The Good Society

by Walter Lippmann

The Good Society is a critical text in the history of liberalism. Initially a series of articles published in a variety of Lippmann's favorite magazines, as the whole evolved, it became a frontal assault against totalitarian tendencies within American society. Lippmann took to task those who sought to improve the lot of mankind by undoing the work of their predecessors and by undermining movements in which men struggle to be free. This book is a strong indictment of programs of reform that are at odds with the liberal tradition, and it is critical of those who ask people to choose between security and liberty. The Good Society falls naturally into two segments. In the first, Lippmann shows the errors and common fallacies of faith in government as the solution to all problems. He says, "from left to right, from communist to conservative. They all believe the same fundamental doctrine. All the philosophies go into battle singing the same tune with slightly different words." In the second part of the book, Lippmann offers reasons why liberalism lost sight of its purpose and suggests the first principles on which it can flourish again. Lippmann argues that liberalism's revival is inevitable because no other system of government can work, given the kind of economic world mankind seeks. He did not write The Good Society to please adherents of any political ideology. Lippmann challenges all philosophies of government, and yet manages to present a positive program. Bewildered liberals and conservatives alike will find this work a successful effort to synthesize a theory of liberalism with the practice of a strong democracy. Gary Dean Best has provided the twenty-first century reader a clear-eyed context for interpreting Lippmann's defense of classical liberalism. The Good Society is the eleventh in a series of books written by Walter Lippmann reissued by Transaction with new introductions and in a paperback format. As with other major figures of the twentieth century such as Thorstein Veblen, Peter Drucker, Margaret Mead, and Richard Hoggart, these are classic books with contemporary perspectives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, History, Economics, Society

452 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator who gained notoriety for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War. Lippmann was twice awarded (1958 and 1962) a Pulitzer Prize for his syndicated newspaper column, "Today and Tomorrow."

Reviews

[Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recently heightened interest in the intellectual history of neoliberalism has given this impressive work a renewed sense of importance. Published in 1937, The Good Society had a notable impact on some of the key early figures of neoliberal thought, including F. A. Hayek. Even as Lippmann distanced himself from the neoliberals after WW2, the arguments he presents in this book remained inspirational for them. Two ideas, in particular, stand out from the book in this regard.

First is related to Lippmann's rejection of centralised planning as a practice to organise the economy. The significant idea here is not so much Lippmann's insistence that planning inevitably leads to totalitarianism and tyranny; much more influential was his understanding of the economy as an 'unsystematic' system that was simply too complex to be (successfully) planned, or even understood for that matter - and following from this, his argument that a true liberal government should let go of any desire to direct the economy, and instead concentrate on fine-tuning the rules that constitute the economy, i.e., those that shape the market interactions of free individuals.

Second has to do with the way Lippmann defines liberalism as a project of, and for, law. For Lippmann, liberalism is essentially about the defence of the rule of law, which protects the individual from arbitrary uses of power. He also argues that a liberal government should not be about controlling the actions of citizens, but about administering justice. The state, in other words, appears for Lippmann as a neutral judge between conflicting interest groups. Accordingly, he argues that all public officials, including legislators and executives, ought to primarily see themselves as judges, rather than as 'leaders' who seek to change the world according to some political programme. Such an image of government, whose power dissolves into the impersonal administering of justice based on the rule of law and where all officials from the local to the national level restrain themselves from exercising any discretion in favour of political interests, proved to be highly compelling for the neoliberal movement that sought to instrumentalise the law in favour of the economic rights of transnational capital and to tie the hands of democratically elected bodies.

Aside from its affinities with and influence on early neoliberalism, the work is highly interesting (and enjoyable!) in the way it articulates a critique of the intellectual and political demise of nineteenth-century liberalism. This includes a rather original take on the problems with classical economics, a science that, Lippmann argues, started to confuse the models it built with the real world. Economists failed to realise that, instead of instrumentalising their models for the defence of the status quo, they ought to have used them as sources of social critique and as guides for liberal reform. This lesson, again, was one that the neoliberals would heed.

[Giff Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I include a series of quotes, to give readers a sense of both Lippmann’s philosophical thesis, and his cogent writing style:

“While it is perfectly true that the market determines how labor and capital can be effectively invested to satisfy popular demands, the market is, humanly speaking, a ruthless sovereign.” (p. 171)

“Broadly speaking, the market does regulate the allocation of capital and labor with some efficiency. But there is a very large margin of error, which in human terms means personal misery, arising from the fact that the choice of careers and the investment of personal savings are long commitments; whereas the short-term fluctuations of prices are often misleading, and yet sufficiently violent to wreck many lives before men can readapt themselves.” (p. 171-2)

“That anyone who thought he was preserving the system of free enterprise should have persuaded himself to believe that the law must leave men free to destroy the patrimony of their children is one of the curiosities of human reason.” (p. 213) (Remember that this was written almost 40 years before the concept of and physics behind the “global warming” phenomenon was first articulated.)

“The very fact that the rate of interest is so low that there is not sufficient inducement to attract capital to private enterprise would appear to be proof that unless the excess savings are publicly invested they will be hoarded and wasted. For these excess savings do not fructify industry; on the contrary they represent wealth withheld from use, and this withholding, whether in hoards or imprudent investment, is accompanied by the unemployment and extreme poverty of the marginal workers . . . When these conditions obtain, wealth is maldistributed, and in so far as the maldistribution is not corrected at its source by the suppression of unearned increments of monopoly and necessitous bargaining, it has to be corrected by taxation and public investment. . . . To divert excess savings from the hoards of the rich and to plough them back into the improvement of the quality of the people and their estate is, therefore, required not only by the long view of the imponderable national interest, not only as an expedient to allay discontent, not only as a matter of social justice, but as a requisite for preserving the equilibrium of the exchange economy itself.” (p. 229-30) (Note, this was written more than 75 years prior to Thomas Piketty’s “Capital”.)

“The Founders of the American Republic realized that the demagogue is not a romantic fellow who appears now and then, but that he appears whenever government is not effectively representative. Demagoguery is the falsification of representative government, the cultivation of the transient and apparent rather than of the considered and real will of the people.” (p. 256)

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lucid examination of the history of liberalism with a proposal for its future trajectory. It argues the fascinating thesis that liberalism was originally a radical social critique that was eventually transformed into a tool to protect vested interests, and that modern liberalism's impotence was the root cause for the ideological disarray of the mid-twentieth century.

The Good Society does have a few flaws in my opinion. After reading numerous self-assertions that he had compiled a radical political programme, I found his actual policy proposals to be surprisingly tame. I also thought that many of the principles he used to critique what he perceived as a bankrupt liberalism and authoritarian collectivism implied a further critique of the dominant social system than he was willing to make. Despite some issues, Lippmann synthesized and contrasted an impressive breadth of philosophical views in the context of the great political questions of his age. Though I disagreed with some of his analysis and policy proposals, I think that the book's animating principles of disgust with relationships of dominance/subordination and celebration of man's unrealized creative faculties should be defining tenets in any viable liberalism.

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lippmann had a view between keynes and Hayek . Both of them were very different from each other , Keynes was very liberal whereas Hayek wasnot.Walter is complicated altogether as he tries to get something in between these two economics but this book gave Shiller the idea to bring up his book
This makes it a must read.

[Prakhar Bindal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written during the Great Depression. A corruscating defense of the morality of capitalism.