability). The goal then is to adopt long-sighted behavior, which has the purpose of establishing joint cooperation. The long-sighted perspective can shift cooperation to a more optimal outcome for both parties by looking beyond immediate concerns and shifting focus to objectives that weigh more heavily the longterm advantages of cooperation.

Perhaps the most important contribution in Conflict and Defense is Boulding’s use of spatial differentiation to study the effects and likelihood of conflict. He extends the two-party duopoly model to two nations. He argues that the greater the distance that exists between nations (i.e., the farther their centers of gravity) the greater each nation’s viability (or stability/security). The conflict of war serves as a good example where nations with largely separated centers of gravity must expend enormous effort to transport military equipment and personnel far away, which makes them less likely to engage in war. But with advances in technology, nations’ centers of gravity have come to overlap each other in ways that make each nation less secure. In this scenario, the costs to engage in war become lower and the likelihood for conflict increases. As a result, global stability is lessened. Boulding, therefore, recommends establishing an external supranational organization to restore stability. This overarching organization must have the authority, legitimacy, and will to ensure global viability. Without such an entity, the number and intensity of conflicts can escalate without reproach as centers of gravity grow. For Boulding, “the biggest problem in developing the institutions of conflict control is that of catching conflicts young. Conflict situations are frequently allowed to develop to almost unmanageable proportions before anything is done about them, by which time it is often too late to resolve them by peaceful and procedural means” (Boulding, 1962, p. 325). Furthermore,

The study of conflict is by no means exhausted when we have considered the conflicts of individuals, groups, and organizations such as firms, labor unions, and national states. All these particular conflicts lie embedded in a matrix of a more general conflict—the great battle of ethical, religious, scientific, and ideological systems for the allegiance of men (Boulding, 1962, p. 277).

Boulding then states:

The extent to which ideological differences result in overt conflict depends mainly on the extent to which these differences are embodied in organizations designed for conflict. Thus, the decline in wars of religion is not necessarily due to any decline in religious fervor, though this may have been contributing cause, but rather to a gradual separation of religion from the state and its armed force as an organizer of conflict. As long as the church was identified with the state and regarded as an essential ideological organizer of a society, religious differences were embodied in the social system of interacting armed forces and became occasions for armed conflict. With the rise of the secular state and internal freedom of religion, religious conformity was no longer regarded as essential to the unity of society, which could be held together by purely political organization (Boulding, 1962, p. 278).

Again, Boulding comes back to his recommendation for peace:

Just as war is too important to leave to the generals, so peace is too important to leave to the pacifists. It is not enough to condemn violence, to abstain from it, or to withdraw from it. There must be organization against it; in other words, institutions of conflict control or, in other words, government (Boulding 1962, p. 334).

Besides government oversight, there is also a need for personal responsibility:

Both life and government are unstable castles of order in the midst of a universe of increasing entropy and chaos. They can be built, however, because of the learning process, because the gene can teach patterns to unorganized matter, and because the human organism can learn from its imagination, for its experience, and from others. Our hope for the future of mankind, therefore, lies first in the human imagination, which can create the forms of things unknown and so create the image of possible futures that have not been previously imagined (Boulding, 1962, 336).

Bessie

While Boulding and Elise were having their family and moving around the United States, Boulding’s mother, Bessie, stayed in Hamilton, New York. She became involved with the Quakers and developed many friendships there. She was ill for several years before her death. At one point, the Bouldings moved Bessie from Hamilton to an assisted-living facility in Ann Arbor, so they could look after her. Bessie missed her friends once in Michigan. They decided to move her back to Hamilton where she was much happier. She was writing poetry all the while and seemed to live a peaceful life. In 1961, soon after the Bouldings’ year away in Jamaica, Bessie died. Boulding’s Aunt Ada, who he was still close with, died the following year after having recently visited Boulding and his family.

Conflict Resolution in Action

Boulding not only advanced peace research academically, but (as mentioned in Chapter 3) he engaged in trying to both educate other people about peace studies and influence politics. There are several examples of this behavior. First, in April 1958, he held a vigil at the University of Michigan campus flagpole, protesting the proliferation and testing of nuclear weapons. Boulding said, “I conceived the act as a moral obligation of citizenship in the United States” (Kerman, 1974, p. 124).

Probably the best story of Boulding’s activism comes from one of his former students (and colleagues) who wrote:

One theme that came to dominate Boulding’s thoughts, and is recurrent throughout his writings, was his hope and prayer for a world order based on mutual respect, regardless of political or religious beliefs. This came dramatically to the fore when Kenneth participated in an exchange with Russian Scientists in the mid-1960s. At that time he was preoccupied with the enormous threat to human futures from continues proliferation and test of atomic weapons. Contemplating the darkest of futures for humankind if we did not come to our sense, he wept openly at the conference table. I am told by a participant that Kenneth’s impassioned plea for the common brotherhood was so moving that the impasse was broken and the Russian delegates said “here was a man whom they could trust.” Even more astonishing, I am told, they then wept with him. Thus in the midst of the Cold War, a significant trust was forged among those finding themselves on opposite sides of the table (Rapport, 1996, p. 69).

Land of the Rising Sun

Boulding’s last long-term sojourn while at the University of Michigan was to the International Christian University in Tokyo, Japan, for the 1963–1964 academic year, as the Danforth Visiting Professor. Boulding fell in love with Japan and the Japanese people, making several trips back. Boulding wrote of his first trip:

This was a wonderful year for all of us. I realized what an ignorant Westerner I was and what a wonderful stream of human life and experience had come out of Asia. It was there also that I got really interested in the evolutionary theory of human history. Most of my students were Marxists. [ . . . ] I kept suggesting to them that though there were dialectical elements in human history, there were also non-dialectical processes, which, of course, they had never thought of. At the end of my term there I gave some lectures on “Dialectical and Non-Dialectical Elements in the Interpretation of History,” which eventually turned into a book, A Primer on Social Dynamics [(1970)], expanded later into Ecodynamics [(1978a)] (Boulding, 1989b, p. 379).

Another book that resulted from his trip to Japan was The Meaning of the 20th Century (1964a). In this book, Boulding discusses the transition from civilized society to a postcivilized society. The first transition of humankind was from a precivilized society (around ten thousand years ago, or so) to civilized society with increased concentrations of people into cities, states, and nation-states. Boulding argues that knowledge was the source of both the first and the second transition. Through learning and growth in human knowledge, civilization was brought about and postcivilization is being brought about. No society can subsist without knowledge, and it is largely the result of culture (little information we know is ingrained genetically). Certainly higher-order knowledge (such as is required to form a complex social system) is wholly the result of learning via culture. The second great transition is led largely by science. It is a shift away from folk knowledge and beliefs to a large set of testable hypotheses about the world. The scientific method has, therefore, debunked much earlier knowledge and allowed for humans to explore their world without fear of retribution (think: Galileo). This transition from a folk-based model of observation and beliefs to a rigorous scientific method of inference and verification was a long process. Many

people started observing their world in different ways—testing claims for accuracy and questioning old beliefs. This is not easily done, especially when thinking about social systems that are not as easily testable, because, “man loves to find connections even between the most remote events, and often finds his belief in these connections confirmed because the belief in them biases the observations and even biases the events themselves (Boulding, 1964a, p. 69). But Boulding argues that social sciences help minimize biases through two inventions. First is the sample survey where samples are drawn on society to explore behaviors and make observations about the larger population. Second is indexing (e.g., measuring GDP or inflation), which “enables us to see some essential characteristics of a very large and complex system” (p. 71).

The most interesting element to this book is Boulding’s discussion about how to guide the current transition toward betterment. In the second great transition, he sees potential both for evil as well as for good. But Boulding makes a good argument that the transition is occurring— after all, the rapid development of technology, climate change, and escalation of wars are occurring with little evidence of their subsistence. He further remarks that it is unlikely the great transition can be stopped. Social evolution is rather constant and the potential for change is everpresent and exhibits properties of critical mass where innovations (or mutations) are always changing the system into something new.

I therefore have no hesitation in recommending the attitude toward the great transition which I have described as critical acceptance. There may be times when we wish nostalgically that it had never started, for then at least the danger that the evolutionary experiment in this part of the universe would be terminated would be more remote. Now that the transition is under way, however, there is no going back on it. We must learn to use its enormous potential for good rather than for evil, and we must learn to diminish and eventually eliminate the dangers which are inherent in it. If I had to sum up the situation in a sentence I would say that the situation has arisen because of the development of certain methods of reality testing applied to our images of nature. If we are to ride out the transition successfully we must apply these or similar methods for reality testing to our images of man and his society (Boulding, 1964a, p. 191).

Spaceship Earth

In May 1965, Boulding presented a three-page speech to the Committee on Space Sciences at Washington State University titled “Earth as a Space Ship.” And on March 8, 1966, at the sixth Resources for the Future Forum on Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy, Kenneth Boulding (1966) presented his now famous paper “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth.” This paper, arguably, marks the beginning of modern ecological economics, which is different from mainstream environmental economics in that it sees the economy as a subset of the larger ecosystem (or biosphere) and promotes protection of natural capital. In Boulding’s Spaceship Earth paper he castigates neoclassical economists for ignoring the environment in their models. As Kula (1998, p. 4) accurately states, Boulding’s paper “must be one of the most thought-provoking pieces written on the environment this century.” Heilbroner (1975, p. 77) called it a “classic.” Its importance is mostly due to the fact that until this time mainstream economists were largely silent about how the economy impacts the environment (as well as how the environment impacts the economy). Boulding’s article made it clear that the environment is important and that economists can no longer ignore it in their analyses.

In the 1970s, due to growing national interest in environmental issues (resulting in the first Earth Day and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency), mainstream neoclassical economists developed two subfields for studying the environment: (1) environmental economics, and (2) natural resource economics. Today most mainstream economists use the term environmental economics to encompass both subfields.

Environmental economics studies the effects (or inclusions) of economic activity on the environment—water pollution, air pollution, toxic waste leakage. All these effects are harmful, but some to a larger degree than others. Natural resource economics studies the economic effects of resources (or elements) taken out of the environment for economic uses, such as mining, logging, and commercial fishing. Both subfields weigh the costs of environmental degradation against the economic benefits of greater economic growth and resource use. But because it is unlikely someone can accurately assess future environmental costs in the present (environmental effects are often immeasurable until many years, or decades, later), environmental economists often discount the true economic impact of environmental degradation, which makes the economic benefits seem larger than they actually are (Spash, 1999).

Both environmental economics and natural resource economics adhere to several mainstream principles. First, they believe technology will develop quickly enough to solve any environmental problems that may arise. Second, they support the idea that the free market will solve all environmental problems (a green invisible hand); therefore, they promote small government with limited (or no) regulations. Third, they think economic growth equates to economic development and is thus always desirable.

Mainstream economists view the environment as a mere extension of the economy. Their models generally ignore the long-term environmental impact of economic activities (e.g., water pollution) and instead include the environment as an afterthought to growth constraints. Their anthropocentric perspective separates humans from the ecological system; therefore, the economy, as a social construction, is also removed from the environment. Boulding (1966; 1978a) criticizes this anthropocentrism and argues that any discussion of the economy must presuppose environmental importance (and environmental dominance). This belief has important implications for how economists should view economic growth. Mainstream economists encourage economic growth at almost any cost. They see growth as the primary solution to social/economic problems (poverty, inequality, and crime). But Boulding believed economic growth is unlikely to solve many of the problems (economic, social, and environmental) caused by a capitalist system. Instead, he argued for a more fair and equitable social construction revolving around enhancing people’s living standards.

Mainstream economists also conflate economic growth and economic development. Their growth models (e.g., the Solow growth model) classify the environment as an open system of endless bounty, and thus disregard its value when making economic decisions. These models are constrained by population growth and technological improvement in the long run, but they ignore the environmental resources needed to sustain this growth, and waste-producing outputs due to growth. For Boulding (1966; 1978a), economic growth is a quantitative measure of increased production while economic development is a qualitative measure of living standards—much in the way John Kenneth Galbraith (1996; 1998) and Amartya Sen (1984; 1985) view development. Thus, an increase in economic growth does not imply (nor necessarily lead to) better living standards—in fact, rapid uncontrolled economic growth will likely lead to large income and wealth inequalities and environmental problems (such as we are now seeing in China). The costs of such growth far outweigh the benefits, which makes this type of growth unsustainable (Daly, 1999). Ecological economics was born from these principle disagreements with mainstream economics, and the potential negative long-term effects of decisions made using mainstream ideology.

Boulding’s (1966) article was a clarion call for all economists to begin considering the limitations of planet Earth, and to start incorporating the effects that economic decisions have on the environment. He argued that Earth had finally reached an exhaustive point where there were no new lands to inhabit. No longer could people think of their world as illimitable (open). Boulding states that Earth is a closed system, which he compares to a spaceship. In Boulding’s spaceship, regular attention must be paid to population growth, energy use, and use and disposal of all other resources. If spacemen pay no heed to how best to use their inputs and account for outputs, then the environment becomes unstable, potentially leading to their extinction (or crisis, at minimum). To mainstream economists, however, the environment is considered an open system of unlimited resources. This anachronistic view is a hangover from times when economic models were oversimplified to account for our inability to accurately model a macrodynamic system (Boulding, 1978a).

According to Boulding (1966, p. 4), “Economists . . . have failed to come to grips with the ultimate consequences of the transition from the open to the closed earth.” An open system is one where “the outputs of all parts of the system are linked to the inputs of other parts” (1966, p. 4). In a closed system, no inputs come from outside and no outputs go outside the system (outside does not exist). Boulding claims that mainstream economists’ open system perspective can be analogized to that of a “cowboy economy.” This analogy generates images of frontier plains (abundant unexplored free territories) and “is associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies” (Boulding, 1966). For Boulding this romantic view of undiscovered plains is naive today because there are no more undiscovered plains on Earth. As such, Boulding’s closed system economy that he calls a “spaceship” is Earth.

In the cowboy economy, growth via consumption and production is desirable. The more an economy consumes, the more is produced, the higher is its GDP, and the better off everyone becomes (Boulding, 1966; 1978a). No consideration is given to pollution or degradation of resources (or other long-run effects) in the cowboy economy. Conversely, in the spaceship economy, it is desirable to minimize throughputs. The success of this economy is not measured by maximizing consumption and production; rather, success is measured by increasing “the nature, extent, quality, and complexity of the total stock of capital, including in this the state of the human bodies and minds included in the system” (Boulding, 1966). The spaceship economy is consequently better off with lower levels of production and consumption. And technology is valuable when it lessens harmful outputs by using fewer (or the same amount of) inputs without destabilizing the system—socially, economically, or environmentally.

All living things are open systems because they take inputs to live (air, food, water) and give off outputs in the form of carbon dioxide and waste. Open and closed systems rely on three classes of inputs and outputs: matter, energy, and information. Boulding states the economy is open with regard to all three classes. And all three are dependent on each other; or, more generally, “everything depends on everything else” (Boulding, 1978a, p. 224). However, not all are accounted for by economists; therefore, Boulding (1966, p. 5) states:

Thus we see the econosphere as a material process involving the discovery and mining of fossil fuels, ores, etc., and at the other end a process by which the effluents of the system are passed out into noneconomic reservoirs—for instance, the atmosphere and the oceans— which are not appropriated and do not enter into the exchange system.

Energy is either renewable (sunlight, heat, water) or nonrenewable (fossil fuels), and both types are used “to move matter from the noneconomic set into the economic set or even out of it again” (Boulding, 1966, p. 5). Advanced economies use significant amounts of nonrenewable resources to increase the amount of energy throughput far above the amount of renewable energy stock available. This results in an increase in economic production (and throughput). But this boost is temporary because energy in this system adheres to the second law of thermodynamics: In a closed system, energy disperses over time and work (production) is only possible at the point of entropy where less concentrated energy is useful. Entropy represents a steady-state where pure energy has dissipated enough to become usable. In order to have a sustainable energy stock, it is necessary to learn how to effectively use renewable energies. This is necessary because eventually nonrenewable energies (fossil fuels) will be extinguished. Using more renewable resources now will also reduce (perhaps eliminate entirely) the end amount of damage caused by pollution from outputs produced by using fossil fuels and nuclear fission (Boulding 1978a, pp. 293–95; 1985; Georgescu-Roegen, 1971).

According to Boulding (1966), of the three classes of inputs and outputs, information (knowledge) is the most important to humans. He argues that matter is only significant when it becomes a part of “human knowledge.” The production of knowledge is necessary for human development, and the more knowledge a society possesses the greater is its economic progress. Knowledge, therefore, evolves in the ecosystem where it lets people organize energy and materials for effective use (Boulding, 1978a, p. 225). But, Boulding argues, there may be an eventual limit to this evolution, which implies that technology will, contrary to neoclassical beliefs, fail to solve important social, environmental, and other problems (Boulding, 1966; 1978a). At what point technology will fail to provide solutions is impossible to predict, but the world is currently creating environmental problems at rates faster than existing science can solve them (Daly, 1999).

For example, Boulding believed the effects of population growth deserved significant attention because the human population is growing at an unsustainable rate. Boulding did argue that we do not know a priori what should be the steady-state population level—but we have to pay much more attention to population growth and start measuring its impact on living standards (Boulding, 1964a; 1978a, pp. 298–99). He provides three theorems to explain the result of population growth. First is “The Dismal Theorem,” which states if human misery is the only measure of population growth then the world will expand until it is so miserable that it will eventually reduce its population. Second is “The Utterly Dismal Theorem,” which asserts that any technical advancement will only relieve misery for a short while. Ultimately it only serves to increase the number of people—and period of—suffering until maximum misery is achieved and population is reduced to a nonmiserable level. Last is “The Moderately Cheerful Form of the Dismal Theorem,” which encourages finding a way other than misery to check population growth. It is necessary to measure Earth’s capacity for population sustainability so maximum misery is avoided. Boulding was possibly the first person to consider tradable reproductive rights as a practical method for controlling population growth (a concept today being applied to the trading of pollution emission credits in the private sector) (Boulding, 1950; 1964a; 1978a). Herman Daly (1996, p. 119) elaborates Boulding’s point by stating:

The eventual necessity of a steady-state population has been evident to many for a long time. What holds for the population of human bodies must also hold for the populations of cars, buildings, livestock, and each and every other form of physical wealth that humans accumulate.

Daly, like Boulding, argues that an increasing population harms the lower classes because it raises the unskilled labor supply thus keeping wages low (or pushing them lower). They both see population as having a principal influence on people’s well-being. The second economics paper Boulding published was “The Application of the Pure Theory of Population Change to the Theory of Capital” (1934) where he tied fluctuations in population size to fluctuations in capital.

Mainstream economists are largely interested in prediction and establishing economic laws based on risk (i.e., mere chance propositions) (Spash, 1999). However, for Boulding, uncertainty surrounds all decisions that influence the environment (and therefore the economy, too). He wrote, “under imperfect markets [ . . . ] there is a double  uncertainty— we are not only uncertain as to the future, but we are uncertain even as to the present parameter of the market functions” (Boulding 1971c, p. 160). Most mainstream modeling techniques (i.e., cost–benefit analysis) collapse under uncertainty, which is especially the case when making economic decisions that directly (or indirectly) influence the environment because it is indispensable and not substitutable.

Boulding has a well-developed view of growth. For him “the objective of economic policy should not be to maximize consumption or production, but rather to minimize it” (Boulding, 1971c, p. 267). Boulding’s focus on thermodynamics emphasizes his viewpoint that economic growth must be scrutinized given constraints on what we know about the environmental impact of production resulting from the necessary inputs (resources, labor, etc.) and resulting outputs (waste and products). Besides, rapid growth, even if it were sustainable, does not directly result in better living standards.

The International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) was established in 1988 “to advance understanding of the relationships among ecological, social, and economic systems for the mutual well-being of nature and people” (www.ecoeco.org). It publishes the journal Ecological Economics. The ISEE also confers biennially the Kenneth Boulding Memorial Award. The work of the award recipient is supposed to represent the objectives of the ISEE in the spirit of Boulding’s transdisciplinary scholarship. Though, somewhat ironically, Boulding wrote very little on the environment. But Clive Spash’s “The Economics of Boulding’s Spaceship Earth” (2013) is an excellent analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Boulding’s paper. Spash believes that while Boulding’s article was a useful contribution to ecological economics, it did not (in contrast to what is presented above) help create modern ecological economics. His main argument, besides some errors in Boulding’s reasoning, is that he did not continue to build on the foundation he established—instead moving on to other areas of interest. But Spash remarks that Boulding did have a come-to-Jesus moment when he gave a plenary speech at the inaugural conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics in 1990 (Boulding, 1991b). In this speech, Boulding admits to some of his minor errors in logic concerning ecological economics—probably his primary error was a willingness to consider nuclear energy as an alternative energy source. Spash acknowledges that Boulding maintained a commitment to ecological economics (discussing climate change, population growth, etc., in many later works) and at the end of his life can be seen as someone who, while not building ecological economics, had deep concerns about the environment and saw it as one of the most important social issues of our time.

A Final Move

On his return from Japan in the summer of 1964, Boulding and his family stopped at the University of Colorado at Boulder so he could teach a seminar for a few weeks. He instantly fell in love with Boulder. Over the next two years, he returned to give lectures several times. After one of his summer lectures, a member of the Economics Department was driving him to the airport when he baited Boulding by stating they were looking for a senior economist to join the department. Boulding bit. Maybe the area reminded him of his boyhood days at Chard with his mother and grandparents, or maybe he reached an age where his artistic mind needed more space. It is also possible Boulding simply wanted a change of scenery and a change of pace. So, in 1967, the Bouldings moved to Boulder.

5

Where the Buffalo Roam

Boulder Bound Bouldings

Kenneth Boulding spent most of the rest of his 26 years in Boulder, Colorado. The first 13 years he spent as professor of economics connected to the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. These were good, productive years and are the focus of this chapter. He did not necessarily have the same level of inspiration at the University of Colorado as he did at the University of Michigan, but his years at the University of Colorado are marked by a few important advancements in his thinking. First, he continued his work on conflict and peace. He refined his thinking and, with the help of his wife, Elise, developed a more well-rounded theory of peace. Second, he created what he called grants economics. Once his grants economics was well defined, Boulding could complete his bigger picture of the social system. Third, he developed his evolutionary economics that fit within the institutional economic framework. At the same time, Boulding helped finance the Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, which began circulation in 1978, and was on their editorial board for many years. The end of this chapter speculates on the degree to which Boulding falls into the Institutionalist and Post Keynesian schools of economic thought.

