By Tony Judt , March 2010
This text is based on a lecture given at New York University October 19, 2009. Delivered to an American audience, it retains its significance for Europeans, even more committed than their cousins across the Atlantic to the history and legacy of social democracy.
The Americans would like things to go better. According to public opinion studies conducted in recent years, all want their children to have a better chance of life at birth. That's what they prefer if their wife or daughter had the same chance of surviving motherhood than women in other developed countries. They would be happy to have full medical coverage at a lower cost, greater life expectancy, better public services and less crime. When told that these things exist in Austria, Scandinavia or the Netherlands, but they come with higher taxes and a State "interventionist", many of these same Americans say "But it's socialism! We do not want the state interfering in our affairs. And most importantly, we do not want to pay more taxes. "It's a strange inconsistency. This strange cognitive dissonance is an old story. There is a century, we remember, the German sociologist Werner Sombart asked: Why is there no socialism in America? There are many answers to this question. Some are related to the size of the country: it is difficult to organize and pursue common objectives across Imperial. There is also, of course, cultural factors, including the typical American distrust towards the central government. This is indeed no coincidence that social democracy and welfare states are more successful in small homogenous country where mistrust and mutual suspicion does not occur with equal intensity. Be prepared to pay for services rendered to others and their earnings based on the idea that, in turn, they will do the same for you and your children: because they are like you and see the world the same way as you. Conversely, when immigration and visible minorities have altered the demographics of a country, it is typical that we felt more distrust of others and little enthusiasm for the institutions of the welfare state. Finally, it is undeniable that social democracy and welfare states are facing serious challenges practices today. Their existence is not questioned, but they are not as confident as they once seemed.
History a prejudice
But my concern is how is it that here in the U.S., we have so much trouble if only to imagine a different kind of society while inefficiencies and inequities of our concern us so much?
We seem to have lost the ability to challenge the present, still less to offer alternatives. Why are we so incapable of conceiving another form of organization for our mutual benefit? Our failure is - forgive me for using academic jargon - discursive We do not just talk about these things. To understand why this should be the case, we must make some appeal to history. As Keynes had once remarked: "The emancipation of the mind necessarily involves a study of the history of opinion." To achieve a mental emancipation, I propose that we take a minute to study history of prejudice to the universal use today "economism", the invocation of the economy in every debate about public affairs. Over the last thirty years, in large parts of the world English (although this is less the case in continental Europe and elsewhere), when we wondered if we support a proposal or initiative, we do not ask if it was good or bad. Instead, we examine whether it was effective and productive. If it would be good for the gross domestic product. If it would contribute to growth. This propensity to avoid moral considerations, to limit ourselves to the question of profits and losses - economic issues in the narrowest sense of the term - is not instinctive in the human condition. It acquired a taste. We have already known. In 1905, young William Beveridge - whose report in 1942 would lay the foundations of the British Welfare State, gave a lecture at Oxford in which he wondered why the political philosophy had been overshadowed in public debate by classical economics. The question of Beveridge is equally valid today. Note that this eclipse of political thought is not from the writings of the great classical economists themselves. In the eighteenth century, what Adam Smith called "moral sentiments" was at the forefront of economic talks. Indeed, the idea that we can limit the public policy to a simple economic calculation was already concern. The Marquis (the Condorcet, one of the most insightful writers on the mercantile capitalism in its early years, anticipated with distaste the prospect that "the eyes of a hungry nation, freedom will not be more than the necessary condition security of financial transactions.
The revolutions of the time were likely to encourage confusion between freedom to make money ... and freedom itself.
But how, in our time did we come to think solely in economic terms?
