Gerschenkron's Secret: A Research Note

Abstract

The American economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron (1904–1978) gained fame as the creator of the theory of the ‘advantages of backwardness’, according to which latecomers in the industrialization process could obtain important advantages from their later start. The parallel with the theory of combined and uneven development in historical materialism has already been noted by many scholars. It was usually dismissed as a coincidence, and Gerschenkron himself said that he also regarded it that way; he never mentioned Marxist precursors in this connection. This article proves, however, that Gerschenkron, as a student and academic in Vienna (1924–1938), was in fact a committed Marxist—at first in the left opposition within the Social Democratic Workers' Party, and later in the Communist Party. It was as good as impossible for a scholar in his position not to have read Rudolf Hilferding's famous book on Finance Capital (1910); and it is likewise highly improbable that Gerschenkron, the omnivorous expert on the USSR, would not have read the 1931 German translation of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. Both books developed the idea of the ‘advantages of backwardness’ long before Gerschenkron did. After his emigration to the United States in 1938 Gerschenkron always kept very quiet about his left-wing past, thus effectively killing two birds with one stone: he was not linked to Marxism, and he could claim more scientific originality than was due to him.