Once, long ago, the economist Kenneth Boulding asked me, “What would you like to do in economics?” Being young and brash, I said very immodestly, “I want to bring economics into the twentieth century.” He looked at me and said, “Don’t you think you should bring it into the eighteenth century first?” (Waldrop, 1992, p. 328).

A Difficult Move

Almost by accident, at Boulder.

Where the Rockies thrust through the plains, Kenneth,

109

Lecturing in November, set in motion a notion a commotion an emotion—ah, so schön! is Boulder

With an Upshot an Uproot. . . (Kerman, 1974, p. 309).

Needless to say, Elise was not happy at the idea of moving to Boulder and neither were most of their children. She was just starting her doctoral dissertation, and as a result took two more years to finish her PhD in sociology at the University of Michigan. At this time, in 1967, their children were aged, roughly, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20 years. The oldest, Russell, was already in college. Mark stayed behind in Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan that fall semester. They had stability in Ann Arbor, and for Elise there was no incentive to leave—too little to gain for the effort and too much to lose if things did not go well. But Boulding was a nomad in some ways. The 18 years he spent at Michigan (minus his three years away in California, Jamaica, and Japan) was the longest he spent at one place since childhood. So, at 57 years old, it is not surprising he wanted a change of scenery. Also, in a letter dated October 30, 1964, Boulding wrote to the department about his displeasure with the graduate economics program. For example, he wrote, “it seems to me much more attention should be paid to the history of economic thought, and especially to what might be called the classical literature of economics than we now do. I was shocked, indeed, to be told that the prelims no longer included the history of thought” (Boulding, 1964b, p. 1). Also, Boulding believed the state of Michigan was not properly supporting the university to keep it in top form. He struggled to ensure adequate funding for the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution and as a result felt its functions were severely limited. (Of course, when Boulding left Michigan, state funding amounted to over 70 percent of the university’s budget; while in 2012 it was around 17 percent— resulting in significant research dollars rerouted for building fancy dorms and fitness centers to attract paying students.)

For Elise, not only did she have to write her dissertation, but Boulding had helped secure her a teaching position in the Sociology Department at Colorado, which added significant additional responsibilities. And they both had part-time appointments at the already established Institute of Behavioral Science. This meant that Elise had to start teaching full-time, relocate her family, and write a dissertation. It is no wonder she was not thrilled. But, as was common of the time, she followed Boulding’s lead.

It was not all mountain views and gazing at bubbling brooks for Boulding either. He agreed that the move to Boulder was a one-year trial.

During the first year, they knew they were staying; but the Board of Trustees of the university were split on granting his tenure. It became a stressful time for Boulding, and, in the midst of it, according to his new secretary, Vivian Wilson, he considered leaving the university. It is not publicly known why the university was not more favorable of Boulding’s presence. It may be assumed that Boulding was considered too radical, and that his pacifist views (during the Vietnam era) might create conflict. Of course, Boulding was not that radical in his thinking. He was a Keynesian, but at that time so were most economists. It is also possible that Boulding’s contract created some tension. At the time he was the highest paid professor at the University of Colorado. This created considerable tension for him among some faculty. Boulding was also granted a half-teaching–half-research schedule to give him more time to write and work at the university’s Institute for Behavioral Science. He would normally teach one semester and then take the next semester off so he could attend conferences, give lecture presentations, and write. This favorable agreement, matched with the high salary, was possibly weighing on the minds of trustees as they pondered Boulding’s case. In the end, they granted him tenure and Boulding was happy to stay in Boulder for the rest of his academic career.

Institute of Behavioral Science

Boulding’s involvement in the Institute of Behavioral Science was significant. It may not be surprising that the director of the institute was a Friend and a friend, Gilbert White, a geologist. Boulding and his wife were both actively involved with the development of the institute during this time.

Milorg

At the University of Colorado, Boulding continued his research on conflict and peace. He was still focused on writing about the perils or war and how best to achieve peace. His year in Japan resulted in a paper that showed what Boulding always suspected, which is that not only did war result in a weakened domestic economy during the war years, but even if a country “won” the war, their domestic economy would actually be weak for many more years. Boulding finally started to apply his analytical mind to the problem of war and realized, as General Smedley Butler wrote, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives” (Butler, [1935] 2003, p. 23). Boulding’s earlier work on issues linking economics to war was The Economics of Peace (1946), but this book mostly discussed the economic development after war rather than studying the military-industrial complex as a voracious economic giant that consumes people and resources.

Bouldings testimony before Congress in 1969 for “The Military Budget and National Economic Priorities” highlights his views on the “war industry,” what Boulding called milorg—the military organization (Boulding, 1971d). Boulding argues that at the time, the military budget was between 9 and 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). This spending diverts resources away from consumers in the economy; and as such:

The war industry is a cancer within the body of American society. It has its own mode of growth, it represents a system which is virtually independent and indeed objectively inimical to the welfare of the American people, in spite of the fact that it still visualizes itself as their protector (1971d, p. 492).

Perhaps Boulding’s most interesting work on peace during this time is Stable Peace (1978b)—ironically, sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. The book focuses on the policy needs for maintaining peace. He writes in the preface, “Policy is social agriculture; just as a farmer both cooperates with and distorts the ecosystem of the farm in the interest of certain human values, so the policy maker must cooperate with and distort the overall dynamics of society” (1978b, p. xii). He asserts that peace is already defined by society in a rather clear way. Nations in particular are able to state whether they are at peace or at war. The question for Boulding is how to ensure that peace is always the goal.

Boulding’s self-proclaimed First Law: If something exists, then it must be possible. Nowhere is this aphorism more appropriate than in the quest for stable peace. He argues that America and Canada have lived in peace for over two hundred years. If this type of peace exists between two neighboring countries, then it can also exist around the world. Conflict will arise; however, as Boulding explored in Conflict and Defense (1962), not all conflict is destructive, and many times, under the right circumstances, it is constructive. The target is peace, but when conflict occurs it is up to policy makers to move momentum toward a constructive outcome and to avoid destruction. But war, in the span of human history, is something of an outlier. By no means is war the natural state of being in most periods among most people. In fact, many people, institutions, and countries live in relative peace most of the time. This observation by Boulding is encouraging because it is easy to fall into the mind-set of war as inevitable; but Boulding suggests otherwise.

Boulding regularly uses his concept from The Image (1956) to explain behavior (because he saw image as the primary determinant of it), and the same is true for people as for countries (and institutions). For example, he states that people can argue with one another, but rarely do these disagreements result in murder (of course, sometimes they do, but far more often they do not). It is people’s image of themselves as nonviolent that keep them in check. Likewise, the same may be true of nations (think: Switzerland). Instead, “in the case of nation-states, the self-image of the state as a potential war maker is so common as to be universal, though there are some interesting exceptions in those areas that can be described as stable peace” (Boulding, 1962, p. 16). War between certain countries is unlikely (United States and Canada or United States and Great Britain). It is precisely this mind-set that war is not inevitable that helps promote peace.

The military-industrial organization (milorg) plays an important role in setting Boulding’s social image of war and peace. Boulding finds that the adage “if you want peace prepare for war” is incorrect. In fact, countries that are prepared for war tend to find themselves engaged in war. The size of the military-industrial complex may be correlated to war/ peace probabilities. A large and growing military-industrial complex may create a critical mass where war is an eventuality. Alternatively, a small or shrinking military-industrial complex means a low critical mass reducing the probability of war. Of course, resource allocation is a dynamic process, which is why Boulding argues for an organization that is responsible for maintaining peace as its primary goal. The United States has military high schools and colleges and companies that make up the military-industrial complex. But a sufficient counterbalance does not exist to promote peace.

Weapons are an important resource requiring more careful study. In Conflict and Defense (1962), Boulding states that the larger the range of weapons (e.g., a missile) the larger must be the viable size of the warring party. To this, Boulding adds,

The development of the guided missile and the nuclear warhead, however, confronts the human race with a quite unprecedented problem, for it has destroyed unconditional viability of even the largest countries. When the range of a deadly missile rises to 12,500 miles, or half the circumference of the earth, it is clear that a fundamental watershed had been passed and that war itself is no longer a viable situation (Boulding, 1962, p. 27).

Peace Starts at Home

Boulding’s greatest collaborator for peace research was his wife, Elise. She completed her doctorate in sociology at the University of Michigan in 1969, and her dissertation was titled “The Effects of Industrialization on the Participation of Women in Society.” Her dissertation argued that as the world becomes more modernized, women would become more active participants in society (and the economy). At Colorado she taught courses on family, religion, and society in the Sociology Department. Perhaps most important, she started the peace studies program at the university with her husband. This was a new field that combined faculty from many different disciplines. The Bouldings cotaught many courses on peace and conflict resolution. The focus of Elise’s research was on promoting peace at home. She was a lifelong advocate that the household is essential to creating a peace-minded environment. There must be regular communication with the goal of peaceful outcomes. If everyone in the household keeps to that principle then peace is an almost guaranteed result. Not that there will not be conflicts or misunderstandings, which are inherent among human relationships. Of course, Elise was raised in a different time, so she saw women as playing the dominant role in family peace strategizing. This philosophy is aligned with that of Maria Montessori’s that within children is the “hope for the world” (Elise Boulding, 1989).

Grants Economics

Beginning in the 1950s, Boulding spent considerable time developing his general systems theory and applying it in various ways to society. He first looked at conflict and defense strategies. But this work left an important unanswered question: Why do some conflicts result in fruitful outcomes and other conflicts end in disaster? By the end of his time at the University of Michigan, Boulding had started thinking about this question and developing his theory of civilization: grants economics.

Although Boulding’s grants inspiration grew from his work on conflict and defense, it also stemmed from his application of balance sheet theory—where not all exchanges are equivalent. His first paper on this topic (though he did not use the term grants) was “Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy” ([1962] 1971e). It was his 1969 paper “The Grants Economy” ([1969] 1971f) that he introduces the theory of grants economics in a more robust way. Contrary to traditional economics, which almost entirely consists of an exchange system (quid pro quo), a grant is a one-way transfer where one person (or entity) gives something and the other person (entity) does not give anything in return—nothing tangible anyway. As such, the “distinction between a grant and an exchange is somewhat ambiguous” (Boulding, 1971f, p. 477). In simpler terms, a grant occurs when the grantor gives up something measurable and the grantee gains something measurable (without losing anything). This is different from an exchange where the give and take of a transaction essentially cancel each other out (the value of exchangeables are considered equivalent by the actors). Much of the analysis on exchange can be traced back to Adam Smith extending to present day.

Boulding’s argument is that economics focuses exclusively on exchange but ignores grants. Grants do not fit neatly into existing economic models (particularly neoclassical economic models that are dominated by exchange). Boulding (and his student Martin Pfaff) found that the grants economy had been growing at a quick pace since the end of World War II and that any serious study of economics must include both exchange and grants.

Pure exchange economics cannot come to grips with some of the most important problems of our day: Those involving, for instance, the distribution of power, income, and wealth—which exchange economics takes for granted. The dissatisfaction with exchange economics is one of the most important sources of radical dissent. Radical economists, however, often destroy their own case by throwing exchange economics out the window altogether. Grants economics insists both grants and exchange are necessary to the organization of a modern economic system, and that any intelligent reform must be based on an integrated view of the system which includes both grants and exchange as interacting mechanisms (Boulding, Pfaff, and Horvath, 1972, p. 19).

There were many reasons for this; but take the example of economic foreign aid (medicine, textbooks, education, etc.), which is a rather recent phenomenon. One country gives another resources and expects nothing in return—except good will, which is difficult to measure in a meaningful way. Another example might be an economic subsidy that helps an industry survive. The American passenger railroad company Amtrak is a good example of a company receiving a one-way transfer grant from the government so it can stay in business.

Grants emerge from three sources: love, fear, and ignorance. An example of love is parents’ relationship with their children. Loving parents will give their children things (clothing, food, and shelter) expecting nothing in return. A grant from a threat occurs, for example, when a robber tells you “give me your money or I’ll hurt you.” The thief takes something from you giving nothing in return. The threat must be legitimate (or at least believable) to work. The third type of grant results from ignorance. For example, thousands of people in America in the early 2000s were sold variable interest-rate mortgages even though they were eligible for better (i.e., cheaper and safer) fixed-rate mortgages. The lenders and banks made more money from variable-rate mortgages (grantees), and the consumers (grantors) paid more than they should have. This is one reason why Boulding argues that many poor people are made poorer (and kept poor) because of grants from ignorance (lack of adequate knowledge).

Boulding further conflates grants into two categories: (1) exploitative grants from threats and ignorance; and (2) integrative grants from love (or kindness). Grants made out of love and kindness cannot be exploitative— unless the grantee does not deserve the gift. For example, a church seeks volunteers to serve in various roles (chorus, ushers, etc.). The volunteers are giving up their time and energy (arguably measurable) and in return they get an immeasurable amount of God points. This grant only becomes exploitative if the church takes advantage of the grantor by demanding too much or using the grantor’s faith (or guilt) to get something for nothing. Boulding explains that these types of relationships exist everywhere (military, university, household). It is the nature of the institution that helps one understand whether the grants are exploitative or not. Even Boulding admits that the concept of grants is complex. It is worth our effort to understand it, however, because:

Qualitatively, the grants economy represents the heart of political economy, because it is precisely at the heart of the one-way transfers that the political system intervenes in the economic system. Qualitatively, a grant dollar tends to exert higher leverage on the economy than an exchange dollar, thus positioning the grants economy to act as a regulator of the exchange economy. [ . . . ] The domain of grants economy performs such integrative functions as income redistribution, system maintenance, economic growth, technological advancement, and so on (Boulding, Pfaff, and Horvath, 1972, p. 21).

The advancement of technology is particularly interesting. Many people laud the “market” (exchange economy) for technological advancements such as the Internet; but it is usually the grants economy (e.g., government, military, foundation grants to academics) that allows for the creation of these technologies. Of course, the exchange economy helps make many of these advancements valuable to the public. But it is the integration of these mechanisms that leads to a more accurate understanding of the entire economy.

Few grants, however, fall squarely into one category. A good example is taxation. On the one hand, it is a threat by the government that says “pay us this money or experience repercussions.” On the other hand, it is also integrative because people feel a responsibility to support the country (or state or city) where they live because they know that money goes toward socially valuable purposes such as education. Many grants fall into this gray area—an intermingling of different grant types. Boulding wrote “Taxation in Wartime: Some Implications for Friends” in 1942, which discusses concerns (Quaker) Friends had with paying taxes that are used to fund war efforts. Boulding’s argument was that whereas it is true some tax revenue may be used to fund a war, it is not the entirety of its use. He further comments that it is the decisions of political leaders to determine how the government spends its money. Refusing to pay taxes will not stop war spending, it will merely create personal hardship (legal ramifications) and redirect limited funds for sources such as education to war efforts—thus creating worse conditions. So Boulding advocated for Friends to pay their taxes and instead seek change in political leaders so they become advocates for peace.

Urbanization is the primary reason Boulding provides for explaining the increasing size and impact of grants. Contrary to the popular belief that the market mechanism is the solution to all social problems, Boulding believed the grants economy was growing to pick up the slack created by the failings of the exchange economy. For example, Medicaid in the United States (medical care for the poor) results from a lack of jobs with sufficient income and benefits to provide adequate health care as well as a healthcare insurance industry that is too restrictive. Food stamps are a grant that ensures people who cannot afford food can eat. Public housing assistance, Social Security, and Medicare are all examples of public grants that fill serious gaps in the exchange economy. Prior to urbanization, most people lived in agricultural communities and were able to subsist within a basic exchange economy with little need for grants except among household members and the local community (e.g., church and school). The same is not true in our modern industrialized economy. People who are disenfranchised from work because of macroeconomic changes, illness, or limited access to proper education are left reliant on grants to survive and get themselves on stable footing. The current mainstream argument is that these disenfranchised people are voluntarily not participating in the economy, are lazy, or simply lack the intellect to make proper personal enhancements to achieve their goals. Although some people might fit this characterization, a large majority of these people are merely a consequence of the modern economy. In an economy where there is one job for every six available applicants, it is guaranteed that five people will be unemployed. So, the grants serve to smooth the business cycle making it possible for people to overcome labor market fluctuations and maintain civility.

Boulding dismisses the idea that all grants are a function of the exchange system. For example, if there is no public education system then people will be taxed less and spend that money on a school system that is roughly equivalent. But it is not guaranteed that a credible education system will replace the previous one. This idea concerns public goods. An educated society benefits everyone, so a shared responsibility in educating fellow humans is good for all. This is an important concept because it speaks to many misconceptions among people today about the way society is organized. Most people are stuck in an exchangesystem mind-set, where everything has a price and its cost should fall on those who benefit directly from it.

A contemporary example of a grants economy phenomenon is that in the United States (and other countries) students are paying an increasing share of the cost for a college degree. Most students attend state universities; and, in the past, these students received good educations at negligible cost because states subsidized colleges and universities on the idea that giving access to a college degree for their residents at a reasonable cost is good for their economy and society. In the past three decades, however, states have significantly reduced their funding to universities, which has led to significant tuition fee increases. Because a college degree is now required for even basic jobs in most developed countries, many young people see a college degree as the only reasonable chance they have to attain a middle-class lifestyle. As such, many students are paying a larger portion of their college tuitions—a ssuming they can secure the funding needed to attend college. Interestingly, however, this change in states’ budgets is not entirely a result of falling revenue, but rather a change in priorities. Since 2005, California, which for many decades was the model for public higher education, has spent more on its prison system than on its higher education system (Folbre, 2010). The offset in spending on higher education almost equals the increase in prison expenditures, which suggests a shift in priorities among legislators. And California is not alone in its change in priorities from colleges to prisons. As Boulding states,

Because we are much less conscious of the nature and pathologies of the grants economy, the grants economy has had an unfair advantage in this dispute. It is only as we come to see the exchange economy and the grants economy as equal partners in the total social enterprise that we can properly determine the role that should be assigned to each (Boulding, 1973, p. 13).

Boulding writes further,

One of the odd things about the grants economy concept is that it seems to arouse great anxiety and hostility among many more traditional economists. I admit I am a little puzzled by this, as a grants economy seems to me a very natural and obvious extension of the existing frame of thought in economics and in the social sciences generally. Indeed, the whole concept seems so obvious that it is hard to believe that it has not been developed before (Boulding, 1973, p. 11).

Chicago or Bust

Boulding became president of the American Economic Association (AEA) in 1968 (the year after Milton Friedman—what a contrast!). Normally, the president of the AEA is an honorific title that requires little work as to the day-to-day operations of the organization. Since the president is only in place for one year, there is insufficient time to assess, develop, and enact major changes. Of course, there is always an exception, and, in 1968, Boulding was embroiled in one.

In August 1968, the 35th Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago. There was growing anxiety in the country about the Vietnam War, and the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, had mobilized the National Guard (with an order to “shoot to kill, if necessary”) and created a tense atmosphere. Police tried to corral the many antiwar protesters coming into Chicago to disrupt the convention, which led to many confrontations, tear gas, and beatings. The violence was evident throughout the week and shown on television for everyone to see. This left in the image of the public a sense of concern about the Democratic Party’s ability to govern effectively and create cooperation. In November, the Democrats lost to Richard Nixon (no wonder the 1968 Democratic convention sticks out in so many people’s minds).

Needless to say, many professional associations (sociologists, psychologists) were not going to meet in Chicago to show their displeasure at what happened at the convention. But the American Economic Association was supposed to meet in Chicago in December 1968. The AEA executive committee was split (5/5). This meant the decision fell entirely on Boulding. In his words,

I went to the AEA offices in Evanston, Illinois, and met with the people from the hotels that we had contracted to stay in, and then went and communed with my soul and decided that we should stay in Chicago. As a regular member of the Executive Committee, I would probably have voted the other way. To find that having power changes one’s views and decisions was something of a shock to me! (Boulding, 1989b, p. 381).

It is surprising that Boulding, the pacifist peace scholar would elect to keep the meeting in Chicago. I do not know what Boulding’s “soul” or “inner light” told him; but his practical side probably wrestled with the fact that breaking contracts is not easy and would create significant legal and administrative headaches. Plus, with such a short time to reorganize, a large number of people (several thousand people—some with travel plans already made) would have been an extreme challenge. He published two letters he sent to members of the American Economic Association in the American Economic Review in 1968.

Presidential Address

It may actually be possible to summarize Boulding’s cosmogenesis, up to this point, into one model and theoretical construct (see Boulding, 1969)—which is his AEA presidential address in December 1968. Boulding found that grants alone did not explain in a complete way the complexity of social organizations. Up to this time, Boulding had compartmentalized his thinking on grants and the integrative society with his work on conflict and defense. Eventually these ideas became conflated into a more elaborate theory of human society. A chief criticism of Boulding’s at the time was that the economics profession had divorced itself from concerns about human betterment—instead adopting a physical science methodology to unfeeling observers. For Boulding, “The concept of a value-free science is absurd” (Boulding, 1969, p. 4).

Although this thinking may work in a field such as physics, where studying cosmological phenomena has no effect on the makeup of the universe, it is quite different in economics. Economists are studying a social system—i.e., people. And empathy for other people is what ensures one is not a psychopath. Yet many economists approach their study of the economy emulating psychopaths. Some primary factors for psychopathy are: grandiose sense of self-worth, lack of empathy, and failure to accept responsibility for their own actions. Many economists study issues such as joblessness, poverty, and healthcare reform without considering the human implications. Political discussions typically revolve around the financial costs associated with social programs rather than the human effects. It is not possible to discuss reducing Social Security benefits without at the same time having a frank discussion about the impact those reductions will have on people. Boulding’s presidential address was a harkening back to the moral philosophers of Adam Smith (Boulding’s intellectual hero) and Thomas Malthus. Likewise, Boulding’s spaceship economy example highlights economists’ institutional anthropocentrism. People cannot be separated from the natural environment any more than they can be separated from the economy or any other social system.

