George Kennan, the American diplomat, described the scene in his memoirs: ‘The disaster that befell this area with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel in modern European experience. There w...
History is not written as it was experienced, nor should it be. The inhabitants of the past know better than we do what it was like to live there, but they were not well placed, most of them, to under...
If it is to be taken seriously again, the Left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitatio...
If we don’t respect public goods; if we permit or encourage the privatization of public space, resources and services; if we enthusiastically support the propensity of a younger generation to look exc...
Keynes himself had taken the view that capitalism would not survive if its workings were reduced to merely furnishing the wealthy with the means to get wealthier. It was
Keynes himself had taken the view that capitalism would not survive if its workings were reduced to merely furnishing the wealthy with the means to get wealthier.
Keynes’s warning on this matter: [i]t is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better...
Love, it seems to me, is that condition in which one is most contentedly oneself. If this sounds paradoxical, remember Rilke’s admonition: love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves...
Our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more. For the last thirty years, when asking ourselves whether we support a policy, a proposal or an initiative,...
Selfishness is uncomfortable even for the selfish. Hence the rise of gated communities: the privileged don't like to be reminded of their privileges - if these carry morally dubious connotations.
So what have Keynes’s ‘madmen in authority’ done with the ideas they inherited from defunct economists? They have set about dismantling the properly economic powers and initiatives of the state.
The chief shortcoming of the old public services was the restrictive regulations and facilities—one-size-fits-all—with
The idea that it was the state’s business to know what was good for people—while we accept it uncomplainingly in school curriculums and hospital practices—smacked of eugenics and perhaps euthanasia.
The likely consequences of this coming age of uncertainty—when a growing number of people will have good reason to fear job loss and long-term redundancy—will be a return to dependency upon the state.
The loss of social purpose articulated through public services actually increases the unrestrained powers of the over-mighty state.
The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cu...
The narcissism of student movements, new Left ideologues and the popular culture of the ’60s generation invited a conservative backlash.
The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and injustice as under authoritarian rule, and in addition their trains do not ru...
The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike.
They convey neither conviction nor authority.
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