Albert Hirschman: Legacy and Debates

Discovery and surprise

I come now to my second point. Often, possibilities imply a constellation of favorable circumstances and are helped by clusters of opportunities. This may be illustrated by a short story.

As it is known, in the mid-1980s of the last century, Albert looked around for an alternative to current critiques of reactionary thinking and started working on his last, fabulous monograph, The Rhetoric.⁶ At the same time, I initiated a long, highly possibilistic book (in object and endeavor): Discovering the Possible⁷. Hirschman was amused. Introducing me, he often said jokingly to colleagues and friends, “Luca is an Italian scholar working on a most interesting subject: me!” At a certain point, I proposed two titles for my book: “Discovering the Possible” and “The Surprising World of Albert O. Hirschman.” I asked which one he liked most. He answered, “Both.” And the reason is—I now realize—that possibilism comes out of some surprise (i.e., a contrast between a message from reality and what we had in mind previously) and, therefore, generates in time a surprising world.

Albert was a reserved and independent person. The lukewarm American reception of The Rhetoric did not satisfy him. He turned his attention to Europe and presented in Paris, at the Commissariat du Plan, his discoveries and follow-ups.⁸

The Berlin Wall had already fallen. That very day, we had been together at Buenos Aires University for one of his numerous “Laurea Honoris Causa.” In front of thousands of students so far away, I started talking of that incredible event and of the great significance that it was inevitably going to have for our “Laureandum.” Albert’s interest shifted to Berlin, where, as you know, a lively discussion had started on the interpretability in exit-voice terms of what had happened.⁹ He accepted the invitation for a sabbatical year at the Wissenschaftskolleg. Helped by Annette and Wolf Lepenies, Sarah and Albert Hirschman started commuting between Princeton and Berlin. Sarah (who knew Russian already) began studying German. Albert carried through the well-known, extraordinary research on exit voice and the fate of the German Democratic Republic (DDR)¹⁰ while cultivating in his mind a new perspective.

He met Nicoletta Stame and myself in the German capital, and with a simple question—“How can you call yourself European if you are not present in Berlin?” He induced us to “relocate” ourselves to Europe. He was particularly keen on understanding what was going on in East Germany (and more generally in the liberated East—where his father came from). He wrote the important “Social Conflicts as Pillars of Democratic Market Societies” for a “discussion circle” that met in Dresden.¹¹

At the same time, he welcomed the surprising rise of his friend Fernando Henrique Cardoso: from Senator to Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, and finally President of Brazil. He wrote that the torch of liberty, ignited in the United States by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, had traveled south to Fernando Henrique. I organized in Naples an association to support this development, and Albert suggested that Brazil and Italy should work together. Actually, I interested Romano Prodi and Patrizio Bianchi in Bologna, and we had in Rome a joint meeting of the Italian government with six ministers from Brazil.

All in all, it is clear to me that in the first half of the 1990s, Albert had one of the happiest times of his life. He released a long interview in Italian to Marta Petrusewicz, Carmine Donzelli, and Claudia Rusconi;¹² prepared conscientiously a “Colloque” on his work with a selected group of “competent rebels” in Berlin; and cultivated his life-long universalist dream of working on three continents at the same time. But after a journey in the European East, he came to Nicoletta Stame and myself and said, “It will require some time.” And he did not have that time. Later, unfortunately, as is known, he felt in the Alps, and the mirage disappeared.

The high tide of the 1990s and today

Okay, you might argue. Does it make sense, however, to recall that happy period now, in very different conditions, with serious troubles on the East, on the South, and actually on all sides—in a world characterized by the widespread revival of nationalism, the rise of China and other countries, re-ignited by inter-imperialist rivalries, etc.? In my opinion, it does. Especially if we realize that, instead of moving toward resolution (as we had often supposed), many problems in different parts of the world (more or less developed) have only been attenuated or have recurred in different forms; that others, that we thought were solved, have re-emerged; and that still others have been powerfully added. And especially if we make a collective effort to understand what it is all about.