The fascination for an economic vocabulary etiolated did not come from nowhere. Instead, we live in the shadow of a great debate in which most people know absolutely nothing. If we look who exercised the greatest influence on contemporary economic thought English, five foreign-born thinkers come to mind: Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Karl Popper and Peter Drucker. The first two were the outstanding "grandfathers" of the Chicago school of macroeconomics of the free market. Popper is known for his advocacy of "open society" and his theory of totalitarianism. As for Drucker's writings on management exerted a huge influence on the theory and practice of business in the prosperous decades after the boom of the war. Three of these men were born in Vienna, a fourth (von Mises) in the Austrian city of Lemberg (now Lvov). All were deeply shaken by the disaster that struck their native Austria in the inter-war period. After the cataclysm of the First World War and a brief experience in municipal socialist Vienna, the country was victim a reactionary coup in 1934 and four years later, the invasion and Nazi occupation. These events forced them all to go into exile, their writings and teachings - those of Hayek, in particular - should take place within the shadow of the central issue in their lifetime why liberal society had collapsed and she Had she given way to fascism - at least in Austria?
Their answer: the attempts of the Left (Marxist) to introduce in Austria after 1918 a state-directed planning, services in the hands of the municipality and a collectivized economy had not only proved illusory, but were directly produced a cons-reaction. The European tragedy had been caused by the left: first, because it could not achieve its objectives and then because it was unable to defend themselves along with his liberal heritage. Everyone, albeit in a different register, drew the same conclusion the best way to defend liberalism, the best defense of an open society and freedom was the accompanying leave the government out of economic life. If we kept the state at a safe distance, if we prevented politicians - be they well intentioned - to plan, manipulate or direct the affairs of their fellow citizens, the extremists of both right and left would be held in failure. John Maynard Keynes was facing the same challenge how to understand what happened between the wars and prevent their return? The great British economist, born in 1883, grew up in a Britain stable, confident, prosperous and powerful. Then, his vantage point at the Treasury and then as a participant in peace negotiations at Versailles, he saw his world collapse, taking with him all the reassuring certainties of culture and class. Keynes would also the same question that Hayek and his Austrian colleagues. But he would respond very differently. Yes, Keynes recognized, the disintegration of the late Victorian Europe was the searing experience of his life. Its essential contribution to economic theory was actually the importance he attached to the uncertainty down remedies which had faith in classical economics and neoclassical, Keynes insisted on the essentially unpredictable in human affairs. If there was one lesson of the Depression, fascism and war, it was the uncertainty - high level of insecurity and fear collective - was the corrosive force which had threatened and could even threaten the liberal world. Keynes therefore sought to give a greater role to the State to ensure social security, including but not limited economic intervention by the cons-cyclical. Hayek suggested the opposite. In 1944, in his classic The Road to Seifdom he wrote "No description given in general terms can not give an exact idea of the resemblance between much of the current English political literature and the works that destroyed faith in Western civilization in Germany and created the mindset that allowed the Nazis to win. In other words, Hayek explicitly stated that the Labour Party came to power in England would lead to fascism. Now the Labour actually prevailed. But their victory resulted in the implementation of policies that, for many of them were directly related to Keynes. During the next three decades, Great Britain (as much the Western world) was governed in the light of the concerns of Keynes.