Boulding’s AEA presidential address was his first step toward developing a version of his systems theory of society that was sellable to economists. Boulding wanted economists to incorporate other social sciences into their discipline to gain the broader perspective that he believed was necessary to both understand the economy and develop solutions to pressing problems—such as war. His view was that you cannot study one facet of the economy without taking the entire economic (eco-) system into consideration. This was Boulding’s general systems philosophy that promoted a supermacro view of how the economy fits within the larger society.

Boulding begins his presentation by arguing that moral (or ethical) concerns are hierarchical in nature:

Let me first explain, then, what I mean by moral and moral science. A moral or ethical proposition, is a statement about a rank order of preference among alternatives, which is intended to apply to more than one person. A preference which applies to one person only is a taste. Statements of this kind are often called “value judgments.” If someone says, “I prefer A to B,” this is a personal value judgment, or a taste. If he says, “A is better than B,” there is an implication that he expects other people to prefer A to B also, as well as himself. A moral proposition then is a “common value” (Boulding, 1969, p. 1).

The neoclassical view that taste is determined on an individual basis is nonsensical to Boulding. He states:

[P]ersonal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed (Boulding, 1969, p. 1).

Boulding links the concept of tastes (or hierarchical ordered preferences) to cultural acceptance. More specifically, tastes are always culturally driven, which generates the taste development that supports the existing culture—thus legitimizing the taste. The idea that tastes exist separate from culture is incorrect, in Boulding’s opinion. Instead, one must study a culture to understand the order of taste preferences. This may, at first glance, seem like a minor point, but at the time this was against the mainstream grain that was moving toward greater specifications that relied on rational agents and free markets. The idea that culture was a driving force (cf., John Dewey or Thorstein Veblen) makes individuals beholden to the culture within which they live (or were raised and born into). As the biologist Richard Dawkins makes clear in his writings, if one were born in India one would likely be Hindi; Japan, Buddhist; Israel, Jewish; Pakistan, Muslim. If culture determines your faith then why not your tastes?

Worse than the idea that tastes are individually determined is what Boulding called the “Immaculate Conception of the Indifference Curve,” where tastes are given and therefore the nature and evolution of their development is unknown. Boulding further elaborates:

I am prepared indeed to go much further and to say that no science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations [ . . . ] The propositions of science are no more immaculately conceived than the preferences of individuals. Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture, as we have seen, is a group of people defined by the acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication among them (Boulding, 1969, p. 2).

The dynamic process Boulding describes is important because it states that scientists (and social scientists) are not unfeeling observers of the world trying to make sense of things. But rather that “as science develops, it no longer merely investigates the world; it creates the world which it is investigating” (p. 3). This line of reasoning then suggests that the underlying subcultural ethic will, in part, affect the world that scientists (or social scientists) are studying. Turning to economics, which

specializes in the study of that part of the total social system which is organized through exchange and which deals with exchangeables. This to my mind is a better definition of economics than those which define it as relating to scarcity or allocation, for the allocation of scarce resources is a universal problem [ . . . ] I have elsewhere distinguished three groups of social organizers which I have called the threat system, the exchange system, and the integrative system. Economics clearly occupies the middle one of these three. It edges over towards the integrative system insofar as it has some jurisdiction over the study of the system of one-way transfers of exchangeables, which I have called the “grants economy” (Boulding, 1969, p. 4).

Boulding argues that economists wish to evaluate the effectiveness of society using a Paretian optimum. Boulding asserts, however, that “it rests on an extremely shaky foundation of ethical propositions” (Boulding, 1969, p. 5). Economists, with rare exception, do not consider malevolence and benevolence in their analyses. This lack of inclusion results from the exchange system that is the chief sphere of economics, and exchange can often occur without concern toward well-being.  Currently, Boulding’s logic is seeing some rejuvenation. Issues such as ethical investing (or socially responsible investing), fair-trade goods, etc., are all examples where an ethical concern for “fair” exchange smacks of benevolence. Boulding argues that it would not be hard to use the economists’ tools of trade (models, etc.) to account for varying degrees of benevolence and malevolence. He had been doing similar work since his year sojourn at Stanford in 1955–1956 when he wanted to better understand the nature of conflict and that there can be useful conflict and harmful conflict. This research spent considerable time breaking down the effects of intentions on outcomes such as war, cultural breakdown, and political strife. So Boulding was championing the idea that more economists should adapt their models likewise by considering how outcomes differ depending on the weights applied to measures of benevolence/malevolence.

Moving to a discussion of the heroic ethic, Boulding discusses the strengths and weaknesses of economic accounting. In a personal reflection he writes,

The “lore of nicely-calculated less or more,” of course, is economics. I used to think that high heaven rejected this because its resources were infinite and as theologically unsound for reasons which I cannot go into here, but also for a more fundamental reason. High heaven, at least as it exists and propagates itself in the minds of men, is nothing if not heroic. The power of religion in human history has arisen more than anything from its capacity to give identity to its practitioners and to inspire them with behavior which arises out of this perceived identity (Boulding, 1969, p. 10).

Economics, for Boulding, does not possess a heroic element. Instead the economist is a cold, calculating creature who observes, measures, and reports. It is easy to think of bankers, stock traders, and Federal Reserve chairs as fitting this characteristic of an economist. Economics can be better, such that it includes both rationality and heart. Boulding as a romantic (poet, painter, sculptor) no doubt felt conflicted between his rationality and his spirit. Of course, moving economics away from cold rationality toward a more humanomics is something still far from mainstream. Even with the financial crisis that started in 2008, too many economic-oriented people focused on the stability of institutions (banks, etc.) and were uninterested in the plight suffered by everyday people. How resources were allocated was a direct result of the cultural ethic Boulding illuminates in this address. It is not that the government lacks the resources to assist millions of families suffering from home foreclosures and job loss. Instead it is a decision (culturally driven) to direct money to banks and corporations. Is this a hierarchical value proposition with an ethical core? Absolutely. During the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, the financial executives considered responsible were investigated and many went to prison. During the more recent financial crisis, which dwarfs the savings and loan crisis, some corporate and financial leaders were committing fraud; and yet, none of these executives have been investigated nor jailed. In the current political culture it is more reasonable to let individuals suffer the consequences of bad policies than to let the markets clear out the insolvent banks and fraudulent companies. It is not that banks are too big to fail; it is that individuals are too small for them to care. The question is not who was at fault, because there is plenty of blame to go around. The question is who pays when the bill comes due for bad economic policies. The answer, as Boulding would likely state, is not value free.

Needless to say, Boulding received some criticism from the profession for his ideas. In defense he gave a presentation titled “The Network of Interdependence” a few months after his AEA address at the Public Choice Society (February 1970). For Boulding, economics fits too tightly into the sphere of exchange and would greatly benefit from venturing into the integrative sphere, where topics are more relevant because they consider the human effects of economic decisions. But breaking down the silo walls was difficult at a time when the profession was becoming more insulated requiring greater abstractions from reality. And in some ways this myopia persists today. The idea that austerity is necessary to minimize the size of government so it can grow in a more efficient way misses many points. Boulding’s argument suggests that it is necessary to evaluate models of economic performance using metrics that accurately capture the full human impact. Again, it is not a matter of scarce resources (which is always a given, everywhere), but rather an understanding of the total system.

It is the things that we haven’t thought of that lead to the hazards we do not see. This is why a purely technical education can be disastrous. It trains people only in thinking of things that have been thought of, and this will eventually lead to disaster. It is the engineers, I think, who invented Murphy’s law. Who indeed but an engineer could have formulated a principle so pregnant! (Boulding, 1974, p. 6).

Quaker Writings

Boulding continued to be a devout Quaker and activist during his time at the University of Colorado. He and Elise were regular attendees at Quaker meetings. His Quaker writings during the years 1966 to 1980 were less prolific than earlier (or later) in his life. Although he wrote several articles on Quakerism and peace studies, much of his thinking during this time was not dramatically different from his earlier work. Three articles, however, stand out as important expositions of his thinking while at the University of Colorado. The first is “The Mayer/Boulding Dialogue on Peace Research” (1967), which is an edited transcript of a discussion between Boulding and Milton Mayer (the progressive Jewish Quaker who wrote They Thought They Were Free [1955]) in 1966 at Pendle Hill. Mayer was more of a rapacious cynic, whereas Boulding was coolly rational and ethereal (a tough combination to pull off). So the resulting discussion was more probing than Boulding’s thoughts by themselves might reveal. The discussion captured Boulding’s thoughts on evolution and also his increasing application of knowledge growth to social reform.

Evolution is a learning process and learning is an evolutionary process. There are processes by which more and more complex and improbable structures are created. The key concept of science is information, not matter or energy; and information is the key to evolutionary theory. Information is the only thing which is not conserved, the way matter and energy are. When a teacher teaches a class, the class knows more at the end of it and the teacher knows more too (Boulding, 1967, p. 7).

Boulding argues that social systems are also subject to changes in evolutionary thinking, and that they are built on the values of society. Boulding again reiterates what he presented in The Image (1956) that values and behaviors are not genetic. People are not born with a human nature as much as their experiences (through the learning process) create behavior. He calls this process the development of social self-consciousness, which occurs in tandem with individual self-consciousness. Going back to some of Boulding’s earliest thinking of evolution he makes his thoughts more robust when stating:

[T]he evolutionary process is not arbitrary, but built very deeply into the whole structure of the universe. There is no stationary equilibrium at all. This is a universe in profound disequilibrium, in constant change, and at the present moment this part of the universe is in explosive change. You can argue that the rate of change is so great that we may not be able to ride it. But the only recipe for a little learning is a lot of learning (Boulding, 1967, p. 9).

Mayer counters by stating that knowledge has done little to promote peace in the world. He argues that we have more knowledge today than at any other time, yet it has done little to assuage war. Knowledge, essentially, can be used for good and bad purposes. To say more knowledge by itself leads to positive outcomes is naive and makes suppositions about how knowledge is used.

Boulding states that while not all knowledge moves us toward peace, ignorance is even less desirable than more knowledge. Where Mayer is focused on individual experience, Boulding is more interested in society at large. Individual knowledge is less important for promoting peace than knowledge growth among society and how that knowledge is evolving and expanding. It is the larger society that interests Boulding. More important, “and I am also, if I may say so, in favor of useless knowledge. Indeed, the pursuit of useless knowledge has been very important in human history, and the scientific revolution arises out of it” (Boulding, 1967, p. 17). He further argues that understanding the social system does not require understanding people on an individual basis. One must consider the whole social system to see the effects of knowledge on the world. Boulding gives the example of Prohibition, which seemed to some people a way to eliminate a social evil. But the outcomes of Prohibition were not what the people who promoted it anticipated, which is why if “we want to operate in social systems we have to understand them, and this means understanding something that is different from people, because a social system represents the interaction of people at an abstract level” (p. 18).

Mayer argues, as expected, that if social systems operate “on a different track” than individuals, then social systems contain moral imperatives in the same way as individuals. But what are these larger social moral imperatives? Boulding believes that people want essentially the same things—and that those things are generally right and proper. But the difference is in the ways people go about accomplishing those goals. Boulding uses Veblen’s term of instrumental values to make the point that these values can differ significantly across different societies—though the overarching goals are similar. Furthermore, “government is going to be sensitive in the long run to strong and well-founded intellectual criticism” (Boulding, 1967, p. 20). Mayer, however, states that government is composed of people and if it is people who can make these changes, why do they not occur naturally. Further, “there being no social organism, but only morally responsible persons, there are no social sciences, and the social revolution will be a moral revolution or it will not be at all” (p. 25).

Boulding sees the influence on government as a truly long-run process. By halts and jerks the system can move closer to peace (or progress). True change is slow and requires a social provisioning process that moves societies toward the potential for greater peace. The dynamism of the process is both its strength and its weakness. Change allows room for improvement but even if things get better they can always change, so it is not as much a goal for peace, per se, as a goal toward finding ways to achieve and maintain peace. This is an evolution in Boulding’s own thinking, where, earlier in his life, he asserted the dynamism associated with social systems, he now accepts the impermanence of any social change. Maintaining achieved social change is difficult and requires regular communication and adherence to values that are accepted across societies, which is somewhat tautological because societies need to share similar values to reach any sensible consensus. Consequently, he said “What I advocate on Vietnam is a humiliating defeat. I think this would be terribly good for us. Look what it did for Japan, look what it did for the Germans. It releases you” (Boulding, 1967, p. 25).

Boulding reverts to his lowest common denominator: that the combination of knowledge and love is the answer to what is ailing the world. The two are necessary, about which he exclaims, “Love without knowledge will destroy us” (p. 28). Mayer then adds his own twist that love alone is not the solution and that inward peace may not lead to world peace, but it is better than nothing. However, the “ends of man are moral, determined by will,” so Mayer asserts that it is decisions by people (intellectual decision making) that determines the ends. On Boulding’s concept of failure as enlightenment, Mayer writes presciently:

Let us assume then that at the conclusion of this project, Kenneth turns out to have been right, that the best thing that could happen to the United States of America is total defeat. I want to know now, what is to be done with the findings of this research project? Are they to be publicized? Is the Peace Research Center to publicize them? [ . . . ] What happens then to the Peace Research Center? I think that the project is a great project, but I think that the utilization or even the publication of that finding would be a moral choice and not an intellectual choice. And a moral choice that, if it were made one way, might mean the end of the Peace Research Center (Boulding, 1967, p. 29).

It is hard not to see Mayer’s arguments in a modern light as realistic. With today’s plutocracy in the United States and influence of corporations over political power (and will), we see government as beholden not to the people but to a select few people who pull the strings. Mayer and Noam Chomsky would have gotten along well with their ideas of morality as the focal point in discussions of policy and international relations. There is such great perversion of democracy in the United States that recent wars in the Middle East have left many people disillusioned by the political powers (and innocent civilians destroyed) and the needle of social values spinning in the wrong direction. Mayer and Boulding would certainly find themselves on the same side in current debates, though it is easy to see that Mayer’s viewpoint was the more forward-looking of the two, because even the most savage curmudgeon would never have envisioned the distortion of values that would follow several decades later.

Of Machines and Men

The second Quaker article written by Boulding at this time was “Machines, Men, and Religion” (1968b) published in Friends Journal. In this paper, Boulding discusses the mechanistic approach to studying social problems versus the animistic view. He argues that machines are things we can make that, while in some ways are complex, are very different from people. Where a machine has clear inputs and outputs, human beings process information differently. Once we move beyond individuals, however, to social systems there is reason to apply a more mechanistic interpretation. It is a very Keynesian view when one believes that on the macroeconomic level we can measure inputs and outputs and have an impact on the quality, size, and effects (certainly in measurable ways) of those inputs and outputs. Social organizations are the product of people and are directed by decision making as to how those organizations are structured and perform. But even these systems are far more complex than machines and require a different mind-set to understand their processes.

Animism is inherent in people and can be observed in religion—it leads to magical thinking. People expect their beliefs to have an influential force on the world. “The evidence, for instance, that rain dances produce rain is very meager” (Boulding, 1968b, p. 643). Although all religions have differing degrees of animism, it is not the sum of the system. Many people believe when one attacks the animism of religion that one destroys the religion. Boulding, however, argues that even after stripping out animism from religion there is something left—namely, philosophy. Religious philosophy is about human nature and how societies gel together in a way that can reflect the values of a culture. For Boulding, “[t]he fact is that religious language expresses an aspect of human life which it is very hard to express in any other way” (p. 644).

The implications of this kind of discussion go far. Nevertheless, I think I can plead for some kind of co-existence, for the principle that there may be many avenues to human knowledge. Mechanism, mysticism, perhaps even animism, and certainly religion will have to learn to live together more readily in the future than they have in the past (Boulding, 1968b, p. 644).

He goes on further to write that people are subject to the same mysteries. Human psychology is still largely unknown. It appears to Boulding that someone such as Shakespeare had a better understanding of people than scientists do today.

Evolution is not a machine. It is not a process by which known inputs produce known outputs according to known methods. It is a process that produces fantastic increases in orderliness by means of methods which seem entirely random. It is a process in which minute inputs produce enormous outputs, and enormous inputs often produce nothing at all. Therefore, the great weakness of mechanism as a dogma—applied either to biological evolution or to the history of human society, which is also an evolutionary process—is that it simply does not work (Boulding, 1968b, p. 644).

In addition:

There is a case for applying mechanism and especially for sophisticated mechanism, if we can, to those areas where a kind of animism still rules. It is significant that we print “Pray for Peace” on our envelopes and that we do not print “Pray for Full Employment.” In the last generation, employment policy has passed from animism into mechanism. Even in my student days, economic “blizzards” were treated with something very much like a rain dance (Boulding, 1968b, p. 644).

Truth

Boulding gave a lecture in 1970 at Swarthmore College titled “The Prospering of Truth” (1970b). In this lecture he tries to tease out whether truth does, in fact, prosper and how we know this for certain. He uses his concept of image to explain that people’s perception of the world (their images) influences what they believe, but, when faced with  contradictory information, images can change and move toward a more truthful understanding of the world. He argues that statistical correlation often leads to misunderstandings about cause and effect. He gives the example of when performing human sacrifice sometimes it did have the effect sought—but when it did not there was defense of the cultural norm to explain why it did not work (maybe the female was not actually a virgin, or the witch did not float because her dark magical powers were so great).

Even in current time we see correlations leading to bad insights. For example, in 2010, Harvard professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff wrote a paper titled “Growth in a Time of Debt” that showed statistically that countries with high government debt grew at a much slower pace than countries whose governments had lower debt. Essentially they showed that when government debt reached 90 percent of gross domestic product, economic growth goes from positive to negative. This study, therefore, supported government austerity measures (e.g., government spending cuts) to boost economic growth. Many politicians used this paper to justify austerity policies both in the United States and in many other countries in the world. However, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin at the University of Massachusetts published a rebuttal, titled “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff” (2013), where they found, after getting access to their original data and trying to replicate their results, that Reinhart and Rogoff made numerous errors in their calculations. “Reinhart and Rogoff kindly provided us with the working spreadsheet from the RR analysis. With the working spreadsheet, we were able to approximate closely the published RR results. While using RR’s working spreadsheet, we identified coding errors, selective exclusion of available data, and unconventional weighting of summary statistics” (Herndon, Ash, and Pollin, 2013, p. 261). Once these errors were corrected, Herndon et al. found that, contrary to Reinhart and Rogoff’s finding, countries with public debt-to-GDP ratios of above 90 percent did not experience a −0.1 percent reduction in economic growth, but instead a 2.2 percent increase.

Whether these errors were made intentionally or unintentionally speaks to Boulding’s point that statistical analysis is fraught with perceptional errors such that “it is not unknown, especially among social scientists, for even quite sophisticated investigators to fall into fallacies of correlation” (Boulding, 1970b, p. 9).

Boulding argues that the second impediment to the prospering of truth comes from the Seven Deadly Sins, of which the deadliest is pride. “It acts as a censor which prevents evidence which might be contrary to preconceived positions from reaching the attention of the individual” (Boulding, 1970b, p. 10). In regard to the Reinhart and Rogoff mistake, they too committed not only Boulding’s Type I error, but also Type II. Rather than state a mea culpa, they went on the defensive publishing an op-ed in The New York Times (2013) asserting that they did commit coding errors (hard to refute) but that the other allegations of data exclusion and unusual weighting were not legitimate. They defended their results and held on to their previously conceived beliefs. According to Boulding, “There are many examples of scientists who have exhibited a great deal of pride and have identified their own personalities and reputations with theories which they have defended for this reason and this reason alone” (Boulding, 1970b, p. 10). This behavior inhibits the prospering of truth.

Moving beyond people (or small groups) we see that social organizations (nations, religions, companies) grow from one person (or a group of people) into a larger structure. This structure can grow or shrink, but it is always in flux. Boulding questions whether the growth of a social organization is indicative of moving us closer to truth. Being a Christian, Boulding certainly sees the spread of Christianity throughout the world as a possible example of truth prospering. But he also explains his doubt that Mormon religion founder Joseph Smith received the Golden Plates in Palmyra, New York, but that the Mormon religion has prospered in America. Regardless of its shaky historical accuracy, Mormons are prospering as a subculture. From this perspective, it is the religion’s (or social organization’s) image of the future that most determines its success. Most religions are in an advantageous position because:

The great advantage of an ideology which lays great stress on life after death is that nobody ever comes back to disprove it, and while it cannot be proved, it cannot be disproved. It is the disproving, not the proving of an ideology which leads to its destruction. This is why secular and political ideologies are apt to be weak and temporary, for they make promises which are expected to be fulfilled in this world and even if the promises are for the grandchildren, if we wait long enough the grandchildren will turn up and demand that they be redeemed” (Boulding, 1970b, p. 18).

Boulding further applies his evolutionary logic to the legitimacy of religion in a way he had not previously.

Many people hold the faith which they do because their enemies do not. Thus the Poles are Catholics because the Russians are Orthodox. The Greeks are Orthodox because the Turks are Moslems. The Turks were Moslems because the Byzantines were Christians, and so it goes on. The success of one faith or another often depends on factors which are random to the secular world, though in transcendental systems they may quite properly be regarded as evidence of providence (Boulding, 1970b, p. 19).

Lastly, Boulding presents how the prospering of truth affects and is influenced by power. Boulding uses his tripartite structure of social systems (exchange, threat, and integrative) as a way to explain how power influences people (and vice versa). People with power who have images in their minds that are untrue can run things amok. So developing a truthful image of how nations, economies, or universities work is necessary to the development process.

In our images of social systems, however, people who believe in the social equivalent of a flat earth are constantly occupying positions of power, which is one reason why social systems, and especially the international system, work as badly as they do. It is easier to go to the moon than it is to achieve peace or social justice or to abolish poverty and crime (Boulding, 1970b, p. 29).

At this point we see that Boulding has become (perhaps always was) an evolutionary institutional economist. Boulding many times wrote that John Commons, one of the fathers of institutional economics, was one of the greatest American economists. In this article, Boulding makes it clear that:

The cumulative growth of human knowledge, the persistent drive towards changes in values, the great learning process that goes on from generation to generation, the experiences of revelation all produce and fulfil evolutionary potential. [ . . . ] Human history is a record of the fulfillment of the evolutionary potential of the human nervous system. As such, it has its ups and downs, but knowledge once gained is very hard to lose (Boulding, 1970b, p. 31).

