What Do You Bring to Our Department?
A Story about Time Travel
This story was inspired by an interview between Russ Roberts and Yanis Varoufakis on February 25, 2013 on the podcast Econtalk.
Nobody noticed where he came from, and a few students gave him sidelong glances as he made his way across Harvard Square and into the main campus, but they assumed he must be in period costume for some Freedom Trail site, and gave him no mind. Admittedly, the Freedom Trail was across the Charles River, and this man wasn’t wearing a tricorn hat, but he looked to be from that era. Close passersby would have noted that he glanced around frequently, as though he were a little disoriented.
He was a well-dressed man, if out of date. He wore breeches, a long dark coat, and worn boots. He had a prominent nose. But his most striking feature was the powdered wig he wore on his head.
He walked around the campus until he found a map, and then he went directly to the building where the economics department was headquartered. He went inside and walked around until he found an office which looked important.
He knocked. A small, Indian-American woman answered. “Hello, yes,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I wish to speak with the head of your department,” he said.
“Got an appointment?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re right. You don’t. What’s your name?”
“Smith. I’m a professor. Not here. I’d like to see about getting a position actually. I was hoping to speak to the head of your department.”
“That’s me. I’m the chair,” she said with exasperation. She looked him up and down. She had a few minutes to kill before her next meeting. Besides, the term had just ended and grades had been submitted. Already the relaxed mood of summer was settling over the school.
“We aren’t hiring at the moment,” she said. “And when we do, we’ll have a hiring committee. You can’t just come in here and ask for a job.”
“That is all very well,” said the visitor. “I merely wish to speak with you about your department and what I have to offer. I think you’ll find I could be a valuable asset, if and when you do need a professor.”
She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “What the heck?” she asked. “Come in. Let’s chat.”
Her office was cluttered with books and papers, but there was an empty chair. Smith remained standing until the department chair sat down. She gestured wildly to make him know he could sit. He sat.
“You said your name was Smith?” she asked soon after he had sat down. “First name?”
“Adam.”
“That’s ironic,” she said quickly. Then she gave him a second glance. “You dress the part.”
She wrote down his name on a yellow pad. “You said you’re a professor? Of economics? Do you have any teaching experience? Research?”
“Yes,” said the visitor. “I taught at the University of Glasgow for many years. Admittedly, that was… a very long time ago.”
She narrowed her eyes and gave him another glance, but she kept writing. “A long time ago, you say. Have you published anything?”
“Yes, in fact, I have. Among other works, I published a book entitled, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Perhaps you have heard of it.”
She looked up. “Okay, come on,” she said. “Is this a joke? Are you an actor?”
“No. I have never performed on the stage.”
“You dress in costume, come here and tell me you’re Adam Smith?”
“My name is Adam Smith. I take it you have heard of my work?”
“No shit, Sherlock. I teach economics. I know who Adam Smith was.”
“Who is Sherlock?”
She slapped her desk. “He’s… oh, forget it. Okay, fine. I’ll play along. We only hire faculty with recent publication credentials. Have you published anything recently? More recently than two centuries ago? And don’t tell me that you wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. We’re looking for faculty who publish economics, not philosophy.”
“My dear,” said Smith, “If this is the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Four, then I have not published anything in over two centuries. I have been away for some time.”
She sighed and tossed the pad on her desk. “How exactly did you get here again? Not the building. Boston. Harvard. Twenty Twenty-Four.”
Smith frowned. He looked a little sheepish. He glanced around the room. “Well,” he said. “I do not know. I remember closing my eyes in my bedroom and the next thing I knew I opened them and I was standing in your Harvard Square. I do not know what happened. The funny bit is that I knew exactly where I was, and I knew what year it was. I say a man staring at his iPhone, and I knew what that was. It was as though I were transported into the future by some being or force which imparted to me the basic knowledge I would need to know to find my way in the world. Whatever it was even imparted to me the knowledge that America has had at least one president who was in films, and another who was – how do I say this – involved with reality television. I know what a film is, roughly, and what television is, but whatever it was that imparted this knowledge to me did not give me to understand what reality television is. I take it this has something to do with capturing people in their daily lives and putting it on a film? However, I was not at all surprised to learn that the Americans would elect actors to be their presidents. That is entirely in keeping with everything I have heard about Americans.”
The chair had paused in her writing and was staring at him. She seemed to be having trouble making up her mind as to whether he was playacting, insane, or quite possibly the real thing.