The success of the European welfare state
Since then, as we know, the Austrians have taken their revenge. The question of why this happens - and why at this point - is an issue that could usefully be addressed at another time. But, for whatever reason. we live today with the muffled echo - as the waning light of a star - a debate held there seventy years born men, mostly in the late nineteenth century. It is certain that the economic terms in which we are led to believe are not usually associated with these distant political disagreements. However, do not know them is to speak a language qCon not fully understood. The welfare state had its credit notable accomplishments. In some countries, it was social democratic, based on an ambitious program of socialist legislation, in others - in Britain, for example - it prompted a series of pragmatic policies to alleviate social disadvantage and reduce the excessive wealth and excessive poverty. The common and the universal realization of the governments neo-Keynesians of the post-war they were succeeded remarkably in reducing inequalities. If you compare the gap between rich and poor, both in terms of income or capital in all countries of continental Europe and in Great Britain and the United States, you will see that is reduced considerably during the generation after 1945. Greater equality is accompanied by other benefits. Over time, the fear of returning to political extremists - political desperation, political envy, political insecurity - has lessened. The western industrialized world has entered a period of successful safe prosperous bubble maybe, but a comforting bubble in which most people would have fared better than they ever have hoped for once and had good reasons await the future with confidence. The paradox of the welfare state and indeed all States Social Democrats (and Christian Democrats) in Europe was simply that over time, their success undermine their attractiveness. The generation that remembered the thirties was, as one can understand, the more determined to preserve the institutions and tax systems, social services and public benefits they saw as bulwarks against the return of the horrors of the past. But his successors - even in Sweden - were beginning to forget why they had been searching for this kind of security. This is social democracy which has linked the liberal middle-class institutions in the wake of the Second World War (I use here the term "middle class" in the European sense). In many cases, it enjoyed the same social assistance and social services themselves that the poor free education, medical care cheap or free, public pensions and so on. Consequently, the European middle class found itself in the sixties with its provision of income well above what they were in the past, since much of the necessities of life were covered by taxes. Also, the very class that had been exposed to so much fear and insecurity in the inter-war period was now closely inserted into the democratic consensus of the postwar period.
The Return of inequality
However, in the late seventies, this type of consideration has been increasingly neglected. First with tax reforms and employment ThatcherReagan years, and immediately after the deregulation of the financial sector, the inequality is again a problem in Western society. Following a significant decrease from 1910 to 1960, the index inequality has grown over the past three decades. USA Today, the "Gini coefficient, which measures the gap between rich and poor, is comparable to that of China ('). If one considers that China is a developing country which will inevitably widen significant differences between the few rich and many poorer, the fact that we have here in the U.S., a similar coefficient of inequality speaks volumes about the delay we have taken over our old aspirations. Take the Personal and Work Opportunity Act Responsibilily (2) 1996 (It is hard to imagine more Orwellian title), the Clinton-era law that was trying to empty the contents of the provisions of the welfare state here in the United States. The terms of this law we should recall another law, passed in England, nearly two centuries ago: The New Poor Law of 1834. Its provisions are familiar with the description of its operation by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist. In the famous passage where Noah Claypole mocked the little Oliver, calling him "Work'us (Workhouse (3), he means, in 1838, exactly what we mean today when we speak with contempt" welfare queens (4). The New Poor Law was atrocious, it forced the poor and the unemployed to choose between work for any wage, even very low, and the humiliation of the hospice. Here and in most other forms of public assistance of the nineteenth century (still being designed and labeled "charity"), the level of help and support was calibrated so that they are less attractive than the worst alternative available . This system was based on classical economic theories that deny any possibility of unemployment in an efficient market if wages fell so low and there was no alternative attractive to work, everyone would find a job. During the hundred and fifty years, reformers have sought to replace such humiliating practices. The right to public benefits from welfare has finally replaced the New Poor Law and its foreign equivalents. Unemployed citizens were no longer regarded as having the least deserved and they were not penalized for their situation and it does not implicitly placed in doubt their capacity as members of society. More importantly, the mid-twentieth century welfare states have introduced the idea it was totally incorrect to define status of citizenship based economic participation. In the United States today, at a time when unemployment is rising, a man or a woman without a job are not full members of the community. To receive if only the meager social benefits available, they should have first sought and, where they exist, have accepted a job regardless of the proposed salary, even a small and unpleasant job. Only then will they enjoy the respect and help their fellow citizens.
admiration of wealth
Why so few of us they condemn such "reforms", adopted under a Democratic president? Why are we so little moved by the stigma attached to their victims? Far from us to question this practice back to the early industrial capitalism, nor shall we're too well adjusted and that a consensual silence - revealing contrast compared to the previous generation. But as Tolstoy reminds us, there is "no state of existence to which a man can not get used to, especially if it sees them accepted by everyone around him. " This "disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or at least, to neglect, persons of poor and modest condition [...] [...] is the great and the most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. " This is not me saying that. These words were written by Adam Smith, who considered the probability that we admired the wealth and poverty despised, admired and disdained the success of failure, as the greatest danger we face in the mercantile society he predicted the advent. We're there. The most telling example of the kind of problem we face is in a form that many of you may find it a mere technicality: the privatization process. Over the last thirty years, the cult of privatization has fascinated Western governments (and many non-Western governments). Why?