The Artist

Boulding published his second book of poetry Sonnets from the Interior Life and Other Autobiographical Verse (1975a). This book contains selected sonnets and other verse Boulding wrote from 1930 to 1974. Many of these writings are religious in nature and all are personal. He states in the introduction that these works were never written with the intention of publishing them, but rather for personal reflection. Boulding was regularly writing poetry. He has many unpublished poems in his archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder—far greater in number than those published. He also had many paintings included in his archives that give visual insight into his perspective on the world.

Sonnet at 3 a.m.

Imagined or unimagined, most improbable sound,

Shall I address Whom with archaic Thou,

Flat That, or cheeryble You? Suckingdown slough Of language, where is there holy’d ground!

I am no longer boy, I have been around,

You cannot fool me with any sacred cow;

If there’s a swamp, drain it, harrow and plow, Raise crops and stock, no one can then be drowned.

But Isink even on this solid land For all the ground of being is a sea!

O pitter patter Peter pity me.

I’ll walk on water too, invisible Hand,

For there is that beyond pleasure or pain

To which I never yet have cried in vain (Boulding 1975a,

p. 145).

Sonnet for Death

Now, on his padding feet, Death comes to steal

My old friends one by one. The rough wind lashes The wise, familiar scene, and cruelly dashes The landmarks down until my senses reel.

Death, I am mindful, serves the general weal— But oh, it is the noblest tree that crashes

When its time comes, and how its fall makes gashes In the green forest tent, most hard to heal!

Then will the forest thrive—or must it perish, Tree by old tree in each successive gale? Only new seeds, new growth, can spell the tale; If new life outweighs death, the forest flourish.

So must I strive for increase, though I know

I too must fall, to let the forest grow (Boulding, 1975a, p. 161).

The Professor

Up to this point, the focus has primarily been on Boulding’s academic output. It does, however, produce an incomplete picture of his professional life. Although Boulding was a Quaker, poet, and artist besides an economist, it is fair to say that he especially loved teaching. He regularly admitted that he was addicted to teaching. Reading through his student evaluations, course materials, and syllabi, one gets a sense that Boulding practiced what he preached. Some professors may write on particular subjects of interest to them and not, in any meaningful way, share this knowledge with students, but Boulding was quite the opposite. Contrary to some popular myths that active researchers are not necessarily engaged teachers, Boulding was certainly an educator and a mentor to his students. Boulding’s courses, similar to his writing, were varied and broad. He taught courses on the subjects he was writing about— conflict and defense, peace, institutional economics, and general systems theory. Even though some students said he seemed disorganized during lectures, many students commented on how his free-flowing style kept their attention and made the class dynamic. Throughout his career, Boulding held some classes at his home. He enjoyed having students at his home in a relaxed environment to talk about economics, peace, and life. Since his days at Fisk University, students were always welcome in his home. He particularly enjoyed holding class outside on nice days, which, when reading through his diaries, left me with a feeling that he was metaphorically lifting the ceiling of his consciousness to have a world of ideas opened—everything was fair game. One longtime University of Colorado employee told me that Boulding, a social person, always had students around him—that he never remembered a time seeing him alone on campus. Boulding admitted that his courses served as an open discussion for ideas he was formulating. In-class discussions where students challenged his ideas and pointed out errors in thinking were beneficial to his work.

While in Colorado, Boulding developed his institutional economic thinking; he actually taught institutional economics at the University of Colorado. From his Spring 1978 syllabus, the reading list included: Thorstein Veblen, Wesley Mitchell, John Clark, and John Commons. Ironically, in Boulding’s book The Image (1956), he claims that Veblen “was not, I think, a great social scientist” (p. 9); and yet sometime during his years at the University of Colorado his opinion changed because he relied on Veblen’s writings for much of his course on institutional economics. And, in fact, many of the questions he organized for the class revolved around Veblen’s work in a positive way. Not to mention the fact that much of Boulding’s writing during this time (1970s) and beyond drew heavily from Veblen’s writings on social structures. Boulding’s evolutionary thinking begins from a proposition that people construct institutions that in turn affect society. It is decision making within institutions that enacts change, which is precisely in-line with institutional economics.

Yet Boulding’s book Evolutionary Economics (1981a) did not pay much tribute to institutional economists (he never even uses the term institutional economics anywhere in the book). This book delved into evolution as a systems approach to economics. He harks back to his earlier thinking on ecology to explain dynamic changes in society.

Manifesto

Ecodynamics (1978a) is Boulding’s “manifesto of the universe” (Boulding, 1992b, p. 81). This book represents the culmination of much of his work during his years at the University of Colorado. In a broad sense, Ecodynamics makes associations between his three systems of evolution: physical, biological, and social. These systems are not independent from one another. In fact, the physical system is prerequisite of the biological system, which is prerequisite of the social system. Each lower level is necessary for the higher-level systems to emerge. Physical evolution starts with the beginning of time and the creation of stars, planets, and so forth. It also includes more experiential evolution such as the Ice Age, earthquakes, and meteors. Biological evolution occurs once life began with the simplest single-celled organisms to the most complex—and how these bodies are changing over time as a result of environmental and social–environmental flux. Beyond the social system (sociosphere) is the noosphere.

The noosphere, [ . . . ] of which the integrative system is a vitally important part, is not shut up in the 4 billion individual skulls that constitute, as it were, the cells of the system, or even in the 77 or so billion human skulls that have ever been made. It is the great network of interaction and communications among these individual minds that largely determines the content of each (Boulding, 1978a, p. 199).

Boulding maps the dynamism of evolution through time, from the Big Bang to present time, by focusing especially on how evolution has occurred to bring us to the point where we are now. Mostly Boulding compares biological evolution to social evolution using the concept of ecology (study of populations) to capture the dynamism of selection and mutation (i.e., change) among groups of cells, which brings about evolutionary change. Society undergoes evolutionary changes as well, since it too is a system made up of dynamic processes and emergent properties subject to selection and mutation—though more predictably.

Boulding wrote (1978a, p. 33), “My Oxford philosophy tutor, who had a curious habit of crawling under the table while giving his tutorials, commented in a high British voice coming from underneath the table on a paper I had given on evolution, ‘It is all very well to talk about evolution, Mr. Boulding, but what evolves, what evolves, what evolves?’ After forty years I have at least a glimmering of the answer. What evolves is something very much like knowledge.”

Boulding presents his tripartite social structure of the threat system, exchange system, and integrative system. As we now know, it is the integrative structure that most interests Boulding. And the integrative system, which is based not on threat or exchange but rather on legitimacy and benevolence, can create, mutate, or suspend culture in influential ways. More than anything, the integrative system is about knowledge (or know-how), which is a common theme in Boulding’s analysis of social evolution. Much of this development occurs in families, but it also occurs in organizations, in schools, and among peers. Unlike biological evolution, social evolution is entirely human driven. “The structures of the integrative system in the human mind, like all its structures, are almost entirely learned, subject to certain physiological limitations imposed partly by the genetic structure and partly by the accidents of growth” (Boulding, 1978a, p. 201). It is the decisions of people (both individual and collective) that create the future from what they perceive as all possible futures. Decisions made today can reverberate for many decades. This, for Boulding, is why human imagination is so important and should be harnessed to help conceive of futures that are better than anything in the past. It is the plasticity of our minds that allows for a vision of the future to be formulated, then decisions made to move in that direction. This is why learning is such an important component of Boulding’s thinking. He calls this evaluative change.

In social systems evaluative change takes on dimensions far beyond what it has in biological systems because of the extraordinary capacity of the human nervous system for imagining the future and evaluating complex structures. Human behavior [ . . . ] is profoundly affected by decisions, which in turn affect the dynamic course of the total system. Decisions involve constant evaluation and reevaluation of both past experiences and future projections (Boulding, 1978a, pp. 269–70).

Boulding goes on to argue that as a society we should diminish the role of threat power (social and otherwise). Exchange, however, is much more difficult to dispense with (though not impossible) because it plays a critical role in society. What is needed to lessen exchange power is greater reliance on integrative structures. But even in socialist countries it appears difficult to move very far from exchange power to greater integrative power. The trick in complex societies is to strike a balance between exchange and integrative, such that integrative structures add legitimacy and community to a society that utilizes exchange in a way that does not cause alienation among citizens. Again, this appears a difficult balance to achieve, but a recognition of the integrative structures helps acknowledge that the “market” cannot solve all social (and even economic) problems. Very few people really want to live in the nineteenth-century capitalism of Marx’s era.

With what one might be called the radical passion one must have sympathy. The passion to eliminate poverty, misery, hunger, malnutrition, and avoidable ill health, and to create a world in which every human being born has a reasonable opportunity to fulfill the genetic potential for health and learning, love and joy, grief and resignation, is a passion in tune with the potential of the human race. [ . . . ] It is the radical illusions, not the conservative coldness, that are the greatest enemies of the radical passion. If radical passion is to be fulfilled, if we are indeed to move into a world that is better than what we have now, the radical illusions must be discarded and a realistic appraisal of the dynamic effects of human action must become widespread (Boulding, 1978a, p. 356).

Retirement

In 1978, two important milestones changed the Boulding family. First, their youngest child, William, was married in Princeton, New Jersey. This meant that Kenneth and Elise were now free of all child-rearing responsibilities. That fall, Elise and Kenneth took visiting professor posts at Dartmouth College. Elise was asked to stay as chair of the Sociology Department, which she accepted. Kenneth, however, returned to Colorado since that is where he wanted to be—and he was not exactly welcomed by Dartmouth’s Economics Department. So, for the next six years, the Bouldings had a long-distance marriage. They saw each other at conferences and other odd times. In Boulding’s reply to one of Elise’s letters, where she indicated she thought he would stay with her at Dartmouth, he wrote:

[I]t never occurred to me that you really wanted me to do that, and after a gulp or two, I accepted our “commuter marriage” and I don’t regret it for a minute. I joke about how Dartmouth fell in love with you and didn’t fall in love with me, which I try to explain to people who may seem puzzled about the arrangement . . . [T]here was never the slightest indication they [the Economics Department] wanted me to teach there. You are enough of a feminist to know that a spouse needs to be much more than a house spouse, though there is nothing wrong with a dash of that (I always say the only time I am sure I am doing good is when I am clearing or washing dishes) (Morrison, 2005, p. 175).

Boulding’s academic career was shorter at Colorado than he hoped. The university had a mandatory retirement age of 70. As Boulding approached that age he fought hard against it. He had no intention of retiring quietly to his cabin in the woods. But, it was to no avail, the  policy remained and he officially retired in 1980. Vivian Wilson remarked about how upset Boulding was at the outcome and that he had a difficult time with it. She said it did not take long for him to realize his good fortune. He enjoyed teaching at other universities and traveling with greater freedom. He eventually came to see his forced retirement as a blessed happenstance.

6

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Boulding found freedom in his new role as emeritus professor starting in the middle of 1980. The final 13 years of his life were productive and he felt at home in Colorado (more so than any other place he had lived in the United States). He believed the 1980s was perhaps the most productive decade of his life (Boulding, 1992b, p. ix). This decade, however, was about more than simply increased production of output. The quality and depth of his work during this time may have been some of his best. Part of this late creative fervor was likely the result of being 70 years old and free from the confines of both university life and professional obligations. Having already served as president of the American Economic Association and only lacking a Nobel Prize for accomplishments in economics, Boulding was freer than at any other time to let his thoughts flow. Arguably, this freedom had been building since his time at the University of Michigan when he became a rogue economist writing on topics and in a style that were too broad for the mainstream to accept (or much acknowledge). But the tone of his books and articles during his last years were more forward-thinking than his earlier work. Whereas his textbook Economic Analysis (1941a) and other books such as Ecodynamics (1978a) and Conflict and Defense (1962) were compilations of his articles and espoused theories and models about how the world functioned at those times, these later works were more about the future: issues of human betterment, power, and moderation. Perhaps as we get older there is a tendency to focus either on the past or on the future. To focus on the future is imagining beyond one’s short life span.

Three favorite pieces stand out during Boulding’s final 13 years. First was his public letter to Ronald Reagan, where he resigned his membership of the Republican Party. It will no doubt surprise people who think of Boulding as a radical to find out he was a card-carrying member of the Grand Old Party most of his years in America. But, after reading all of Boulding’s work, it is not that surprising. It was also predictable that the supply-side economics ushered in by Ronald Reagan went against much

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of the economic ideals that Boulding believed in—he was, after all, an ardent follower of Keynes. The second most interesting piece was his article “What Went Wrong with Economics?” (1986a) that highlights his concerns with mainstream theory and the limitations of empirical methods applied to economics. Much of what Boulding espouses about the problems with economics is still accurate today. It makes one wish Boulding had spent more time talking about what is wrong with economics. The last piece that summarizes Boulding’s final years is the book he compiled with his wife titled The Future (1995), and this book shows a different side of Boulding. A side that I think is a more accurate reflection of what he was always preaching. In many ways Boulding was always a futurist. His interest in staying off nuclear disaster was less for the present than for the future potential of the human race. Boulding saw his life as a blip in the evolutionary grandeur of life, which is interesting for such a deeply religious person. Rather than waiting around for Jesus to return, Boulding wanted people to carve a future that was intelligent, prosperous, and loving toward all people. It may be that this is the type of thinking found among truly devout people. Rather than mobilize a nation against what he felt was wrong, he made intellectual arguments that were logical and sensible. It is likely this lack of connection from his mind to real-world action left him feeling, as he stated several times, like “a voice crying in the wilderness” (Boulding, 1971a, p. viii).

Early 1980s

Elise’s years at Dartmouth away from her husband were important because she always felt in the shadow of her husband at the University of Colorado. After all, it was his acceptance of the job at Colorado that secured her position there. Faculty members in the Sociology Department were aware of this arrangement and were therefore generally unwelcoming. At Dartmouth she was her own person and established herself as a first-rate academic in her own right. But the distance, travel, and time away from her husband eventually weighed on her and she returned to Boulder in 1985 to continue her work in the community and be with her husband again.

Before Elise’s return to Boulder, she and Kenneth set up a community for retired scholars and peace activists. The community consisted of a building at 624 Pearl in Boulder that was split into condominiums. The community was known as the Friends for Independent Retirement (FIR). Elise looked forward to living in their condo with other like-minded retirees, but she had to convince Kenneth of the idea. He did not want to leave their home at 890 Willowbrook with its majestic views of the foothills of the Rockies. Kenneth even tried to convince Elise to sell their investment in FIR because he had become increasingly concerned with leaving their children some money and also over his retirement income. Elise remained resolute, and Kenneth wrote to her:

As Edward Hicks [a Quaker] says in his journal “when you have a determined woman it is very important that she be right,” and I sure hope you are right in spite of all my misgivings. And as I love my wife more than my house or anything in it, I’m prepared to make this sacrifice and condone this folly. And if it doesn’t work out as you expect I promise I will refrain from saying “I told you so.” And if it does work out [I’ll] admit it. You can’t ask for more than that (Morrison, 2005, p. 189).

The Bouldings were happy in their new retirement community; even Kenneth admitted later that the decision to move was the right one.

Technology Review

From 1974 to 1982, Boulding wrote 63 short articles in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s magazine Technology Review. These articles ranged in topics from economic growth to human betterment and politics. They provide insights into Boulding’s thinking during this transition period in his life from full-time professor to emeritus professor. During this time there was a noticeable maturity to his thinking. It is beyond the scope of this book to present all 63 articles, so instead the most original ones are discussed here. Many of his articles have roots in his earlier work, so important lines of connection will be drawn so that readers can follow-up on ideas raised in his Technology Review articles to his earlier, more in-depth work.

Large Systems

In Boulding’s “The Evaluation of Large Systems” (1975b), he discusses his views on Marxist economics. Boulding was never a fan of Marxist economics (see Chapter 3). He respected many of Marx’s economic ideas, but his overarching thrust for more centralized power went against Boulding’s inner desire for personal freedom and democracy. His concern in this article is primarily with people’s inability to accurately evaluate and understand large systems. For his analysis he uses the broad social systems of socialism versus capitalism (or centrally planned economies versus market economies). Boulding has regularly commented in his writings that both types of systems have strengths and weaknesses, but the potential for too much power in the hands of too few in a socialist system makes it less desirable than a capitalist system, which has greater resiliency and a higher rate of power turnover. Where Boulding goes further in this article is to discuss potential systems, thinking about what types of systems are possible and desirable. Typically the Marxist debate of capitalism versus socialism revolves around an ideal socialism versus an existing (real) capitalist system. In this type of argument it is difficult to make true comparisons because there is evidence of what is versus an ideology of what is possible. But the real problem for Boulding is that even concepts such as capitalism and socialism are not heterogeneous. He states correctly, “any argument which assumes that there is one thing called ‘capitalism’ and another called ‘socialism’ is patently ridiculous. There are many different kinds of capitalism and many different kinds of socialism and a good many systems which lie somewhere in between. Dichotomous evaluations, therefore, are doomed to failure simply because they attempt to evaluate something which does not really exist” (1975b, p. 12). And another serious problem is measurement. Saying large income inequality persists in capitalist systems may be true, but what level of inequality is harmful? It is possible that some inequality can, under certain conditions, be helpful (promote innovation and incentives for development). This is a hotly debated topic in economics and will remain so for many decades. But there may ultimately be an agreement because income and income effects are more easily measured than something more elusive such as power. Quantifying power in a meaningful, comparative way is difficult—let alone applying these varying measures to their economic effects. Essentially these efforts can be enlightening, but all too often the result is both sides retreating to their respective beliefs with little change. Large systems are difficult for human minds to grasp, and their complexities make overarching generalizations difficult (perhaps impossible) to verify or refute.

Vietnam

In “The High Price of Technology Misused” (1975c), Boulding starts with the current events of the fall of Saigon—comparing it to a Shakespearean tragedy. “It feels like the end of Hamlet. The agony is over, heroes and villains alike lie dead on the stage, and Fortinbras—a clod if ever there was one—takes over” (p. 5). He goes on to state that almost ten years ago he helped organize the first teach-in at the University of Michigan against America’s involvement in Vietnam. Boulding felt all along that the Vietnam War was an abuse of American power and war mongering mentality that disgusted him his entire life. But worse for Boulding than the general vagaries of war was the senselessness of that war. It was a “misguided” effort that had a foregone conclusion. In defense, he writes, “Indeed, socialism in the form of centrally-planned economies seems to me a gigantic fraud. It does not liberate the human spirit. It produces societies which are dull, tyrannical, uniform, and ultimately defenseless against the abuse of highly centralized power” (1975c, p. 5). Boulding restates his faith in the human ability to re-create reality and come to solutions to solve its main problems. Social evolution will continue resulting in “something better than either corrupt capitalism or tyrannical socialism. The search for something better is worth all our energies and commitment” (p. 5). Boulding then states a common theme, going back to A Reconstruction of Economics (1950), that failure is a good thing because we learn from it. We do not learn from success because it only serves to root a random occurrence into a rigid way of thinking; we lose the plasticity that failure creates, as it forces us to reevaluate and consider alternatives.

There is much to learn from the failure of the Vietnam War. For Boulding, it emphasizes that greater military, economic and technological strength is no guarantee of success. It is unwise to underestimate the impact of human dedication and persistence. Also, “no threat can be ultimately effective unless it is regarded as legitimate” (Boulding, 1975c, p. 5). Furthermore, “The dynamics of legitimacy dominates all other human systems. Although there are times when wealth and threat create legitimacy, more often they destroy it” (p. 5). More worrisome for Boulding, “In the last 25 years, the United States Department of Defense has absorbed close to 10 per cent of the GNP.; qualitatively it has caused a brain drain that has crippled us in many respects. Defense, then, has exacted an enormous cost morally, psychologically, and economically” (p. 5). Using his concept of image, Boulding calls for greater reflection and research into disarmament in an effort to transform our national image.

Nous

Knowledge is the driving force of evolutionary change in Boulding’s view. In “Know-How and the Price of Cheese” (1976a), he discusses the power of entropy in terms of potential as applied to society. Potential is realized most clearly in the transmission and growth of human knowledge (in Liverpudlian scouse—nous). It is the ability of people to communicate knowledge that produces outcomes and realizes one of many possible futures. He uses the price of cheese as an example of how our use of energy and various forms of resources have assimilated in such a way as to reduce the price of cheese below what would have been possible without the application of know-how to production. Even more important, know-how can combat social entropy by making innovation a driving force to push beyond the constraining limits of our environment.

Apotheosis

In “Economics for Good or Evil” (1976b) Boulding pays homage to his intellectual hero, Adam Smith, and weighs the good, bad, and indifference that economics has wrought in the world. He extols the many grand virtues of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and rightly so. Of course, as explained in Chapter 4, Smith was a moral philosopher and a member of the intellectual enlightenment. Boulding acknowledges Smith’s contribution to our understanding of government’s responsibility “to provide public good such as education; concern for separation of church and state, and freedom of religion; a distrust of empire, and even of corporations; and the sense that people minding their own business will inevitably be guided by an ‘invisible hand’ to serve the general good” (p. 5). But classical economics also helped generate impoverished conditions in England in the mid-nineteenth century. And it kept government constrained from doing its job to intervene when the invisible hand truly disappeared.

The suffering of the people in England in the nineteenth century gave rise to Karl Marx. In Boulding’s view, Marx did more harm than good. He saw the centrally planned economies as equally harmful to the betterment of people. Keynes’s economics, however, results in many benefits for society. Keynes’s policies after the Great Depression in the United States ushered in a time of economic strength with a good balance between government and market. Keynes created macroeconomics, which gave rise to economic accounting that made it possible to understand business cycles, widespread unemployment, aggregate demand shortages, and money. These ideas offered tremendous insight into how the modern economy functions and are still relevant today. While plenty of problems still persisted during this time, on the whole, things looked much better after Keynes’s than before him.

Problems remain, from persistent poverty (especially extreme poverty in many parts of the world) to military industrial power and ecological destruction. So even though economics has had some success, it also suffers indelibly from these bright failings and the inability to resolve them in a meaningful way.

I may suffer from delusions of grandeur, but oddly enough I believe I know what’s gone wrong. The source of our trouble is the concept of production as a process by which the three so-called “factors of production”—land, labor, and capital—enter as inputs to produce products as outputs. And I must lay this disastrous mistake squarely at the feet of my beloved Adam Smith (Boulding, 1976b, p. 5).