“I… see,” she finally said. “Well… in that case I have to tell you that we aren’t currently hiring and we won’t have any available positions in the foreseeable future, but if you are staying in… Boston, I guess you can inquire again. We will be in… you can… do you have… how about you just drop by again in six months? I must say that we don’t normally take faculty who haven’t published in the last two centuries, but we may be willing to overlook that. By our current hiring standards, you would be… well, you would be unqualified, quite frankly, but we might be able to make arrangements, should a position open up.”
“Very well,” said Smith, standing up. He seemed not at all displeased. “I shall go across the sea to Glasgow and see if they have any positions. I daresay with the pace of technological change, I am sure you have ships which will get me there and back in plenty of time.”
After bidding her good day, he walked out. The chair sat and stared at the wall for a full minute, trying to reconcile what had just happened. The rational part of her brain was telling her that he couldn’t possibly be Adam Smith, but the logical part of her brain was telling her that the odds were pretty good that he was.
Two weeks later, the chair was passing by a bench on her way to her office when she noticed an odd-looking man sitting on a park bench looking out of place. Like Smith, he was dressed in what appeared to be clothes from a previous century. He had long white hair and a bushy white beard.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Are you lost?”
“Yes,” the man said. He had a German accent.
“Where are you trying to get to?”
“Well,” he said. “I was attempting to reach the economics department, when it suddenly occurred to me that my predictions must have been slightly off. I have been sitting here and working out the timeline, but I think I have it nearly finished.”
“I’m the chair of the economics department,” she told him. “I can show you the way.”
“Are you?” he asked, jumping to his feet. “That’s marvelous. I was looking for you, in fact.”
“For me?” she asked. “Why?”
“I would like to be given a position.”
“Really? Have you ever taught economics before at the university level?”
“No, but my books have been studied in universities for many years.”
She motioned for him to walk alongside her and he followed her lead.
“Is that so?” she asked. “What is your name?”
“Karl Marx,” he pronounced.
She shot him a glance. “Is that a joke?” she asked. “Is this another prank?”
“No.”
She stopped walking and turned to face him.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re making fun of me or what your game is.”
“I really am Karl Marx,” he said. “I take it you have heard of me.” He looked pleased.
“Ok,” she threw up her hands. “Let’s say you really are Karl Marx. Let’s give you that. Fine. You want to look for a job – let’s do the job interview right here. What are your credentials?”
“I have written about, and studied, political economy for many years,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Have you done any real economics work, though? Have you written a book on economics? How about a paper? I don’t recall many numbers, charts, graphs, in your works when I read them in my youth. Many would say they are works of philosophy more than of economics.”
Marx smiled. “Not exactly,” he said. “They are works of science.”
“Yeah, well, listen, do you know much about the history of the twentieth century? You know this is the twenty-first?”
“Yes. I know a little.”
“Well,” she said. “You do know that your predictions that capitalism would collapse on its own contradictions failed to materialize?”
Marx smiled more broadly. “Yet,” he said.
“You know they tried that whole proletarian revolution and worker’s paradise thing in Russia, right? Didn’t work out so well for them. Look, some of us think it would have been really great if it had worked out. We were rooting for you. But after more than a hundred and fifty years, your predictions have yet to come true.”
“See, this is what I was just trying to work out,” he said. “You see, I just now found myself transported to this time and place, and the knowledge came to me of where I was and what had happened. I confess I was disappointed to see that I was so off, but I have hit upon it. Your financial crisis was the canary in the coalmine. I can see it now. The Russians were too early. They were idealistic, to be sure, but that can only get you so far. But this time, it really is just around the corner. The entire global system – it can’t sustain itself – within ten years, I promise, no less than ten years, it will all come crashing to the ground.”
He had managed to work himself up talking about this and he smiled again very broadly when he finished.
“I wish I believed you,” she told him.
“What do you say? Am I hired?”
“We’re looking for real economists,” she said. “Try the philosophy department. Good luck.”
With a vague imprecation in her general direction, Marx got up and walked out. She didn’t catch all of it, but there was something in there about her being a member of the bourgeoisie, which she found herself bristling at a little. She shuffled some papers on her desk and tried for the rest of the day to forget about the whole affair.
Days later, she was just closing up her office when she encountered another man dressed in what appeared to be clothes from over a century ago.
“What do you want?” she asked sharply.
“My name,” he said, “is John Stuart Mill.”
But she was already pointing towards the door. “Get out,” she said. “I don’t want to hear about it. We aren’t hiring. We aren’t hiring for the rest of the year. We aren’t hiring for the rest of the decade. Tell your friends. Tell all your friends.”