The quickest answer is that in an era of budget constraints, privatization appears to save money. If the state has a public program or an inefficient public service cost - A hydraulic station, a car factory, a railroad - it seeks to give it over to private buyers. The sale reported, as expected, money to the state. At the same time, passing in the private sector, service or transaction in question becomes more efficient through the mechanism of the profit motive. Everyone has something to gain the service improves, the state gets rid of a liability improperly or poorly managed, investors are making profits and the public sector performs in a one-time gain on the sale. That's the theory. The practice is very different. What we have seen over past decades is that public accountability has been moving to the private sector without the community gains a visible advantage. First privatization is ineffective. Most (The activities that the overnment has seen fit to enter the private sector operating at a loss: whether railway companies, coal mines, postal or power plants, the cost of their supplies and their maintenance is higher than the income they can expect to retire. Would For that reason, this kind of public property was by nature unattractive to private buyers, at least to provide them with a very high discount. But when the state sells at low prices, the public suffers a loss. It was calculated that. during privatization in the United Kingdom at the time Thatcher deliberately low price at which public goods were long on the market to the private sector had the effect of transferring 14 billion pounds net taxpayers to shareholders and other investors . In this loss, we should add other 3 billion pounds in fees paid to banks who provided the transaction of privatization. The state has actually paid some 17 billion pounds (30 billion) to the private sector to facilitate the sale of property that otherwise might not find takers. These are considerable sums of money, equivalent to almost exactly to the endowment of Harvard University, for example, or gross domestic product of Paraguay or Bosnia-Herzegovina (5). 11 is difficult to analyze it as an efficient use of public resources. Secondly, this is where the question of moral hazard. The only reason why private investors wishing to purchase public goods is apparently ineffective as the state eliminates or reduces their risk exposure. In the case of the London Underground, for example, the purchasing companies were assured that, whatever happens, they would be protected against a serious loss - thus undermining the traditional economic argument for privatization: the research profit encourages efficiency. "Laléa" in question is that (lans conditions as fortunate, the private sector would be as ineffective (IUC counterpart public - taking as much profit as possible and letting the losses borne by the state. The third argument, perhaps the most significant. cons of privatization is as follows. It is no doubt that much of the goods and services the state wants to get rid were mismanaged incompetent management, under-investment, etc.. Nevertheless, even poorly managed, postal services, railway networks, retirement homes, prisons and other services, whose privatization is planned, remain the responsibility of public authorities. Even once sold, they can not be totally abandoned to the whims of the market. They are by nature the kind of activity that someone has to regulate. This division semi-private, semi-public responsibilities essentially Collective goes back in fact a very old story. If your return is checked in the U.S. today, although it is the government which has decided to investigate you, the investigation itself will most likely be conducted by a private company . The latter has contracted to perform this service on behalf of the State, the same way that private agents are under contract with Washington to ensure safety, transport and technical expertise (with profit) in Iraq and elsewhere. Similarly, the British government now contracts with private contractors to provide home care services for seniors, formerly liability under state control.
The decline of the state?