Boulding asserts that land, labor, and capital are too broad to be useful terms to explain production. Instead it is the know-how (knowledge), energy, and materials that result in output. The process of production always begins with know-how that organizes and directs the combination of necessary parts to result in output. He further argues that it is misguided to refer to land, labor, and capital as factors of production because these elements are too general to be used as true “factors” in the production of actual output. As he states, it is too similar to earth, air, fire, and water to yield many useful insights. Starting with knowledge and building an understanding of production might have gotten economics further.

Betting Man

Boulding was never much into sports. One of his favorite sayings was that whenever he got the compulsion to exercise he would lie down until it went away. Boulding’s youngest son, Bill, however, was a fan of sports. And Boulding wrote in “This Sporting Life” (1977a) about watching his son play basketball at one of his college games (apparently Bill was a good athlete). Not knowing much (if anything) about basketball, Boulding observed the game in a unique way, as a simulated society with all its competition and cooperation playing out in an operatic fashion. (After his father’s death, Bill gave a thoughtful eulogy, discussed more at the end of this chapter, where he stated that his father was once photographed during one of his little league baseball games and the local newspaper ran a story about it, which upset Bill for two reasons: First, he thought the kids playing baseball should have been a more interesting story than his father’s attendance; and second, it was the only sporting event Bill remembered his father attending during his youth.) Now, Boulding’s been dragged to his son’s basketball game by his wife and is interpreting the game as a ritual dialectic. He states, “It does not really matter who wins, but everybody has to pretend very hard that it does. If it ever really mattered who won, the game would disintegrate. One team would poison the beer of the other. Even if one team won all the time, the game would disintegrate” (p. 4). Boulding rightfully compares basketball to the political process, where there are two parties jockeying for control and pretending the outcome matters. If it actually did matter then the losing party would not accept the loss and the system would disintegrate via war or internal strife. Most interestingly, Boulding writes, “the odd thing about basketball is that it is peace: it is regulated conflict, justice imposed by impartial referees (we hope). The competition is real—somebody wins and somebody loses—but essen-

tially a ritual, so that gain and loss are bearable. The ball passes from one team to the other according to reasonably well defined rules, designed originally to create excitement without damage . . . If we can have stable basketball, we should have stable peace” (Boulding, 1977a, p. 5).

Edsel’s Law

Many institutions undergo regular assessment to assure proper functioning and accounting. In “Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth” (1977b) Boulding asks why philanthropies are exempt from criticism. Because philanthropic organizations are assumed morally just, they become separated from public inquiry into their nature and consequences. Boulding writes, “These organizations acquire virtue by mere giving, and inquiring into the effects of the disbursements seems almost impure” (Boulding, 1977b, p. 5). He further states that unlike the market that has clear feedback mechanisms, philanthropic organizations do not. He uses the example of Ford’s failed car the Edsel, which was an immediate flop and everyone knew it because of poor sales. But if a granting organization produces an equivalent “Edsel” it is unlikely that anyone would ever know it. So Boulding suggests organizing an Office of Philanthropic Assessment to investigate the outcomes of giving to attempt to measure the efficiency of gifts. He readily highlights that applying any metrics to philanthropy might be impossible, but that the efforts to do so will no doubt produce interesting insight.

For example, in today’s culture there are organizations such as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) that promote public policy initiatives, which to some people are highly effective and to others it might seem a harmful injustice to the legislative process. But without some accountability of the organizations efforts, it is hard to say to what degree their efforts are effective. An Office of Philanthropic Assessment would not gauge the moral or ethical influences of organizations, but rather their effectiveness. For another example, in 2009 the community activist group ACORN (Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now), which was at the time the largest community organizer helping low- to moderate-income people, was investigated for misuse of federal funds. Much of the debate focused on the investigations of two undercover reporters who uncovered questionable practices at the organization. Little evidence, however, was provided about all the positive feedback the organization had had over its many years in existence and instead focused on the wrongdoings presented by the reporters. It may be that ACORN was not behaving properly, but without oversight and an analysis of the organization’s good work (along with the bad deeds) it is difficult to withdraw funding from that organization without full information. But many states withdrew funding immediately and affected the survival of the organization—even though a later report by the United States Government Accountability Office (2010) found no misuse of federal funds, the damage was already done. It might be that a more timely report by an oversight organization could have staved off ACORN detractors (perhaps not), but it does suggest that Boulding’s idea still has merit today.

Taxing

In the article, “Taxes Can Be Fun” (1977c), Boulding returns to an old theme from his Quaker writings about the moral duty and lawfulness of paying taxes. In his Quaker writings, Boulding argued that, although many people disliked the idea of their tax dollars being spent on military, it was nonetheless people’s responsibility to pay their taxes and change how those taxes are allocated endogenously by voting for people with similar values and who will spend their money in ways they support. Although this seems idealistic, Boulding was realistic enough to argue that even if you did not pay your taxes it would not keep the government from spending on military. The government, after all, holds the keys to the printing press and can spend as much money as they want. Thinking about the Iraq War that started in 2003, the estimated cost to the government is over $2 trillion, yet no new taxes were levied to pay for this; it has simply shown up as a deficit on the government’s balance sheet—borrowed funds. So, even if people refused to pay their taxes, the government could still fund its wars (the same as it funded bank bailouts in 2008).

In this article, Boulding restates these claims that taxes for public services are worthwhile and benefit society. At this time, Boulding found that taxes were high (and rising), which delegitimizes the tax system. Taxes are, to Boulding’s thinking, part of the grants economy. Taxes are a one-way transfer from people to the government that gives people the right to live in the country lawfully. People do not get a direct benefit from taxes in any discernable way. It is precisely this feature of the tax system that upsets people because the causal relationship between taxation and public goods is unclear. Boulding’s solution to this is simple, and interesting, “[o]ur willingness to pay taxes would be enhanced if we could help to direct how the money is spent. I suggest, therefore, that with every income tax return there should be a distributional form itemizing the government budget and the proportion of our taxes that we wish to allot to each” (p. 4). Of course, Boulding admits that this would probably have little impact on how the government actually spends our tax dollars, because it still has the ultimate say in where money is allocated. But the annual feedback the government gets on citizens’ preferences might adjust government’s thinking on how it spends. And a wise government will listen to how its citizens want the government to spend. Plus, “it would certainly make paying taxes a lot more fun” (p. 4).

Fructal

Throughout his life, Boulding avoided labels. Robert Heilbroner once referred to him as a Libertarian Socialist, which is an apt description (Heilbroner, 1975). Boulding himself struggled with this when he wrote “To Cultivate Our Garden” (1978c), where he coined a term for himself, fructal. He did not consider himself a radical or a conservative, so his definition of fructal is derived from the word fruits—just as radical is derived from the word roots.

I am not a radical, therefore, because I think the fruits of radicalism are often tasteless and sour. No rutabaga ever produced a tasty orange. The reason: radicals tend to know what they do not want, but not what they do want. They are avoiders rather than approachers, weeders rather than planters. I can sympathize, since it is much easier to know what you disapprove than what you approve (Boulding, 1978c, p. 4).

Yet Boulding does not consider himself a conservative either. He believes in change, and that change for the better is possible (especially in an evolutionary sense).

Much tragedy arises from the illusion that good things can only come by relentless struggle. In fact, most good things come by plowing, planting, growing, making, and working—the endeavors that produce fruits. Let us all, radicals and conservatives, join together in the ranks of the fructalists (Boulding, 1978c, p. 4).

Moral High Road

In “Symbol, Substance, and the Moral Economy” (1978d), Boulding returns to an old theme about the morality inherent in economic decisions. “The moral economy is that segment of the world’s social system in which individuals’ decisions and actions are dominated by their image of the general good, even at some cost to their individual economic welfare. Cynics may argue that this constitutes a minor part of the social system and that most actions arise from an individual’s economic interest. I disagree” (Boulding, 1978d, p. 4). Boulding argues that many political arguments are moral arguments: Prohibition, environmental protection, and civil rights are all rooted in moral arguments. This is not to say that moral arguments have ideal outcomes. Prohibition, for example, may have seemed morally correct, but once put into action had unintended consequences that gave rise to greater immorality and weakening of the social fabric. Another problem with the moral economy is that people are driven by symbols and metaphors. People rarely sign up to fight in war because they like shooting strangers (or likewise being shot at by strangers), but rather out of a sense of nationalistic pride (Mom, apple pie, and freedom). Moral arguments along these lines can have negative consequences because they are not rooted in a sense of personal moral agreement, only a vague sense of believing an institution believes (and behaves) as you would like, which is not always (usually) the case. So, the moral economy is not always able to move society toward a better place. Studying the moral economy, however, does have merit because it allows for normative statements. It is not enough to simply ask if something is economically possible; one should also ask whether it is just and adheres to a belief system (or image) that matches society’s. Few people would want to live in a truly self-interested society, which might be the definition of chaos. Buddhists generally believe that it is important to earn your living from occupations that benefit society. Any occupations that deal in potentially harmful consequences are avoided. This same concept may be applied to Boulding’s moral economy. It may not be enough to “do no harm,” but rather to do what has the greatest social benefit.

A++

It was interesting to learn that grade inflation was a hot topic back in 1979. In Boulding’s, “A Grading Experience” (1979), he discusses the difficulties he experiences with grading even after forty years of experience. “Considering that grades are the only physical product of a teacher, surprisingly little thought has been given to them” (p. 8). Boulding struggled with what many professors (myself included) see as a sometimes ambiguous process of grading students fairly. “However course or fine the distinctions [between grading scales], the institution of grading rests securely in the fact that the main social function of formal education is certification rather than learning. The grading of students is not all that different from grading beef or eggs” (Boulding, 1979, p. 8). No doubt this is an appropriate description. It is always shocking to professors to talk with a student who got a good grade in their class and find out the student does not understand the deeper meaning of the material. Or to have a good student one semester who in later semesters is unable to recall the material they understood so well in an earlier course. This implies that grading is a function of how well a student can perform under certain conditions more than it shows what someone actually learns (or retains).

Then there is grade inflation, which is a topic of heated debate on campuses today. Interestingly, in 1979 (p. 8), Boulding wrote:

[I]t is true that a C has become a B, and a D has become a C. This is not confined to academic life, however. I recall a delightful grading system—I think for California olives—in which the lowest size is labelled “gigantic” and the highest size “super colossal.”

Boulding compares grade inflation to price inflation. And Boulding correctly states, “It is, however, a fundamental principle of economics that relative prices matter much more than absolute” (Boulding, 1979, p. 8). This is one reason some people argue that reporting a class average grade next to a student’s grade in a course gives someone better information about how that student actually performed relative to the other students in the class. Of course, grade inflation is different than price inflation because the ceiling on grades is fixed at an A. And there is a lack of flexibility in grading in many instances. Boulding writes about the student who, when given a four-question essay, spends considerable time on one question, answering it completely and creatively and has insufficient time to answer the other questions as thoughtfully, and yet this student will be downgraded for the effort. “[I]t is not surprising, therefore, that many of the greatest and most creative human beings flunk out of school” (Boulding, 1979, p. 83). A solution to the subjectivity of essay exams is the dreaded multiple-choice exam that is supposed to be more objective. Yet these types of exams do not reveal a student’s ability to express their thoughts in an organized, creative way.

In a similar view to my own, he laments:

Another problem with the objective examination is that it tends to divorce the testing process from the learning process, and this also is a catastrophe. We learn only by the recognition of failure and feedback from it, so that testing and learning should be intimately related. This is why I have always protested the institution of a final examination. Testing, it seems to me should always take place before the end of a course and be part of the learning process, and all examinations should be returned to and discussed with, the student (Boulding, 1979, p. 83).

Image and Technology

Boulding’s concept of image—as presented in the book by the same title in 1956—is present in most of his writing and thinking post-1956. In Boulding’s Technology Review article “An Evolutionary View of Technology Forecasting” (1980a), he uses his concept of image to explain his concern for our collective (or society’s) image of the future. The future is guided by our decisions, and those decisions are largely a result of how we view the future—i.e., what kinds of future are possible. For example, if you think you could never graduate from college, you probably will not because your image of the future does not hold that as a possibility. This is not to suggest a noetic model of society, where what we think becomes reality; rather, Boulding’s definition is much more helpful. Boulding simply argues that people (and institutions, groups, etc.) hold images in their minds, individually and collectively, to make decisions among various alternatives. If our vision is too narrow, then we may miss opportunities that were viable but were not considered. Going back to Boulding’s idea of normative economics, we need to think of all the best possible outcomes and hold an image of what makes sense. It is unlikely we can get everything we want, but if you have a goal of everything, and only get 75 percent, then you are probably better off than if you set your goals too low.

In this article, Boulding argues, “[i]mages of the future are formed by the projection of patterns that we perceive in the records of the past. Improving our view of the future then involves improving the records of the past” (Boulding, 1980a, p. 8). He then states that there are three different types of patterns. First are mechanical patterns such as movements of celestial bodies. They are predictable because they have stable patterns of behavior, in general. When records of the past are accurate and parameters are stable, Boulding finds mechanical patterns are mostly predictable. These types of systems, however, are not common. Boulding argues correctly that the desire for prediction can cloud our judgment. When rolling a die and recording what numbers it lands on, we can look at the frequency of numbers, but this will never help us predict accurately the outcome of the next roll. For Boulding, it is disconcerting that, in any finite series of random numbers, patterns can appear. And, as is well known, human beings have a tendency to see patterns (whether they are real or not). So this tendency makes it dangerous when looking at any large sets of numbers. “The search for mechanical patterns in random series can only lead to superstition, the perception of order where there is none” (Boulding, 1980a, p. 8). He explains correctly that moving to analyses that involve biological or social systems, mechanical patterns and predictions become less applicable—and perhaps we could argue, more dangerous.

The second type of pattern is episodic. Boulding uses biological life spans as an example where we have well-defined life spans for living creatures, in general (assuming no extinction-level events). “Depressions, wars, inflations have a certain episodic character, although the episodes are much less regular than with biological lifespans” (Boulding, 1980a, p. 8). The third pattern is evolution. “This is even less predictable than patterns of episodes, though it may contain these” (p. 9). Evolution involves changes in many different parameters at varying times (mutation process). And many of these changes are random (or seemingly so). Prediction might be possible, though the number of parameters that need to be specified is large.

Boulding then uses his concept of evolutionary change to discuss technological evolution. He argues that evolutionary prediction may be most easily done by looking at empty niches that need to be filled. He gives the example of whale oil needing a substitute, which, with the discovery of fossil fuel oil, filled that niche. He then suggests that fossil fuel exhaustion in the future will leave niches that must be filled by other sources (energy from solar, wind, waves) that will mature over time. But Boulding admits that prediction even in a well-defined evolutionary process as technology has a terrible track record. No one predicted the automobile and its eventual influence on many people’s lives (including their biophysical environment). Though this goes back to one of Boulding’s original points (made here and also in Ecodynamics [1978a]) that evolutionary changes are random. And once mutations occur, then rapid development may proceed (or not). For example, the Wright brothers developed the airplane in 1903, and in a little over six decades we sent people to walk on the moon. The speed and transformative effect of modern technology is amazing—and equally unpredictable.

On the Other Hand

Maybe my second favorite article of Boulding’s 63 articles in Technology Review is “Economics in Disarray” (1980b).

To celebrate the beginning of the 1980s, a number of economists were invited by Professor David Mermelstein to issue brief statements on the current economic situation, especially regarding inflation, to be published in the New York Times. Wassily Leontief, Martin Feldstein, Milton Friedman, John Kenneth Galbraith, Abba Lerner, and I were among those who responded. The various replies reflected, of course, the well-known economic prejudices of the different authors, but there was an overall lack of consensus (Boulding, 1980b, p. 6).

For Boulding, this lack of agreement is disconcerting because the discipline has so much more information than it had in 1929. With all the available data and analysis, economists should be reaching a more general understanding of economic issues. This expectation, however, is wrong. “But there are no circles of correspondence anymore—nothing like the wonderful series of letters that went on between Ricardo and Malthus, no real attempt to discuss the differences, no real meeting of the minds. We are all on separate trains going out on the spokes of a wheel to our respective suburbs and the center of town is vacant” (Boulding, 1980b, p. 6). Even at economic conferences, there is a lack of discussion about the differences between people’s ideas. And all too often groups with differing opinions organize sessions that only like-minded economists attend, so that a healthy cross-fertilization of ideas is not possible. “When observers see a group of economists exhibiting wide disagreement and obviously failing to communicate, this undermines the legitimacy not only of economics but of the whole intellectual enterprise. The way is then open for the plausible and charismatic persuader who is likely to make things worse rather than better” (Boulding, 1980b, p. 6). Boulding has no silver bullet for solving this problem other than encouraging economists to talk more frequently with one another as is done in many hard disciplines, such as physics, where healthy disagreement can produce both heat and light.

Finding consensus is both more simple and more complex than Boulding suggests. One problem is that, with the increasing mechanization of economics, people become entrenched in their models of how the system should work. This is one reason Boulding argues that mathematics has brought the illusion of rigor to economics; “I joke that this is rigor mortis!” (Mott, 1992, p. 368). What is needed is a greater understanding of where economics started and how it got to where it is today. Essentially what is needed is much more history of economic thought. Unfortunately few economics programs today teach history of economic thought. Few students graduating with economics degrees (this includes bachelors, masters and doctorates) have an understanding of the history of their discipline. Without an historical context, most arguments in economics are ideological rather than factual. After all, the financial crisis in 2008 has roots in the financial crisis that started in 1929—lack of financial regulations, willingness to overborrow (and overlend), and a herd behavior that made many people blind to the risks inherent in the system. It is not terribly surprising that less than a decade after the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from investment banks (put in place to control for the risky market behaviors that brought about the financial collapse starting in 1929), a major increase in risk taking made many of the megabanks too risk tolerant, which eventually led to their insolvency. And there are many other historical examples where economic policies have benefited a select few players and harmed overall economic performance. Yet, too much emphasis is placed on mechanics in economics and far too little on the historical narrative. Perhaps if all economists were exposed to the historical roots of their discipline, more fruitful discussions could prevail.

Dutch

“Defending Whom from What?” (1981b) includes Boulding’s letter to President Ronald Reagan, resigning his Republican membership. His letter reads:

Dear President Reagan:

Your courage and good humor in reacting to the recent tragic attempt on your life are an example to us all. The respect I have for you as a person makes it painful indeed to say what follows. Nevertheless, I am deeply concerned that your policies are leading both the United States and the human race to a catastrophe from which we may never recover. There is a grave danger that you have started us on the slippery slope toward nuclear war, and that under your administration the probability of such a war has substantially increased.

I believe also that your economic policies are likely to lead only to further inflation, erosion of productivity, and redistribution of income away from the poor and the needy. I must urge you to reconsider this course.

I have been a member of the Republican Party in my mature years, believing that it stood for true conservatism and a movement toward peace. I now see it as a party of dangerous and untried radicalism, destructive of evolutionary progress and leading us to eventual disaster. I have therefore resigned my membership in it (Boulding, 1981b, p. 6).

In his article, Boulding continues:

This letter was sent with great reluctance. I have always been afraid of crying “wolf,” but when the wolf is so large, so menacing, so close, and apparently so unperceived, the duty to abandon the cheerful posture becomes overwhelming. Indeed, there are two wolves in the woods. One, economic incompetence, is fairly small or maybe middle-sized. Mr. Reagan lives in a dream world regarding the economy. If he thinks he can reduce taxes, expand the military budget by over 25 percent, cut civilian budgets sufficiently to offset this, stop inflation, and not create unemployment, he wants too many incompatible things.

The war industry is a cancer. It has contributed to our lack of increased productivity and our growing incompetence as a society. The theory that productivity can be increased through redistribution of income to the rich has very skimpy evidence to support it. Rather, productivity can be increased, as in agriculture, by diminishing the uncertainties of productive people. Uncertainty, more than any other factor, limits investment and discourages the risk taking necessary for economic advance (Boulding, 1981b, p. 6).

Boulding then asserts his pacifism by lamenting the value of the military industry and that it no longer serves as a force for defense, but instead as a weapon for exerting authority and control. In this capacity, he believes it loses its legitimacy and will eventually dissolve. Beating an old drum, he makes the call for stable peace. The better gamble is to work toward peace, not by pointing bigger missiles at each other, but rather through unilateral policies that take one step toward establishing peace. This is not a task easily achieved; however, the United States and Canada have maintained friendly relations since their existence, so large nations can “get along” without fighting. As he consistently cries out, we need an image of the future that projects peace. Then it is a matter of getting smart people together to find pathways toward that goal and constantly managing peace if ever we get there. This may be naive, or it may actually be the only way toward world peace without annihilation serving as the precursor.

Pelican Party

A few weeks ago I went down to the county courthouse and, with some trepidation, became a member of the Democratic Party, having recently resigned my Republican membership. I felt this was my duty, in spite of having a highly nonpolitical stomach. [ . . . ] My sense of duty arises from the feeling that some alternatives must be found for the present administration and mood of the Republican Party, which seem to be heading toward a variety of cliffs (Boulding, 1982a, p. 8).

This paraphrases the introductory paragraph of “A New Face for the Democratic Party” (1982a), an article that finds Boulding groping for an understanding of his political affiliation. He does not, however, fully embrace his new party because he does not yet fully understand what it will represent in the future. He sees it as a party that has not adequately evolved to challenge the new Republicans. In his attempt to move the party forward, he suggests they abscond the donkey as the party symbol, because it is too “down-to-earth” and unwilling to change, in favor of the pelican. This is an animal with a more long-run perspective, his beak can hold a week’s worth of food. Also, the pelican can carry so much food in its beak that it cannot fly—a problem the Democrats must also avoid. Boulding does not try to expand on how he thinks the Democrats should emerge from their fifty-year slump, only that they need answers to the Republican’s policies that put the long-run stability of the economy at risk. And that the Democrats must have ideas that are long-lasting and nourishing.

Government for All

The last of Boulding’s Technology Review articles discussed is “The Role of Government in a Free Society” (1982b). During Reagan’s first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, he set the stage for Boulding’s paper when he said roughly six minutes into his address that: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” As a Keynesian, Boulding did not see government as strictly good or bad. The government serves a function, which it sometimes did well and other times not so well. He was deeply concerned, however, with the Reagan administration’s antigovernment positions. Though he did believe that the government had powers that went far in excess of what the Constitution allows. And Americans generally feel that the government has a tendency to overstep its bounds and infringe on people’s personal freedoms. Little did Boulding know that the United States would become increasingly powerful: for example, the recent cases of the National Security Agency (NSA) tracking people unlawfully, Guantanamo Bay Prison holding people without being charged for crimes or given legal counsel, or the Patriot Act of 2001 expanding the power of government in such ways that the impact on freedoms is unimaginable.

On the other hand, Boulding argues that the amount of government expenditures and federal employment have not increased dramatically since the 1950s. Worse, Boulding noted a trend that the federal government was pushing onto states and local governments responsibilities traditionally handled at the federal level. And many of these functions can be achieved more efficiently at a federal level. The big question for Boulding is not government versus no government, but what role should the government play. Boulding argues along the classical lines of public goods and private bads. Government is at its best when it provides necessary services that the private sector is unlikely to fulfill—for example, streets, roads, parks. Boulding writes, “[h]ardly anyone would advocate turning all streets and roads into private property to be paid for through turnpikes” (Boulding, 1982b, p. 6). Today, of course, there are many ardent politicians who argue just that. Government is also able to minimize private bads, such as crime and pollution. These are negative externalities that do not affect the afflicting parties but have a cost to society. Creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 was a response to the increasing negative externalities affecting the environment. Only government has the power to create rules and hold large corporations responsible for their pollution. If the EPA were a private entity, it is not difficult to imagine it taking on a similar role as Moody’s or the S&P in the early 2000s, rating subprime loans as AAA in order to survive.

For Boulding, it is not a question of less government, but better government. He argues that the call for less government (or no government) is really an attempt to solve many of society’s problems by blindly attacking perceived symptoms rather than the real disease. Without a clear understanding of the problems and mechanisms at work, it is not possible to say definitively whether government is good or bad. What he calls for is a constant evaluation of government’s functions. Rightly he shows concern that legislators by their nature produce ever more legislation that bogs down the system with too many rules and regulations. Without an accounting for the effects of those regulations, it is not possible to state whether we are getting better, worse, or staying the same. A better system of accounting for the costs and benefits of legislation (taxation, etc.) will provide answers over time about what government’s efficiencies and inefficiencies are. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is one organization designed to do exactly what Boulding recommended. Though what he really wants is many more GAOs to examine all functions of government. Having an oversight office measuring government actions seems a sensible strategy for understanding how much government is too much government.

The World as a Total System

Boulding’s evolutionary systems thinking started with, in earnest, A Primer on Social Dynamics (1970a) that he expanded into Ecodynamics (1978a), which served as the core of his thoughts on Evolutionary Economics (1981a) and eventually The World as a Total System (1985). These four books comprise a quartet of Boulding’s thinking on evolution and, therefore, share many common themes. This book is the result, in Boulding’s words, of “a series of seminars which I gave at the United Nations University in Tokyo in January and February 1984 on the theme that is the title of this volume. I expanded these five seminars, which were written only in outline form, into the present volume during April 1984 when I was a visiting professor at Mesa College in Grand Junction, Colorado, teaching a course in the subject of this volume” (Boulding, 1985, p. 7).

Boulding’s general systems theory adapted to an understanding of evolution. For him, knowledge is the driving force for evolutionary change (or mutation).

Learning is a process very similar to evolution. The human brain is a remarkably active structure, constantly producing patterns within it that are capable of being perceived in consciousness as images. We see this even in dreams. Indeed, the main product of the human brain might be described as structures that turn into fantasies or images within the mind. This process is much like mutation in evolution (Boulding, 1985, p. 10).

Boulding takes a step back, and, unlike in Ecodynamics (1978a), he is looking at general systems in current time by viewing the entire Earth as a whole. Then he looks at various large systems on Earth to understand their relationships to one another to form an understanding of systematic structures. These structures in static form, Boulding analogizes, are like maps, which give street names and general locations, but do not include every small detail (houses, trees, blades of grass). There are also dynamic structures that add the additional element of time. Given the right information it is possible to see how dynamic systems change over time and what their effects are on other systems, though observable in broad strokes. The goal is to understand the layers of systems from basic to complex. Boulding states there are three large systems at play in the universe, and they were developed in this order over time: physical, biological, and social. The physical system of Earth is the lowest common denominator for all systems that occur on its surface. It is the necessary precursor to all life. It is also the supportive mechanism that maintains life. “One thing that is clear about the physical system of the Earth is that it cannot be taken as a constant” (Boulding, 1985, p. 39). Earth is always changing and in major ways. The essences of these changes are sometimes difficult to see in short periods, but looking at Earth from a longer geological time frame, we see the formation of mountain ranges, canyons, and rivers.

Biological systems emerge from physical systems and as a result are dependent upon the physical system. About this, Boulding asks, “Just how important the physical system of the Earth is going to be in limiting human activity in the future is a large question that is going to be debated for a long time, one hopes” (Boulding, 1985, p. 44). He acknowledges that there are limitations to growth, but human ingenuity has a way of finding substitutes for nonrenewable resources. It is difficult to surmise how long this can go on and whether there, at some point, is a limit to our ingenuity. But on energy, Boulding is rather optimistic. He argues that although many sources of energy today are finite and will reach their exhaustion point eventually, substitutes abound. There is solar, wind, wave, geothermal, and many other sources of energy that can be harnessed, which have proven too expensive or not worth pursuing. And these are the energy sources we know exist. If ever a time comes when we can crack the code of fusion, then energy becomes a nonissue with regard to availability and negative externalities. This may be wishful thinking. However, there are many examples in history of when faced with challenges people used their creativity to find solutions. Unfortunately, it is the social problems that prove more difficult to solve.

Boulding reverts to an earlier theme when discussing people’s effect on the natural environment. He discusses the impact humans have had on soil erosion from artificial fertilizers and other chemicals. While energy may have close substitutes, there appears no substitute for rich soil. Likewise, oceans are undergoing mass pollution and overfishing. Oceans serve as a valuable source of food and employment in many parts of the world (perhaps all areas of the world are affected to some degree), and yet little is done to mitigate the negative effects that are being inflicted on Earth’s oceans. For example, mercury levels in many types of fish have risen dramatically from industrial pollution released into the atmosphere and absorbed by oceans, rivers, and lakes where fish live. There is also a buildup of plastics in oceans that result from trash being taken away along ocean currents and accumulating into a toxic sludge. He also mentions deforestation as a cause of concern. All of these environmental problems in total may be the greatest threat to the future of the human race. Boulding argued that these problems deserve more serious attention from governments than they were currently getting. Sadly, thirty years later they still are not receiving the attention they deserve. We know much more about ocean pollution, climate change, and geological disruptions than we have ever known before; yet there continues to be a distancing of people’s understanding that the physical system is the one on which all life depends.

Biological systems have unknown origins since our view of history is rather short (and short on specifics). We have much more information now than we ever have had about all life’s interconnected genetic code, but the source of this code is still a mystery. We have evidence of evolutionary progress in the biological system. Boulding argues that Darwin’s example of “survival of the fittest” (a phrase Darwin took from Herbert Spencer) is an oversimplification of what actually occurs in an evolutionary process. First, survival occurs sometimes as a means to simply survive. It is a species ability to adapt and change that make it more likely to survive. So, it is really survival by surviving. Second, external factors that have nothing to do with their “fitness,” such as ice ages and large meteors, can change the survivability of certain species. The dinosaurs were certainly fit and ruled the roost for a long time. But an external event eliminated most of them and made way for new species to come of age. (Of course, some animals that existed during the Mesozoic era are still around: lobsters, sharks, crocodiles, lizards.) Social Darwinism suffers the same weaknesses and exhibits even greater limitations.

Moving toward more modern biological entities we get to human beings, which have had a rather short timeline compared to lobsters.

Here Boulding uses the term noogenetic (first presented by Teilhard de Chardin) in Ecodynamics (1978a) to explain why humans are unique— the interacting sphere of all human knowledge as it spreads over Earth. It is our capacity for learning and knowledge that has produced an evolutionary anomaly because it has led to changes in the environment that are much faster and more dramatic than would have occurred without our presence. And this capacity continues to grow producing evergreater and faster change.

The human race represents for the rest of the biosphere, therefore, an evolutionary catastrophe, potentially even on a larger scale than some of the catastrophes of the past. We have already caused the extinction of large numbers of biological species and are likely, even in the course of population increase and economic development, to exterminate many more (Boulding, 1985, p. 67).

Even after hypothesizing about human’s destructive tendencies and the risk associated with the existence of so many nuclear weapons that a cataclysmic event is merely one short button push away from sending us to oblivion, Boulding holds out hope. The sociosphere with the noosphere below it and the biosphere below it, has an ingenuity, or awareness, that keeps our finger off the button. Whether the sociosphere has the foresight necessary to keep lesser-known destructive forces from consuming us over time is difficult to say. Different from the view held by Boulding, a more realistic fear is not the destruction of humans by one bomb but the death from a thousand cuts as the biosphere starts to deteriorate and too little is done to mitigate the damage. Arguably we already see this when looking at less-developed countries with crushing levels of poverty and little access to clean water and medical services.

Humans existed in largely nomadic cultures trying to find freshwater and a good climate. Once people were able to settle down, they formed tribes that developed into localized societies. “Civilization in the classical sense comes from a surplus of storable and transportable food” (Boulding, 1985, p. 74). With the advent of better transportation and trade, civilizations grew larger. Moving forward, Boulding argues it is not until the twentieth century that we can start (perhaps) thinking of society as a single social system. Using the Internet, one can get a top-down view of anywhere in the world.

As a result of the rise of science and its application to the production of human artifacts, we have now developed what might be called a world “superculture” from which it is very hard to escape. All airports are similar and seem to be differentiated only by the gift shops and some signs in the local language, and even in the gift shops most of the gifts seem to have been made in Hong Kong or Taiwan (Boulding, 1985, p. 75).

As evidence of this superculture, we find in most cities around the world a McDonalds or a Starbucks eventually. It is difficult to escape the sameness that is evident many places around the world. Once outside of cities, of course, a more local culture is often visible. Boulding argues that the two world wars brought about greater homogenization of Europe than would have happened without the wars. He states convincingly that universities are a “genetic structure of the superculture and are remarkably similar all over the world” (Boulding, 1985, p. 78). Few countries do not have a university, and they largely teach similar subjects in similar ways. “Universities have become much less parochial and more world-minded in my own lifetime. [ . . . ] The middle classes around the world are more diverse than the ‘jet set,’ more nationalistic, more prone to regard anything outside their own country as foreign and exotic, but still much more aware of world problems and of the world as a total system than they would have been 100 years ago” (pp. 78–79).

One of the great differences between the sociosphere and the biosphere is the much greater importance of decisions in social systems in determining the future. Decisions are not unknown in the biosphere—as, for instance, in sexual selection, where the females may choose one of a competing group of males to mate with. These choices, however, are usually simple, and human choices are very complex and often affected by random factors (Boulding, 1985, p. 82).

This concept of decision is critical in the sociosphere because of constant change and uncertainty. We do not know in advance whether the decisions we make will improve things or not. Even well thought out decisions can have unknown consequences, so regular evaluation of decisions must take place to ensure society is moving in the right direction. As Boulding has stated many times before, we only learn from failure. Failure is an important part of the learning process (of course, as he rightly said, we do not always learn the right things from failure). It is critical to the positive evolution of the sociosphere that we learn from past mistakes and apply that new knowledge to future problems.

Boulding uses his three-part system of society to summarize his view of the social system. With the threat, exchange, and integrative system we can better understand human institutions and relationships. The exchange system is the economy (part of the social system).

A description of the economy involves a description of the production, consumption, distribution, exchange, and stocks of all commodities, together with a description of the economically relevant behavior of all persons and organizations engaged in the economy, including the image of the economy and its future they possess. It should include all changes in the political, social, or physical environment that would be relevant, and so on. This is a system of such overwhelming magnitude and complexity that nobody could possibly envisage it in all its details (Boulding, 1985, p. 90).

Boulding states that in economics the measure used to evaluate is money. It is rather easy to develop comparisons of prices and apply measures of value for various goods. Then Boulding discusses the persistence of income inequality and how there is always a tendency for imbalances. The rich find it easier to spend less than their income and become richer, whereas the poor find it harder to live by their income and subsist and go into debt. There are external forces such as taxation and grants that move money from the rich to the poor, but Boulding asserts that this is only a temporary fix and the rich will eventually get their money back and the poor will fall behind. It may be that Boulding is right about this equilibrating process, and it is also sensible to assume that a certain level of inequality will always exist; but the idea that this has little effect is shortsighted. If the rich are taxed and the appropriations go to war (or something similar), then Boulding’s thesis is sound. If, however, the rich are taxed and the money is spent on public infrastructure and education, then the poor have a greater chance of equaling out. Not all poor people will get this advantage. The ones that do take advantage of it will have a greater chance of climbing out of poverty. This idea is Keynes’s “social investment.”

What Boulding is arguing with regard to inequality is distribution in a deeper sense. He states that it is knowledge applied to the world that creates opportunity for economic prosperity, both for individuals and society. Those that have this knowledge will get richer faster. This is evident in today’s world, where developed nations are outperforming less-developed nations simply because of technological know-how. Boulding used the Industrial Revolution as an example of how knowledge can boost development. Improvements in communication, science, and technology will shift wealth potential toward those with high-level skills and knowledge. Corporations are a rather new phenomenon, and the people who were able to construct them gained significant wealth (and still do today).

About this idea of economic performance, Boulding says, “[t]he gravest weakness, and perhaps ultimately the Achilles heel, of the market economies is unemployment and the tendency for falling into depressions” (1985, p. 102). Boulding credits Keynes with elucidating the ways unemployment occurs (particularly, persistent unemployment). When employers cannot justify the expenses of hiring more employees (or, alternatively, they see the savings in reducing their labor pool), even though there exists a supply of willing workers, unemployment persists (or gets worse) until firms start hiring again—especially when government does not take up the slack by increasing public sector employment (or worse, they reduce their labor pool, too). Lowering unemployment requires businesses to see the financial benefit in hiring more workers (difficult to do when the economy is not strong) or increasing public sector employment. Less effective options include increasing new small business creation or expanding unemployment benefits to keep people from looking for work—but these are likely short-run solutions for most people. Of course, for classical economists (and neoclassical economists) the primary way to lower high unemployment is to reduce wages to the point firms see the financial benefit of hiring. Keynes, however, explained that this does not necessarily work since a reduction in wages will reduce aggregate demand, which reduces profits, leading to higher unemployment and a reduced wage, and so on. For Keynes, the answer was that in times of economic uncertainty firms should be allowed to reduce their labor pool and tighten their belts, but government is in a unique position to increase spending by hiring more public sector employees (stabilizing aggregate demand) to absorb some (or most) of the private sector’s layoffs. Then when the economy gets stronger and the private sector starts hiring again, people can move back to the private sector. Without the counterbalancing effect of the public sector to reduce high unemployment to a reasonable level the economy runs the risk of stagnating and not rebounding quickly (or for many years).

Communication has played an integral role in the evolution of social systems. Communication has made the world much smaller and more integrated, and it happens in many ways. At its simplest it occurs on a cellular level. Certain traits are passed on (communicated) to future generations, and these tendencies persist and often change. Information, in a general sense, is our sharing of ideas that spreads across time and space. After all, the book you are reading is about a man who has been dead for over twenty years, yet his ideas are still being communicated. Such is the power of information and especially written information. In this sense, there has been no greater invention than the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the middle of the fifteenth century because this ushered in the widespread publication of newspapers and books. Printing gave the world information at a faster pace than ever before and people could read, discuss, and argue various viewpoints with similar information. Boulding credits the growth of communication with creating something close to a oneworld social system. Students are educated in various countries and carry that information back to their own countries, which precipitates the homogenization. The Internet today is playing a dominant role in communication—changing the way people interact and influence our social system in various ways. It is difficult to predict how the information age will change the social system, but there is no doubt that change is happening.

The most interesting concept in The World as a Total System is the evaluative system. “The process of evaluation is absolutely essential to the concept of choice. This is a concept that has been principally developed by economists, especially in the interpretation of what is called economic behavior” (Boulding, 1985, p. 157). Choice, for Boulding, is an understanding of all the images in one’s mind about possible futures or outcomes. The various images we have about the future are an agenda of choice that are constantly under review and evaluation. Looking at the past it is possible to see the evolutionary changes resulting from choices we have made. Priorities are lexicographically ordered, and our goal is to understand the potential outcomes of our choices. This is important because it implies that decisions are made as much from images in our minds as from reactions to what is happening now. Clearly current experiences can change our image of what is possible (and therefore our choices), but the decision process is more complex and contains not only our view of what is in front of us, but also what is behind us and what we “think” could happen in the future.

In human history evaluation and evaluative processes are supreme. The world ecosystem is increasingly dominated by human artifacts, and human artifacts are produced because somebody wants them, not because some biological gene insists on producing something, which is the case in the biosphere. The selective process now includes supply and demand, both of which are essentially valuational processes. In an exchange economy, if somebody produces some commodity that nobody wants and it will not sell, it will eventually disappear. [ . . . ] We talk about “values” as if these were permanent structures in the human mind, whereas what we are really talking about is a kaleidoscopic shifting pattern of constant valuations. [ . . . ] An important, but at the present time almost unanswerable, question at the outset is the extent to which these valuation processes are built into the structure of the organism as a result of biogenetic processes of the original genes, and the extent to which these processes are learned. It is clear, of course, that both the genetic structure that creates the biological underpinning of the brain and so provides the potential for learning and the learning processes that realize this potential are significant (Boulding, 1985, pp. 162–63).

In a rather grand way, Boulding questions whether evaluative systems are systemic and macro or isolated. And as the world adopts a greater superculture then macroevaluative systems take on a more significant role. Decisions made by powerful people and adopted by society will have a much farther-reaching impact on society than ever before. It is not enough (or even possible) to say whether potential outcomes are good or bad without having alternatives to replace them. So, in a subtle way, Boulding leans toward the idea that evaluative systems are noogenetic, which means valuations (e.g., violence) are learned traits passed from one generation (or culture) to another through the process of biogenetic tendencies to learn and adapt. This is an important distinction because it suggests that society has far greater control over its fate than many people assume. Herd behavior is the tendency for people to congeal and behave similarly, but it does not dictate what that behavior is. There is another force at play dictating what, where, and how the herd will move and behave. It is this force that Boulding attributes to the evaluative system. He argues correctly that economists largely ignore this factor. Economists believe there is one optimal outcome with welldefined goods and bads. But without deeper understanding of the evaluative system we cannot know prima facie what exactly is good and what is bad, and “there is reasonable hope that human valuations will change toward a survival pattern and that this will happen in the world as a total system” (Boulding, 1985, p. 175).

Human Betterment

It was stated earlier in this book that Boulding was a humanist. Deirdre McCloskey even suggested Boulding was really studying humanomics (2013). There is no doubt that when getting to the core of Boulding’s body of work we find an ultimate concern for people. His interest in economics was entirely driven by compassion for the human race. His edited volume The Economics of Human Betterment (1984a) details his commitment to studying the issue of how to make the world better for everyone. He argues in the foreword that, “[e]conomics should have a key role in this study. It is the discipline that concentrates most on human valuations, and on decision and choice. [ . . . ] Parts of the real world are indeed beyond economics, but economics is a good place to begin” (Boulding, 1984a, p. ix). He then defines betterment in the first chapter:

By betterment I mean a process through time in which in terms of some human valuations the state of a system later in time is evaluated as superior or ‘better’ than the same system earlier in time. [ . . . ] There is a certain prejudice in the scientific community, perhaps a hangover from logical positivism, against the study of human valuations by scholarly process. There seems to be no justification for this (Boulding, 1984b, p. 1).

This concept is directly linked to Boulding’s last chapter on evaluative systems discussed above from his book The World as a Total System (1985). This is also a theme in Boulding’s larger work about the need to understand the moral implications of our decisions. He acknowledges that each person may have one’s own set of valuations; but this large set of valuations has a “pattern, both as a structure at a given moment and as a process through time” (Boulding, 1984b, p. 4). The idea that economics is a value-free discipline is wrongheaded to Boulding. If anything, economists must start with values before inferring anything more about the economy.

Toward human betterment, Boulding defines three coordination processes that coordinate “the different valuations of different people in different groups” (Boulding, 1984b, p. 6). First is the exchange system that is dominated by economic relationships. In this system, it is clearer what people’s values are because their consumption patterns reveal preferences. But he notes that even the market gets things wrong sometimes.

So examining exchange alone will not reveal (or reconcile) differences among groups. Second is a legitimate threat system that encompasses the political processes and institutions that show values toward certain beliefs about how society should be governed and structured. In a democratic society this type of system can work well to reveal preferences toward issues such as military spending, social programs, and taxation. Certainly a great deal can be learned about a society by looking at how it decides to allocate its resources toward specific goals. Again, this is an imperfect measure of values because the power structure may be greatly influenced by a small number of influential people or organizations, which do not necessarily represent the values of society at large. The potential for change is always present, so even if society’s values differ from the ruling party’s, discrepancies can be revealed, which is itself a view of what people think.

The last coordination process is moral order. “Virtually every human being belongs to one or more subcultures—in the family, the church, the local community, the nation and even the world. A subculture is defined by a certain common set of value structures, often called an ‘ethos’” (Boulding, 1984b, p. 7). Smaller communities have stronger ethos, and as the horizon expands to a world ethos, it becomes weaker but still exists. Nations that do not adhere to the world ethos risk being ostracized. But there appears to be greater consensus among the coordinating processes when factors are large—concern for poverty, war, and famine will produce a more similar moral reaction than smaller factors. It is, therefore, possible to judge what the world system generally views as morally acceptable and reprehensible on a sliding scale.

On the whole I would argue that economics has contributed more than any other social science to the concept of human betterment. A different, very interesting, yet puzzling question is whether economics as an intellectual discipline has contributed to human betterment itself—that is, has it done more good than harm to the ongoing experience of the human race? (Boulding, 1984b, p. 11).