In short, governments outsource their responsibilities to private firms who claim to manage better and at lower cost than the state itself. In the eighteenth century, it was called the leasing taxes. The first modern governments often lacked the means to collect taxes and thus proposed, form of bidding, to private parties to undertake this task. The highest bidder got the job and was free - once he had paid the agreed amount - to collect what he could and keep the proceeds. The government was therefore a discount on its expected tax revenues in exchange for money paid in advance. After the fall of the monarchy in France, it was found that in general farming of taxes was a grotesque inefficiency. First, he discredits the State, represented in the popular mind by a greedy profiteer private. In Secondly, he reported less revenue than a system of effectively managed public perception, even if only because of the margin of profit accruing to the private collector. And thirdly, we unhappy taxpayers. United States today we have a state discredited and inadequate public resources. Interestingly, we have no disgruntled taxpayers - or at least, if they are unhappy, it's usually for the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, the problem that we ourselves have created is essentially comparable to that which was facing the Old Regime. It goes today as in the eighteenth century by emptying the state's responsibilities and capabilities, we reduced his public position. The result is the "gated commnunities (6)" in every sense of the term sub-sections of society who like to think functionally independent of the community and its officials. If we deal only or mainly with private agencies, over time, we dilute our relationship with the public sector which we do not seem to need. It hardly matters that the private sector do the same things better or worse, a higher cost or lower. In both cases, we reduced our allegiance to the state and lost something vital that we should share - and that in many cases we used to share - with our fellow citizens. This process was well described by one of its greatest modern practitioner is said that Margaret Thatcher stated "such a thing as society does not exist. There are only individual men and women, and families. " But if such a thing as society does not exist, but simply individuals and the state "night watchman" - watching from afar the activities in which he plays no role - what is it that will bind us together? We already accept the existence of private police forces, private postal services, private agencies responsible for fueling the state in war and many others. We have "privatized" precisely the responsibilities which the modern state was loaded with great difficulty during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What will be the buffer between citizens and state? Certainly not the "company" strongly pressured to survive the evisceration of the public domain. Because the state is not about to disappear. Even if we deprive him of all his responsibilities in relation to services, it will - even if only as a controlling force and repression. There would be no institutions or loyalties intermediaries between the state and people: nothing would remain of the spider web services and mutual obligations that bind citizens to each other through the public space that they collectively occupy. This meant that individuals and private companies in competition for the state to divert their personal benefit. The consequences are no more attractive today than they were before the advent of the modern state. It was indeed very explicit assurance that no group of individuals can not survive long without objectives and common institutions which could prompt the state to build as we have known it. The very idea that there may be a public interest to increase the private benefit seemed to have clearly absurd liberal critics of industrial capitalism emerging. In the words of John Stuart Mill, "the idea of a company holding only by relationships and feelings born of Interest cash is essentially repulsive. "
Rethinking State
What should I do?
It starts with the state: as the embodiment of ~ collective interests, collective goals and collective goods. If we fail to re-learn to "think of the state," we will not go very far. But what should the state do precisely? At least it does not duplicate unnecessarily. As Keynes wrote: "What is important for the government is not doing things that people already have them and tin little better or a little less but to do things that, for now are not done at all. "
Now, to have had bitter experience in the last century, we know that there are things that states should certainly not do. The story presented by the twentieth century the progressive evolution of the state rested precariously on our claim to "us" - reformers, socialists, radicals - have History on our side: our projects, in the words of the late Bernard Williams, had been "acclaimed by the world" (7). We did not today as reassuring story to tell. We just survived a century doctrines claiming that with a disturbing insurance that the state should do and to remind people - by force if necessary - that the state knew what was good for them. We can not go to all this. So if we must "think the state" once again, better start to grasp the limits.
A useless rhetoric?