About this question Boulding is ambivalent. Channeling his intellectual hero, Adam Smith, he sees economics as a way to devise a system that can have an increased benefit for many people at reduced costs. His example of the division of labor shows that once properly organized, less labor input can produce far greater production. And this belief in technological advancement, when properly channeled, can produce tremendous benefits for society. Applying these ideas to issues of education and social investment show that Smith’s version of economics has human betterment in mind. Thomas Malthus, for all his negativity, showed great concern and that with a development of intellect and foresight the world could evolve into a more sustainable and pleasurable place. When it comes to Karl Marx, Boulding sees a mostly negative effect because Marx could only see violence and upheaval as a solution to society’s ills. While brilliant and influential, Marx does not, according to Boulding, help us move to someplace better (even if that was his ultimate goal). Keynes was a different story.

I shall never forget the feeling I had, even as an undergraduate at Oxford, on reading Keynes’s Treatise on Money; for the first time in my life the world of society and of human history began to make sense to me, which it had certainly never done in school. If we add John R. Commons and humanistic economics . . . , and the Fabians and Sir William Beveridge as the creators of what might be called ‘social capitalism,’ I find it hard not to see this as inspiring a real process in human betterment, in spite of its incompleteness and difficulties (Boulding, 1984b, pp. 12–13).

Boulding goes on to state that if economics is only about rational calculations about prices, net worths, and bottom lines, then economics is truly cold and unfeeling. “But we do not have to stop there. I think we have a right to point out that if we do not start with something like accounting and cost-benefit analysis, relative price structures and alternative costs, substitutabilities and all these other things that economists know about, we can go very far wrong indeed in our search for the general principles of human betterment” (p. 13). And he goes further to write, “Economics by itself certainly cannot save us, but I cannot help thinking that compared with much ideology of all kinds, economics is a substantial asset which we can justly criticize, but of which we should not be ashamed” (Boulding, 1984b, p. 14).

What Went Wrong with Economics

Boulding’s 1985 Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE) John R. Commons Award Lecture titled “What Went Wrong with Economics?” (1986a) is a testament to his insights and breadth. One reason it is worth studying is because so much of what he discusses is still relevant (and in some cases more relevant) almost thirty years later. The only glaring mistake is Boulding’s ever-present concern about nuclear annihilation. Not that this risk has disappeared, but it has reduced significantly in the past thirty years. What remains after discounting these fears is both erudite and classic Boulding. He starts with a general observation he has made for decades that economists place too much faith in the market, rather than acknowledging that anything can go wrong with any system at any time. This dogmatism has left many economists to neglect studying the interrelations between the market and government and between the threat system and exchange. Boulding suggests this may be the result of economics becoming too divorced from political science, which is a sensible conclusion.

Then Boulding covers the issue of development economics and its role in studying developing countries. Here he believes economics has done little to help fledgling countries stabilize and succeed. Here, again, he finds that too great a focus on free markets and antigovernment beliefs have caused considerable harm. Essentially, Boulding blames economists for being too simpleminded about how to help developing countries improve. They have not taken accurate account of the cultural and political differences among countries to develop working models that are sustainable. Not that Boulding argues against free markets as a source of economic empowerment; but to focus solely on the market as a mechanism for improvement is to ignore many of the intricacies that exist between countries. A more holistic approach is necessary.

Something Boulding rarely wrote about is the role financial markets play in the economy. Yet in this paper he takes inspiration from Hyman Minsky and states that the financial system is suffering from a dangerous social pathology. He uses Keynes’s “casino effect” phrase to explain the pathologies of organized markets. The Great Depression was a result of the casino market mentality and Boulding ponders that it, “hangs over the imagination of older people today . . . It was the Hiroshima of the market, and who knows whether it might not be repeated” (Boulding, 1986a, p. 75). Indeed, 2008 did in fact see the casino market unleash a torrent on the global economy unseen before. Of course, unlike the many regulations (e.g., Glass-Steagall) put in place during the Great Depression to push back on risk-taking financiers, we have yet to see similar actions taken in earnest.

For Boulding, economics is nuanced. Yet he finds that the debate between a normative versus a positive economics is becoming lost. He argues that Milton Friedman, who argued for a positive economics guided by prediction, is misplaced because to apply that logic assumes stable parameters. Economics, however, is dealing with parameters that are in constant change.

Uncertainty is economics, as Frank Knight pointed out so well, is not just a defect of human knowledge, but an inherent property of the system, as the development of information theory has made very clear. Any system involving information has irreducible and inherent unpredictability. This does not mean that it is totally unpredictable or random. It means that exact prediction is impossible. It is absurd to try to have an exact science in an inexact world (Boulding, 1986b, p. 78).

Furthermore, “[e]conomics has never hesitated to be normative. By normative we mean dealing with human valuations and making propositions about them” (p. 78). This thinking is essential to Boulding’s logic. He never was a positivist thinking the economy could be reduced to a set of equations. Although he thought mathematics had a useful purpose in economics for discovering complex identities, mathematics alone cannot capture the complexities of the economic system. “Equilibrium has become a kind of holy sacrament in economics and has seriously diverted attention from the real world of Heraclitean flux. This is not to say that equilibrium is not a useful construct, but it does not exist in the real world except in very tentative and temporary forms” (Boulding, 1986b, p. 80). Boulding argues that while Adam Smith developed the idea of equilibrium he also developed the evolutionary approach. Economics is not just concerned with exchange in society, but also with how society was provisioned. Boulding sees this as an ecological process. Whereas classical economists (especially the physiocrats) were focused on corn as critical to the production process, much of this thinking is lost on modern economics. “All commodities now are just x and y” (Boulding, 1986b, p. 81).

Related to this lost concept of provisioning is something Boulding wrote about in A Reconstruction of Economics (1950), the confusion between stocks and flows.

There is first the concept of the stock of economically significant objects, which today we would include human bodies and minds, and also consumer capital . . . It may also include economically significant objects which are not human artifacts . . . All these goods are subject to consumption in the literal sense of the word, of destruction . . . Because there is consumption, there has to be production in order to maintain the capital stock. The capital stock is a population of items, production is births into this population, consumption is deaths (Boulding, 1986b, p. 81).

Boulding argues that it is changes in the balance sheet that determine firm behavior; but instead many economists are wrongly focused on the income statement.

The overemphasis on flows (income) almost to the exclusion of stocks has done a great deal of real harm and led to an underestimation of the real importance of maintenance of stocks, and has seriously perverted our image of the dynamics of the system (Boulding, 1986b, p. 82).

What Boulding focuses on last as a great unsolved problem in economics is the macrodistribution problem. This is the income side of accounts that determines the distribution of total income among people. “I have argued, without much effect, for nearly 40 years that there are processes at work here which I have recently called the ‘K theory,’ as some of its main discussants have been Keynes in the Treatise on Money and his theory of the ‘widow’s curse,’ Kalecki, Kaldor, and Kenneth (Boulding), though others should be included . . . There is a great deal of evidence that the volume of net business investment and the degree to which the vagaries of the financial system induce the owners of capital to make household purchases have a profound effect on the proportion of national income going to profits” (Boulding, 1986b, p. 83). This theory is summarized by the adage attributed to Kalecki that capitalists get what they spend and workers spend what they get. Boulding sees the solution to this problem as critical to the survival of market economies. Without an understanding of the K-theory, Boulding fears centrally planned economies (with their own set of pathologies) may become popular.

Power

When most economists think about power and economics, they think of the work of John Kenneth Galbraith (e.g., The Anatomy of Power [1983]), and Boulding had great admiration for Galbraith’s work in this area. One of Boulding’s last books was The Three Faces of Power (1989a), which studies power regarding the social system. He used this book in much of his later teaching, and it is one of his best—perhaps because the concept of power fits so well with his general systems thinking. Power is a critical concept to understanding the many interdependencies that exist within a social system. It may be that Boulding was always interested in power (The Organizational Revolution [1953], Conflict and Defense [1962], and The Economy of Love and Fear [1973]). But he never quite frames his arguments around power as carefully as he does in The Three Faces of Power. While Boulding agrees with most of what Galbraith wrote about power, his primary contribution in this book is to focus on the dynamic aspects of the social system with regard to power—something he finds lacking in Galbraith’s analysis. In this book, Boulding seeks to understand the systematic structure of power that he finds lacking in all the other social sciences.

Boulding defines power as “to what extent, and how, can we get what we want” (Boulding 1989a, p. 10). He then defines three categories of power, which are his often used three-part system of society: threat power, economic power, and integrative power. Threat power is the power to destroy, economic power is the power to exchange, and integrative power is the power to create.

My major thesis in this book is that it is integrative power that is the most dominant and significant form of power, in the sense that neither threat power nor economic power can achieve very much in the absence of legitimacy, which is one of the more important aspects of integrative power. Without legitimacy, both threat and riches are “naked.” The great fallacy, especially of political thinking in regard to power, is to elevate threat power to the position of dominance, which is does not really possess. Failure to understand this is an enormous source of error in human decisions, both at the individual level and at the level of those who control organizations (Boulding, 1989a, p. 10).

Boulding does an excellent job of dissecting the various types of power and how relationships change based on the type and degree of power that exists. He also shows how these relationships change over time since the system is in constant flux. What is really interesting is how he relates this to organizations. Today much research exists in psychology and other fields about the role power plays on productivity among workers. Essentially the early industrialists’ ideas about ruling with an iron fist (threat power) actually inhibit creativity and buy-in from employees. This has a negative impact on corporate culture. And the opposite approach, where employers give employees greater freedom and make decisions transparently, and in a way that gets feedback from employees, creates greater legitimacy of the power structure leading to higher productivity. Boulding applies this concept to education, corporations, and government to emphasize the influence that integrative power has on outcomes. His idea of shared motivation was quite forward thinking. Boulding was far ahead in this line of reasoning—and actually quite far ahead considering he had made these same arguments as far back as the 1960s.

It is not possible to present in all their intricacies the various aspects of power Boulding explores in The Three Faces of Power, but one element that deserves special attention is his focus on the future. Boulding’s consistent fear of nuclear destruction starts his discussion of five possible futures ranging from total annihilation to a more enlightened peaceful world. What is interesting are his two middle potential futures—the ones that seem the most likely. First is a world where little attention is paid to climate change and natural resources. In this future, the world continues moving forward, but in an unthinking way that leads to eventual environmental and social deterioration. It is difficult not to see this forecast playing out in current times—with so little emphasis on alternative energy or real attempts to combat climate change. In this future, economic power rules and old modes of thinking continue to dominate political decisions. Second is a better vision, where real attempts are made to mitigate climate change and focus on population growth and sustainable economic growth. Even this slightly improved future appears a dramatic shift from the financialization and austerity-promoting environment we currently see. But far greater potential exists for incremental change to the better than may have ever existed in the past. The nuclear threat is diminished considerably (though not entirely) and technology has developed in areas of energy and transportation that may hold off calamitous  climate change.

The question is how we move from Boulding’s first middle future to the more sustainable second middle option. The answer for Boulding is one where the greatest power will have the greatest impact. He argues that governments around the world must come to agreement on these issues and start moving in a synchronized way toward achieving desirable ends. It may be that only at the government level is it possible to create systemic change. And, more important, it is governments’ cooperation that will move the world in the right direction.

A widespread recognition of the complexity of the power relationship, particularly the great importance of integrative power, is a necessary step toward the development of a world that can make decisions—and good decisions—about world systems, and at the same time preserve a wide distribution of power among groups, nations, and individuals to deal with those problems that are essentially individual and local. The stick, the carrot, and the hug may all be necessary, but the greatest of these is the hug (Boulding, 1989a, p. 250).

Futurist Studies

Perhaps the most interesting book during Boulding’s later years was a collaborative work with his wife titled The Future (Boulding and Boulding, 1995). This book was actually written in the early 1970s, but they had trouble finding a publisher. The book is structured with five chapters (of previously published papers) by Kenneth Boulding followed by five chapters (also previously published papers) by Elise Boulding. It frames both Bouldings as futurists. Not that they are attempting to predict what will happen (in a more modern understanding of the term), but rather what should we want the future to be and look like. Since much of what Kenneth Boulding wrote in this book has been discussed elsewhere, it is only necessary to discuss the book’s essence; it has two important elements. First, it may be that Boulding, as labeled a futurist, is finally slotted in the right category. Throughout most of Boulding’s life he was focused on the future. His only interest in history was to glean some greater understanding of what lay ahead, and more important what possibly lay ahead. Boulding did not see one future, but many. He was never a doomsayer in a Malthusian sense. Instead, he was more of a driver of the type of future he envisioned. All of us have an image inside of our minds about what is possible. That image determines to a large degree not only what will happen, but also what is possible. Boulding did not want to tell people what to do, only to show them that their image(s) are shaped by many influences and that ultimately whatever shared vision gets adopted, for good or bad, it is the result of preconceived possibilities. Boulding wanted peace, freedom, and stability for all people—but he tells people how to define these realities for themselves.

Second, besides a futurist, Boulding is a moralist. As a lifelong Christian and long-time Quaker he believed in a moral order to life and society. Especially evident in this book is his concern for a loss of morality leading to a perverse society bent on enhancing all the vagaries of human compulsion: greed, envy, lust, and so forth. He is concerned that nationalism (in the form of vanity) will create false idols that people will worship. He sees education as at risk of succumbing to the morally stripped function of producing workers rather than whole people. This is disconcerting because for him education is the only antidote to human weaknesses and corruption. Society needs an education system that values morality and is willing to study problems in a thoughtful way. Without this subtle, yet powerful, component to education, it becomes colorless and lifeless: mere regurgitation of information and replication of skills. More is needed of our education system if we are to realize a future that seeks betterment for all human beings.

Elise Boulding’s chapters are no less interesting that Kenneth’s. After all, how can one not appreciate her when she quotes Che Guevara’s “The true revolutionary is guided by feelings of love” (Boulding and Boulding, 1995 p. 89). Where Kenneth Boulding’s focus on the future and peace were macro in scope (big, sweeping maps of social evolution), Elise’s perspective was micro. She said a primary difference between her and Kenneth was that she was pessimistic about the present but optimistic about the future, and he was the opposite. Her principal unit of focus was the family. She placed her faith in children, and believed it was they who hold the key to a peaceful future. She believed that peace starts in the home, and it is therefore the family unit that is essential to both teaching peace and practicing peace. Elise very much believed that one should think globally, but act locally.

The Bouldings taught a number of courses together at the University of Colorado and other universities around the country. They were partners in developing peace studies and blended Kenneth’s macro perspective with Elise’s micro perspective in a way that created linkages between individual behavior and societal behavior. They were both pacifist Quakers with the ultimate goal of achieving a balance that promoted (for Elise) better human relations and (for Kenneth) better national relations. These two perspectives work so well together because without individual commitment there can never be legitimacy for peace activities for society in general. One important perspective they both shared was that peace is an active process in a dynamic world. Only by focusing on peace continually and having that goal in mind (image) can it be achieved. They both lamented the idea that peace can be achieved with greater militarization. Peace can never be achieved when nations (or people) believe that having a bigger stick will give the power necessary to overcome differences. The idea that if every nation had nuclear weapons this would ensure peace (since everyone has equal power) was a terrifying thought to them because they believed in potentiality. The more weapons there are in the world (especially nuclear weapons) the greater the potential for their use. This may be applied to gun ownership, too. Looking at the countries with the greatest gun ownership we see the highest rates of gun violence. Countries with the lowest gun ownership (e.g., Japan) show the lowest gun violence. This seems logical, and yet many people argue that only by increasing gun ownership will violence be mitigated. But the evidence does not support this claim. So, instead, the Bouldings adamantly call for a reduction in arms and an increase in awareness toward achieving peace. Time and again we see violence in terms of war only leading to more war. The answer for them was that less war (ideally no war) will reduce our need to use violence to achieve peace. After all, it is not their comparative militaries that keeps the United States and Canada in perpetual peace, but rather an understanding that exists between the two nations that shows respect for each other’s borders and cultural identity. It is not that they do not have differences, it is their approach to dealing with these differences that promotes peace. The same should exist for all other nations.

Golden Anniversary

On August 31, 1991, Kenneth and Elise Boulding celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. For the occasion, as with most occasions in the Boulding family, Kenneth wrote two sonnets for his wife: “Sonnets for the Golden Wedding of Kenneth & Elise Boulding” (Boulding, 1991a).

I

How should we celebrate a golden wedding

When all that glitters should not be called gold? For gold is changeless, ageless, gets not old.

And fifty human years are lots of sledding, With steep slopes intertwining and embedding.

Still, there are lots of stories to be told To those who lie within the enduring fold, And after that—well, there is always shedding.

And shed we must, what we no longer need;

Cares, busynesses, habits, casts of mind,

Until in stripped fulfillment we can find

The greatest flowering of our holy seed, And then at last we both will come to see The changeless diamond of eternity.

II

My mind swings back to that first day we met, When love’s clear holy light flared up between us. After that meeting nothing could demean us, And after fifty years Love’s shining yet.

Then, Love committed, bravely did beget

A wondrous tribe—something poor shell-bound Venus Could not achieve—’til You-I came to mean Us, Beyond the reach of Life’s turmoil and fret.

So have we lived upon a rich pleateau;

True, life together’s not without its cliffs— Misunderstandings, separations, tiffs

Can slope towards a precipice below; But Love, true Love, always turned us around,

And here we stand, still on Love’s holy ground.

Sonnets en Mass

Boulding maintained his enthusiasm for teaching and writing up to his diagnosis of cancer in October 1992. “Elise Boulding recorded in her diary, ‘My fear that he wouldn’t be able to use this time for spiritual growth has vanished.’ Later in February 1993, while in hospital after breaking his hip, he said to Elise with a smile, ‘Death is a wonderful invention—everyone should try it’” (Boulding and Boulding, 1995 p. vi). How Boulding spent his final months was writing sonnets. In fact, from January 1992 until February 6, 1993, he wrote 143 sonnets and left three unfinished pieces. Boulding always enjoyed writing sonnets and remarked that people would wonder why he liked writing in a style that was so confining. But for Boulding a sonnet was freeing in its restriction. All of Boulding’s later sonnets are included in his third book of poetry titled Sonnets from Later Life 1981–1993 (Boulding, 1994). Two are presented here to provide a state of mind for Boulding at the end of his life. The first is “Outrageous Joy” written January 24, 1993 (Boulding, 1994, p. 177):

Joy is outrageous. Here we are on a cliff

In a cloud; and we know there is a brink That well may be much closer than we think, We could be over it in just a jiff.

Over all broods the silent sound of “if”

And even where we stand we sense a stink

Of pain and human misery—we shrink

And then comes, almost like a clown saying “Piff,”

Absurd Joy to the world, the Lord is come

Life fresh sap rising in a withered tree

A flame of praise, rising exultantly Beyond all reasons in a world so glum.

There is a vast refreshment in the sky— What matters cliffs indeed to those who fly!

The second sonnet reproduced here is the last one he finished in his life. It was written on February 6, 1993, and is titled “Sonnet for a Calendar” (Boulding, 1994, p. 152):

Rich and relentless as a music box,

My memory will not wholly let me go, Although the product is not much to show Beyond the childlike charm of building blocks.

Still, there are times when fleeting memory locks

Itself into a pattern and flow

Out of which meaning, with radiant glow, Can suddenly make sense of patterned clocks.

All structures fall, but when they fall in place

With older ranks of time, they make good sense—

Two follows one; three, two; four, three, without pretense.

Then, suddenly, a calendar we sense;

Days, weeks, months, seasons, years are safely mated And time, above all else, is celebrated.

Elise and Kenneth Boulding were married for 52 years. They were not only marital partners but also intellectual partners. She commented in many of her writings that Kenneth was proud of her post-child-rearing career. After all, Elise Boulding was Kenneth Boulding’s most regular coauthor. Upon reflection of her time with Kenneth at the end of his life, she wrote:

Nobody ever loved life more than Kenneth Boulding. Not long before he went into his final coma, he smiled and said, “I love the world.” It is not surprising, then, that he did not make a big deal of solemn spiritual preparations for dying. But a few weeks before his death he grinned at me one morning and said, ‘I know this sounds ridiculous, but I feel like having a baby!’ I grinned back. He was getting ready to give birth to life after life (Boulding, 1994, p. 1).

Death

At the age of 83, Kenneth Boulding died in his home in Boulder, Colorado. Elise Boulding wrote in a letter to family and friends on March 20, 1993:

Kenneth had always intended to live to greet the 21st century, but it was not to be. After ten months of gradually increasing debilitation from cancer, he slipped away quietly and peacefully in the early morning hours of March 18 [1993]. The weeks since the family gathered for a joyful celebration of his 83rd birthday January 18 have been precious times of deep sharing in words, song and silence. Every day his spirit grew purer, his smile more beautiful. Our children came in turn to say a last goodbye, and we all have a sense both of loss and completion—loss of one we loved so much, and completion of a life lived so fully and richly that we have been recreated in our relationship with husband, father, grandfather. And so, we know, have many of you, his friends and colleagues (Elise Boulding, 1993).

Last Diary Entry

Boulding’s last diary entry was on October 16, 1992. It read:

Russell [Boulding’s oldest child] has just gone home. He was here for more than a week. He was just enormously helpful. I can’t say how helpful he was in getting me adjusted to my present state of life. We did go to an excellent new doctor and had a very frank conversation about how long I had to live. I gathered from him that he thinks this probably is my final illness and could easily last about six months. At any rate, I have got forward to look for it ending, and I must confess I have had an extraordinarily good life. I will be 83 in three months and I have absolutely nothing to complain about. If there is a future life, well, that’s fine; if there isn’t, I won’t know about it, and that’s fine too (Boulding, 1992a).

Afterlife

Two of Boulding’s books were published posthumously. As previously mentioned, The Future (Boulding and Boulding, 1995) was a book he wrote with Elise many years before but could not get published. It includes five chapters by Boulding followed by another five chapters by Elise. This book is a recognition of Boulding as a futurist and how he saw society and society’s future juxtaposed with Elise’s perspectives. It is an excellent book for getting a better understanding of both Kenneth’s and Elise’s perspectives on pacifism and how the world can start moving in a more peaceful direction. His book The Structure of a Modern Economy (1993) includes an historical analysis of the US economy from 1929 to 1989. This book did not receive the attention it probably deserved since it was published after Boulding’s death. But it is interesting because it offers a topographical analysis of macroeconomic statistics over many decades to show the changes in economic structures and influences (or lack of influences) of the government and historical events on the economy. In some ways it was a traditional analysis using traditional economic measures in untraditional ways. But Boulding maintained his pessimism about logical p ositivism until the end:

Deterministic mathematical models are often inappropriate to the structural and topological complexities of an economic system, and particularly to the instability of its fundamental parameters. If the planets had been moved by angels who didn’t like astronomers, Keplerian and Newtonian celestial mechanics would have been quite inappropriate. Deterministic models are unsuitable for systems in which information is an essential element, as it is in the economic system, for information by its very definition has to be surprising (Boulding, 1993, pp. x–xi).