For similar reasons, it would be vain to resurrect the rhetoric of social democracy of the early twentieth century. During those years, the Democratic Left emerged as an alternative to different kinds of Marxist revolutionary socialism much less inclined to compromise and - in recent years - in their communist successor. There was thus by nature in social democracy is a strange schizophrenia. While walking with confidence in front of a better future, she kept throwing nervous glances over his left shoulder. We she seemed to say, are not authoritarian. We are for freedom, not repression. We are democrats who also believe in social justice, regulation of markets, and so on. Until the first goal of the Social Democrats was to convince voters that they were a radical choice in the respectable liberal system, the defensive position made sense. But today this kind of rhetoric is incoherent. It is no coincidence that as Christian Democrat Angela Merkel can win an election against his opponents in Germany Social Democrats - even at the height of a financial crisis - with a set of policies on all essential points resembles their own program. In one form or another, social democracy is the language of contemporary European politics. There are very few European politicians, and certainly even less to positions of influence, which would disengage from social democratic fundamental assumptions about the obligations of the state, although they may differ in their scope. Consequently, in Europe today, the Social Democrats have nothing distinctive to offer in France, for example, even their impulsive tendency to encourage state ownership hardly distinguishes instincts Colbert of the Gaullist right. Social democracy needs to rethink its goals. The problem does not lie in the social democratic policies, but in the language in which they are made. Since the challenge of the authoritarian left has disappeared, the insistence on "democracy" is largely redundant. We are all democrats today. But "social" means something else - probably more now that a few decades ago, when all sides were accepted without question that the public sector had a role to play.
What is so distinct from the "social" of social democratic approach to politics?
Imagine, if you will, a train station. A real train, not Pennsylvania Station in New York is a shopping sixties bankrupt, stacked on a coal cellar. I think something like Waterloo Station in London, the Gare de l'Est in Paris, the spectacular Victoria Terminus in Bombay or the superb new Berlin Hauptbahnhof. In these remarkable cathedrals of modern life, the private sector works perfectly well in his place there is no reason, after all, only at newsstands or cafes are run by the state. Just remember the dry sandwiches, wrapped in plastic, the cafes of British Railway to admit that in this area should encourage competition. But trains can not be managed in a competitive manner. Railroads - such as agriculture or the mail - are at once economic activity and a fundamental public good. In addition, you can not make a system of railways more efficiently by two trains on track to see which performs best performance Railways are a natural monopoly. So improbable, the English have in fact established a competition of this kind between bus services. But the paradox of public transport is obviously better than he did his job, the less likely it is to be "effective." A bus provides an express service for those who can afford it and prevents remote villages, where there would rise from time to time a retiree, will bring more money to its owner. But someone - the state or local municipality - must continue to provide local service unprofitable and inefficient. Otherwise, the economic benefits Short-term resulting from the removal of this benefit will be offset by long-term damage caused to the community as a whole. As might be expected, except in London where there is enough demand for this system to work, the coaches 'competitive' have therefore resulted in increased costs borne by the public sector increased rates as high that the market could bear, and attractive profits for companies express bus. Trains, like cars, are primarily a social service. Anyone could run a line of railway profitable if all he had to do was to organize the shuttle express from London to Edinburgh from Paris to Marseille, from Boston to Washington. But what kind of rail links in both directions of the localities where people do take the train from time to time? Nobody will set aside sufficient funds to cope with the economic cost is the maintenance of such a service for those rare occasions when he uses it. Only the community - the state government, local authorities - can do. Subsidies necessary always seem ineffective in the eyes of some kind it would surely economists cheaper to remove track and that everyone uses their car. In 1996, the last year before the privatization of British Rail, British Railway boasted of having government subsidies lowest of all European railways. That year, the French were planning an investment rate for their railroads of 21 pounds per capita, the Italians from 33 pounds to the British only 9 pounds (8). These differences were reflected accurately in the quality of service provided by the respective national systems. They also explain why the British rail system could be privatized only through a strong infrastructure loss was totally inadequate.
How to estimate costs?
But unlike investment demonstrates my argument. The French and Italians have long treated their railways as a public performance. Operate a train in an isolated area, even if not profitable, maintains local communities. This reduces damage to the environment by providing an alternative to road transport. The railway station and the service it provides are a symptom and a symbol of the company as a common aspiration. I suggested that ensuring the highest rail service to remote areas has a social interest even if it is economically "inefficient". This, however, raises an important question. The Social Democrats will not go very far in offering laudable social goals, which they admit themselves that they are more expensive than the alternatives. We would eventually recognize the virtues of social services, to denounce the cost ... and do nothing. We need to rethink the methods we use to assess all costs: social as economic. Let me give an example. It is cheaper to provide poor relief under the benevolence that guarantee them the right to a whole range of social services. By benevolence s> I mean the faith-based charity, private initiative and independent aid based on income as well (the food. To grant shelter, providing clothing etc.. But it is notoriously humiliating to be the recipient of such assistance. The older generation still remembers with disgust, even angrily, "the survey on resources" practiced by the British authorities on victims of depression 1930s (9), 11 is not, however humiliating to be the beneficiary of a right. If you are legally entitled to unemployment benefits, a pension, a disability allowance, housing or other municipal assistance provided by the public authority - no one investigates to determine if you dived enough down to "earn" assistance - you will not feel embarrassed to accept it. However, this kind of legal rights available to everyone is expensive. But what would happen if we treated the humiliation itself as cost, a burden to society? If we decide to "quantify" the harm done when people are stigmatized by their fellow citizens just before receiving the basic necessities of life?
In other words, what would happen if we took into account in our estimates of productivity, efficiency or well-being using the difference between a humiliating and a benefit resulting from a right? Perhaps we would conclude that the provision of social services open to all public health insurance or subsidized public transportation was in fact a cost-effective achieve our common goals. Such an exercise prepared by nature controversial how to quantify the "humiliation"? What is the measurable cost of the deprivation of access to resources of cities to individual citizens? How much are we willing to pay for a good society? It is not clear. But it is only asking these questions we can expect answers (10).
A moral critique What do we mean by a "good society"?
In a normative perspective, we could start by a "narrative" in which moral locate our collective choices. This type of story assuming the strictly economic terms that limit our conversations today. But to define our objectives in this manner is no small matter. There is no doubt that in the past, social democracy has addressed the problem of good and evil, especially since she has inherited a pre-Marxist ethical vocabulary steeped in disgust Christian for wealth and the worship of materialism in their extreme forms. But such considerations were often punctuated of ideological questions. Capitalism was doomed? If it were, a given policy progressed she anticipated her death or she could to delay it? If capitalism was not convicted, the policy choices should be designed from a different perspective. In both cases, the relevant question typically addressed Outlook "system" rather than the virtues or defects inherent in a given initiative. Such questions do not concern us most. So we are confronted more directly to the ethical implications of our choices.
What we find particularly odious in financial capitalism or the "mercantile society" as it was called the eighteenth century? What we think instinctively go wrong with our current organization and what can we do? That we find unfair? What offends our sense of ownership when we face lobbying unhindered rich at the expense of all others? What have we lost?
The answers to these questions should take the form of a moral critique of the inadequacies of the totally free market or incompetence state. We need to understand why they offend our sense of justice or fairness. We need to come back in focus for the world. Here, social democracy is of limited help as its own answer to the dilemmas of capitalism was a late formulation of moral discourse of the Enlightenment applied to "the social question." Our problems are quite different.