We still have no answer to the question Boulding raises in his final diary entry about whether life continues after death. Yet, Boulding is still present in many ways teaching us through his writings, much of it still relevant today (in some cases more relevant—e.g., ecology and climate change). Perhaps true immortality is not found in divinity or reincarnation, but rather in relevance and longevity. Besides his body of work that is still available today, people continue to cite his work on peace, conflict, ecological economics, ethics, and general systems. After his death both the Journal of Economic Issues and the Review of Social Economy published special issues on the work of Kenneth Boulding. The International Society for the Systems Sciences that Boulding helped start in the 1950s still exists. The Journal of Conflict Resolution he helped first publish in 1957 is still an influential (and highly ranked) journal in the field. Also, the Association for the Study of the Grants Economy he began with Martin Pfaff still has a faithful membership. In 2013, Wilfred Dolfsma and Stefan Kesting published Interdisciplinary Economics: Kenneth E. Boulding’s Engagement in the Sciences, which includes some of Boulding’s original writings followed by commentary and analytical authors with wide-ranging views on Boulding’s work, influences, and legacy.

Yet Boulding is still “a voice crying in the wilderness,” and hopefully this biography will encourage more people to hear Boulding’s voice.

In a world of technicians, it is the economist who raises the cry that the technically most efficient is not necessarily, or even usually, the socially most efficient; that the best cow is not the one that gives the most milk; the best business is not the one that makes the most profits; the best army is not the one that creates the most havoc; and, above all, the best training is not the best education (Boulding, 1968a, p. 13).

7

Boulding’s Place in Economic History

Kenneth Boulding was a renaissance intellectual with varied interests, as presented in this book. Borrowing Robert Heilbroner’s phrase, Boulding was a worldly philosopher, but also a moral philosopher. Boulding did not work within one school of economic thought. He was always a disciple of Keynes, but he also branched out into institutional economics, behavioral economics, ecological economics, Post Keynesian economics, and others. Boulding was critical of neoclassical economics early in his career. For example, he admonished neoclassical economists for adopting a positivist approach to economic analysis and ignoring the normative elements of economic issues. Today, ethics in economics is a hotly debated issue, and there is still significant resistance to recognizing that economic inquiries are not value-free. As early as the 1930s, Boulding (1932; 1934) dismissed neoclassical economics’ theories of utility maximization, profit maximization, and marginal productivity. Boulding saw himself as a modern political philosopher who was primarily concerned with the well-being of people (humanomics). Boulding’s methods went against the grain of mainstream/neoclassical economics, and arguably still do today. In part, because of Boulding’s nonconformity and concern for social issues, much of his work had originality and emotion. But stepping back and looking at Boulding’s entire research output reveals two areas where he was especially prescient and original: First, his work on peace and conflict resolution; and second, his metaphorical Spaceship Earth as an argument for sustainability and controlling rampant consumption and economic growth.

Peace and Conflict Resolution

War was for Boulding the greatest threat to humankind’s survival (especially nuclear war) and the attainment of happiness. His early pacifism

185

and conversion to Quakerism led to a lifelong study of peace. His work in this area is still considered part of the foundation of all proceeding work among peace scholars. Boulding’s approach was unique because it was transdisciplinary—encompassing political science, economics, sociology, mathematics, anthropology, and biology. Boulding was successful at creating a community of scholars who came from a variety of disciplines. They were all studying peace, but approaching it from their own disciplines. Boulding knew that peace was too dynamic and complex to be solved within any one discipline or by any one person. But Boulding’s greatest advancement for peace studies was being among the first scholars to apply quantitative models to conflict and thus better identify conditions for peace. The Journal of Conflict Resolution is evidence of the lasting effects of Boulding’s (and other scholars’) work in this area. This journal was the first of its kind to promote and encourage rigorous analysis of peace and conflict resolution. As a result, Thomas Schelling and many other influential thinkers from various disciplines had somewhere to publish their work, and they built the reputation of the journal to what it is today—it remains one of the most respected resources for innovative analyses on conflict resolution and peace.

Studying Lewis Richardson’s work and talking with other peace scholars about peace led Boulding to write Conflict and Defense (1962). This book was among the first to study conflict using game theory, and therefore it enjoys a special preeminence among peace scholars. Consequently, it remains his most cited work. War and international conflict continue to exist in the world, which keeps Boulding’s work relevant. As technology and globalization develop further, Boulding’s insights about global cooperation become increasingly important. The potential for war is greater today than at any other time (using Boulding’s logic), which means conflict resolution (both identifying conflict then resolving it quickly and equitably) is of paramount importance. Within the work of Boulding and the peace scholars following him are valuable findings that can move the world closer to peace.

Spaceship Earth

There are many communities of scholars studying environmental issues and policy today. Debates are raging all over the world about climate change, sustainable development, deforestation, and so forth. But when Boulding presented his paper “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth” in 1965 (published in 1966), environmental issues were rarely studied—and among economists Boulding stood alone. Yet, Boulding’s

Boulding’s Place in Economic History 187

Spaceship Earth was the first to integrate concepts such as entropy and the second law of thermodynamics into economic thinking, starting a trend later adopted by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, and others to build the structure of modern ecological economics. The fact that Boulding’s Spaceship article is rather short and that he wrote little else on the environment is a testament to the influence of this contribution. But within this paper are the beginnings of modern ecological economics. For example, he argued that we need to change the way we think about economic growth—that our consumer culture leads to resource waste and pollution quickly leading to untold human suffering. Even today people suffer from anthropocentrism, failing to realize that they (and the economy) are merely a subset of the natural environment (biosphere). Our future is dependent on the quality of that environment. It is imperative that we put more intellectual effort into overcoming the destruction we have already caused the planet as well as developing technology and strategies for using more sustainable energy and better use of sustainable resources. This is truer today than when Boulding wrote it. Spaceship Earth is no longer coming, it is here.

Boulding’s Legacy

It is impossible to say what future historians of economic thought will interpret as Boulding’s most original and enduring contributions to the discipline. In the area of peace studies and conflict resolution, Boulding was a pioneer who wrote on these topics using innovative methods and economic concepts, which were imaginative and forward looking. At the core of Boulding’s work was his deep pacifism, which gives his work an honesty and passion that people writing in areas that do not affect them personally cannot convey as effectively. Boulding also possessed an analytical mind that studied the nature of conflicts using logic and game theory models that have remained insightful after several decades. Likewise, much of Boulding’s Spaceship Earth metaphorical analysis has grown increasingly important. After roughly half a century, his work on ecological economics and peace still raises pertinent questions and points society in a better direction. Boulding can no longer be a “voice crying in the wilderness” when he still has so much to say.

Postscript

When the global Great Recession began in 2008, there was outrage among p eople that economists had lost touch with reality and that the field of economics had failed. A dogmatic worshipping of free markets and minimal government intervention had blindsided much of the profession. Many people are now asking whether economics can shed its dogmatism and become useful again at explaining reality. Kenneth Boulding is proof that it can. His work stands in stark contrast to the mainstream neoclassical methodology adopted by most economists. For his efforts, Boulding was labeled a heretic and largely ostracized by the profession. Boulding was little bothered by these characterizations. Yet, this may be one reason why, until now, a complete biography of Boulding’s work has not been written. Boulding never reached the level of notoriety of Frederich von Hayek or Milton Friedman, not because his work lacked originality or insight, but rather because his sharp divergence from mainstream thinking left him on an island unto himself. And his breadth of thinking made many of his works too theoretical for empirical analysis, which is de rigueur for economics. Perhaps now this book can encourage more people to read Boulding’s writings and begin moving economics and society in a better, more sustainable, more  ethical, and more peaceful direction.

189

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Index

American Economic Association (AEA), 119–20

American Economic Association presidential address, 120–5

complexity of social organizations,

120 moral hierarchy of values, 121–2 ethical considerations, 122–3 tastes and cultural acceptance, 122

American Economic Association presidency, 5

animistic view of social problems, 129–30

Association for the Study of the Grants Economy, 6 Atlantic crossing, 35

balance sheet theory, 41, 68, 114 basketball as ritualistic dialectic,

147–8

“Bathtub Theorem,” 58–9

Boulding, Elise (nee Bjorn-Hansen), 2 background, 51 bilingual upbringing, 54 at Dartmouth, 142 doctoral work, 93 employment, 55–6 graduate school, 83–4, 110

Iowa State University, masters from,

57 marriage, 51–2, 56 meeting Kenneth, 51, 56 musical interests, 54–5

New Jersey College for Women scholarship, 55 Nobel Peace Prize nomination, 57 parents, 53–5 Ph.D., 71

place in economic history, 185–7

Quakerism, 56–7

sociology studies, 83–4 sonnets for, 52–3

University of Colorado, difficulty of move, 110

write-in peace candidacy, 94–5

Boulding, Elizabeth “Bessie” Ann

(mother) in America with Kenneth, 43 background, 9–10 collaborator, peace research, 114 father, 10–11 financial difficulties, 39 later years, 97–8 leaving home, Kenneth, 29 marriage, 11–12 mothering, 14–15 poetry, 25 pregnancy, 13 return to Liverpool, 15–16 Boulding, Kenneth Ewart

American Economic Association presidency, 5 Atlantic crossing, 35 background, 1 birth, 13 children, 72–3, 84 citizenship, 64–5 at Colgate University, 2, 48 commonwealth fellowship, 40 death, 181–2 diary, 17, 182 and draft, 62–4 Earl of Sefton Scholarship, 27 in Edinburgh, 40–1 education, importance to parents,

26–7 emeritus professor role, 141 European agriculture study, 57–8 at Fisk University, 58–9 friends, 28, 31

197

Boulding (continued) grandparents, 16–17, 27–8 golden anniversary, 179 at Harvard University, 39 at International Christian

University in Tokyo, 99 at Iowa State University, 60–2 in Jamaica, 4 in Japan, 4–5 John Bates Clark Medal, 3 legacy, 187 at Liverpool Collegiate, 27, 28 masters, 36 at McGill University, 64 naming, 13 at Oxford, 28–33, 36. See also

Oxford

pacifism, birth of, 18–19 paintings and drawings, 6 parenting, 84, 85 poetry, 63–4 post-retirement years, 6 recommendations for peace, 97 and Republican Party, 6 retirement, 138–9 sixth form choice, 27–8 at Stanford, 4, 85–86 at St. Simon’s, 27 stutter, 22–3, 26 teaching, 134–6 training, 1–2 travel across America, 38 Uncle Bert, influence of, 17, 19 at University College of the West

Indies, 95 at University of Chicago, 35 at University of Colorado, 5, 107,

109–11, 135–6 at University of Michigan, 3–4, 70,

71, 98 and Vietnam War, 21, 65 war years, 16, 17–18

Boulding, William (father) background, 10–11 business success, 15 death, 38 financial troubles, 12, 39 in Liverpool, 26 marriage, 11–12

Butler, General Smedley, 20

“Capital Controversy,” 42

Center for Advanced Study in the

Behavioral Sciences, 71, 85, 

92–3

Center for Research on Conflict

Resolution, 3–4, 21, 84, 110–11 centers of gravity, 96 change, maintaining in social systems,

128

citizenship, 64–5 class system, 17–18, 35, 41 Colgate University, 2, 48 commonwealth fellowship, 40

complexity of social organizations, 120

Conflict and Defense, 4, 5, 20, 95–6,

112–13, 141 conflict and peace research, 86 conflict resolution, 20, 98 Conflict Resolution, 94 consensus building, 155–6 cosmogenesis, 72, 74 Couchman, William, 10–11 cowboy economy, 103–4

“Defending Whom from What,” 156–8

Democratic National Convention,

1968, 119–20 dismal theorems, 105 draft, 62–4

Earl of Sefton Scholarship, 27

“Earth as a Spaceship,” 100–1 Ecodynamics, 4, 99, 136, 141, 161 ecological economics, 4, 71, 101, 102,

106, 187 ecological equilibrium, 68 ecology, and evolution, 136–7 econometrics, 37

Economic Analysis, 2, 36, 48–9, 70, 72,

141 economics complexity of social organizations,

120 ecology, blending with, 73 environmental, 101 ethical considerations, 122–3 fallacies of composition and

aggregation, 75

growth, 60, 101–2, 106, 131 growth in organizations, 77 heroic ethic in, 124 human betterment, divorce from,

120, 125 integration with other disciplines,

74–5 integrative sphere, 125 modern, 91 moral hierarchy of values, 121–2 morality in, 151 and moral philosophy, 121 natural resource, 101–2 psychopathy of, 121 rationality, limits of, 59 social organization systems, 123 and social sciences, 60, 67, 73, 82 tastes and cultural acceptance, 122 teachers of, 82

Economics: An Introductory Analysis

(Samuelson), 49

“Economics for Good or Evil,” 146–7

“Economics in Disarray,” 155–6

Economics of Human Betterment, The, 169

Economics of Peace, The, 2–3, 58, 59,

66–7, 112

“Economics of Reconstruction, The,” 47–8

“Economics of the Coming Spaceship

Earth, The,” 101 economy

as ecological system, 3, 67–8, 103–4 as entity, 82–3 environment, impact on, 101 general systems theory, 3–4 grants economy study, 5 as a moral science, 76 problems of, 3 as social construction, 102 and social justice, 66 study of for state of mind, 76 war, effect on, 111–12

Edinburgh, 40–1

Edsel’s law, 148–9 ethical considerations, 122–3 ethical investing, 123 exchange economics, 115

“Evaluation of Large Systems, The,”

143–4

evolution

of knowledge, 126–7 logic and truth, 132 of social systems, 126–7

Evolutionary Economics, 4–5, 136, 160

“Evolutionary View of Technology Forecasting,” 153–5

“Experiment in Friendship, An,” 

45–6

Export Control Act, violation of, 95

fair-trade goods, 123 fallacies of composition and

aggregation, 75

Fisher, Irving, 38, 48

Fisk University, 58–9

Friends for Independent Retirement

(FIR), 142–3 fructal, 150 future, 177–9 Future, The, 7, 142, 177–9 futurist, 142, 177

general systems theory, 3–4, 72, 92, 160–8

General Committee of the

Department of the Church and

Economic Life, 76–7

“General Systems Theory—The Skeleton of Science,” 92

General Theory of Conflict and

Defense, 70

General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (Keynes), 48

global financial crisis of 2008, 87–8,

124, 189 government, role of, 158–60 grade inflation, 151–3 “Grading Experience, A,” 151–3 grants economics, 114–19

balance sheet theory, 114 categories, 116 vs. exchange economics, 115 grants economy study, 5 as heart of political economy, 116 priorities, 118–19 public goods, 118 public grants, 117–18 sources, 115–16 taxation as example of, 117

grants (continued)

technology of advancement, 116–17 urbanization, 117–18

“Grants Economy, The,” 114

Gray, Sir Alexander, 42

Great Depression, 38 Greenspan, Alan, 87–88 growth, 106 growth of social organizations and

truth, 132

Harvard University, 39 heroic ethic in economics, 124

“High Price of Technology Misused,

The,” 144–5 homeostasis, theory of, 68–9 human betterment, 169–71

ideology and truth, 132 Image, The, 4, 86, 113, 126 image, theory of behavioralism/environment, 90 change in, 87–8 directions, future growth, 91–2 evolution, role of, 90 knowledge as organic process, 87 ratcheting effect, 90 shared image, 90–1 social systems, 133 system levels, 88–90 technology, 153–5 value system, 88

“Immaculate Conception of the

Indifference Curve,” 122 “In Defense of the Supernatural,” 46 information, importance of, 104–5 “In Praise of Selfishness,” 46–7

Institute of Behavioral Science,

111–13

institutions of conflict control, 96–7 instrumental values, social systems,

127 interconnectedness, 81 Interdisciplinary Economics: Kenneth E. Boulding’s Engagement in the

Sciences (Dolfsma and Kesting),

183

interdisciplinary studies conflict and defense, 93 war and peace, 86

International Christian University in

Tokyo, 99

International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE), 106–7

Iowa State University, 60–2

“Is Economics Necessary?,” 74

John Bates Clark Medal, 3, 70, 72

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 93–4

Keynes, John Maynard, 1, 33, 36, 48,

67, 146, 166

Knight, Frank, 2, 37, 41–2, 43

“Know-How and the Price of Cheese,” 145–6

large systems analysis, 143–4 League of Nations Economics and Financial Division, 57–8

Liverpool, 15–16, 26

“Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth,”

148–9

Lucinda, 40, 43–4

“Machines, Men, and Religion,

129–130

“Making Education Religious,” 44–5 manifesto of the universe

ecology, and evolution, 136–7 noosphere, 136 systems of evolution, 136 tripartite social structure, 137

Marx, Karl, 33, 65, 80, 138, 143–4, 146

“Mayer/Boulding Dialogue on Peace Research, The,” 125–9

Mayer, Milton, 125–9

McGill University, 64

Meaning of the 20^th Century, The,

99–100 mechanistic approach to social

problems, 129–30

milorg, 111–13 moral hierarchy of values, 121–2 moral imperatives, social systems, 127 “New Face for the Democratic Party,

A,” 158 noosphere, 136

“Notes on a Theory of Philanthropy,”

114 nous, 145–6

open vs. closed system, 103–4 “Organizational Revolution,” 76–7

organization, theory of, 77–8

Oxford change of studies, 31–2 class system, 41 economics, foundation in, 32 friendships, 28, 31 graduate student at, 34 graduation, 34 masters, 36 scholarship, 27, 28 socialism at, 33 success, 33 transition to, 30 upper-class adjustments, 31

pacifism

and draft, 62–4 nonviolence of, 20 and Quakerism, 19, 47 quavering, 49–50

“Pacifism of All Sensible Men,” The,”

47

“Paths of Glory,” 93 peace and conflict resolution, 185–6 peace and social systems, 127–8 peace research, 114 Peace Research Center, 128 pelican party, 158 philanthropic organizations, 148–9 physics, split, 75–76 political economy, 116 population growth, effects of, 105–6 power and truth, 133, 174–6

Practice of the Love of God, The, 50

Primer on Social Dynamics, A, 4, 99,

160 priorities, and grant economy, 118–19 “Prospering of Truth, The,” 130–1 Protestantism, 80 psychic capital, 66–70 public goods, and grant economy, 118 public grants, 117–18 public letter to Ronald Reagan, 141, 156–8

Quakerism beginnings, 21–2 convinced Friend, 31 and pacifism, 19 publications, 20

Quaker writings anti-Semitism, 45–6 Christian economics, 78–9 education, 44–5 mechanistic vs. animistic view of

social problems, 129–30

pacifism, 47 peace, 125–9 poetry, 63–4 postwar reconstruction, 47–8 religion and ethics, 79 selfishness, 46–7 supernatural, 46 taxation, 117 truth, 130–1

Reconstruction of Economics, A, 58–9,

61, 66–7, 69, 173

Reagan, President Ronald, 6, 141,

156–8 religion

and economic behavior, 80 and economics, 81 and ethics, 79–80

religious philosophy, 129

“Role of Government in a Free Society, The,” 158–60

savings and loan scandal, 124 Schultz, Henry, 36–7

Schumpter, Professor Joseph A., 35,

39, 88

“Scottish University Sitting on Haunches for the Last Fifty Years,”

42

Seven Deadly Sins and truth, 131–2 short-sighted and long-sighted behavior, 95–6

Smith, Adam, 1, 76, 81, 146–7 Socialist Party, 65–6 social evolution, 100 social justice, 66 social science, 67

integration with economics, 73, 121 minimizing biases, 100

social self-consciousness, 126 social systems

change in, maintaining, 128 evaluative change, 137 evolution of, 126–7 instrumental values, 127 moral imperatives, 127 peace and, 127–8 and truth, 133

“Sonnets for the Golden Wedding of

Kenneth & Elise Boulding,” 179 Sonnets from Later Life, 7, 180–1

Sonnets from the Interior Life and Other Autobiographical Verse, 133–4 Spaceship Earth, 186–7 spaceship economy, 103–4, 121

Stable Peace, 112 Stanford, 4, 85–86 statistical correlations with truth,

130–1

stocks vs. flows, 41

Strategy of Conflict, The, 4

Structure of a Modern Economy, The, 7,

182–3

stutter

causes, possible, 22, 23 dictation machine usage and, 

22–3

effect of, 3 mother’s lack of acknowledgment, 26 and teaching, 43 writing, 24–5

surface learning vs. deep learning,  36

“Symbol, Substance, and the Moral

Economy,” 151 systems of evolution, 136 systems theory of society, 121 tastes and cultural acceptance, 122 Taussig, Professor Frank, 39 taxation, and grant economy, 117

“Taxation in Wartime: Some

Implications for Friends,” 117 “Taxes Can Be Fun,” 149–50

taxes, responsibility for paying,

149–50 technology advancement, and grant

economy, 116–17

Technology Review, 143 “Theory of Investment Once More:

Mr. Boulding and the Austrians,

The” 41–2

There is a Spirit (The Nayler Sonnets),

63–4

“This Sporting Life,” 147–8

“Three Faces of Power, The,” 

174–6

“To Cultivate Our Garden,” 150 transdisciplinary approach, 72, 83, 92, 106, 186

Treatise on Money (Keynes), 33, 48 tripartite social structure, 137 truth

evolutionary logic, 132

growth of social organizations, 

132 ideology, 132 power and, 133 Seven Deadly Sins, 131–2 social systems, 133 statistical correlations with, 

130–1

University College of the West Indies,

95

University of Chicago excitement of, 35 intellectual curiosity, 37–8

University of Colorado, 5, 107,

109–11

University of Michigan, 3–4, 70, 98 urbanization, and grant economy, 117–18

viability theory, 96 Vietnam War, 21, 65, 128, 144–5 war

effect on economy, 111–12 social image, 113 weapons, 113

Wealth of Nations (Smith), 

67, 81

“What About Christian Economics?,”

78–9

“What Went Wrong with

Economics?,” 142, 171–4 world as total system, 160–8 World as a Total System, The, 160