A new period of insecurity
We are, I believe, now entering a new period of insecurity. The last of this kind, which Keynes was a famous analysis in The Economic Cousequences of the Peace (1919), followed decades of prosperity and progress and a fantastic increase in the internationalization of existence, "globalization" that does lacked in name only. As described by Keynes, the commercial economy had spread worldwide. Trade and communication quickened to an unprecedented rate. Before 1914, the idea that the logic of economic exchanges peaceful triumph of national selfishness was widespread. Nobody expected to an abrupt end. That is what happened. We also crossed us a period of stability, certainty and the illusion of unlimited economic improvement. But it's all over now. In the foreseeable future, we will be in a state of economic insecurity as much as cultural uncertainty. We certainly have never had so little confidence in our collective goals, our environmental well-being or personal security since the Second World War. We have no idea what kind of world our children will inherit, but we can no longer delude it look at ours in a way reassuring. We need to review how the generation of our grandparents responded to similar challenges and threats. Social democracy in Europe, the New Deal and Great Society here in the United States, were explicit responses to insecurity and inequity of the time. Few people in the West are old enough to know exactly what it means to attend the collapse of our world (11). We find it difficult to conceive of a total breakdown of liberal institutions, a complete disintegration of democratic consensus. But it was precisely this kind of collapse that caused the Keynes-Hayek debate and which are born the Keynesian consensus and compromise social-democratic consensus and compromise in which we grew up and whose charm was overshadowed by his very success . If social democracy has a future, it will be as a social democracy of fear (12). Rather than trying to restore a discourse of optimism about progress, we should first inform us about the recent past. The first task of the dissident extremists today is to remind their public achievements of the twentieth century and the probable consequences of our reckless rush to dismantle them. To put it bluntly, the left has something to keep. Is the d, 'ilo inherited the ambitious modernist thirst to destroy and to innovate on behalf of a universal project. We need the Social Democrats, whose style and features a modest ambition, speak with more confidence of past achievements. The growth of public social service, construction, throughout a century, a public sector whose goods and services and demonstrate our collective identity and promote our common goals of the institution with Social faith in me-right and its benefits as a social obligation: it is not meager accomplishments. They have been little more than partial should not worry. If we should remember a thing of the twentieth century would be to have at least understood that the answer is more perfect, more implications are terrifying. Improvements in imperfect circumstances are unsatisfactory that we can expect the best and probably all we should seek. Others have spent the last three decades to undo and methodically to undermine these improvements : What should we put more angry than we are.
What should also concern us, if only for prudential reasons why were we so eager to demolish the dams in place with great effort by our predecessors? Are we so sure there will be no flood?
can fight for a social democracy of fear. Abandon the work done for a century is to betray those who came before us and generations yet to come. It would be nice, but wrong to assume that the social democracy, or something resembling it, is the future that we peindrions as an ideal world. It does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options currently available, it is better than anything else. In the words of Orwell, Homage to Catalonia in reflecting on his recent experiences in revolutionary Barcelona "There are many things in there that I have not understood that, somehow, I did the same not, but I immediately saw that they deserved to be fought for them. "I think it is no less true that we can save the memory of the social democracy of the twentieth century.
(1) See "High Gini IS loosed upon Asia", The Economist, August 11, 2007. (2) Translator's note: "Act on individual responsibility and work." (3) Translator's note: Hospice. (4) Ndt The equivalent would be "queens of allowance" in French. (5) Cf Massinio Florio Great Kills Divestiture Evahiating the Welfare Impact of the British Privatization, 1979-1997, MIT Press, 2064, p. 163. For Harvard, cf. Harvard endosvment posts solid positive return, "Harvard Gazette, September 12, 2008, For the GDP of Paraguay or Bosnia-Herzegovina see www.cia.gov / library / publications / the-world-factbook / geos / xx. html. (7) Bernard Williams, Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 114. (8) For these figures, cf. my "I Was a famous victory," The New York Review, July 19, 2001. (9) For comparable aid humiliating memories. cf. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Ballantine. 1987. Casey Selwyn thank you to my attention. (10) The International Commission on Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, chaired by Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen advised by, recently recommended a different approach to measuring well-being. But despite remarkable originality of their proposals, neither Sen nor Stiglitz have done little better than to propose better ways of assessing economic performance, the non-economic concerns do not occupy a prominent place in their report. See www.stiglitz-zen-fitoussi.fr/en/index.htm. (11) Bosnia whose citizens know only too well what is entailed such a collapse is obviously the exception. (12) By analogy with The Liberalism of Fear, penetrating into text by Judith Shklar on inequality and political power.
0 comments:
Post a Comment