Ill Fares the Land

by Tony Judt

“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” —ALEXIS

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.

People who live in private spaces contribute actively to the dilution and corrosion of the public space.

And once we cease to value the public over the private, surely we shall come in time to have difficulty seeing just why we should value law (the public good par excellence) over force.

Political demobilization, beyond the healthy retreat from ideological polarization which characterized the growth of political stability in postwar western Europe, is a dangerous and slippery slope. It is also cumulative: if we feel excluded from the management of our collective affairs, we shall not

bother to speak up about them. In that case, we should not be surprised to discover that no one is listening to us.

Freedom is freedom. But if it leads to inequality, poverty and cynicism, then we should say so rather than sweep its shortcomings under the rug in the name of the triumph of liberty over oppression.

Despite being the chief beneficiaries of welfare legislation in much of Europe and North America, the growing share of western electorates that identified with the ‘middle’ was increasingly skeptical and resentful of the tax burden imposed on it in order to maintain egalitarian institutions.

Politicians need to find the courage to insist (in this case) upon a significant raising of the retirement age—and then justify themselves to their constituents. But such changes are unpopular, and politicians today eschew unpopularity at almost any cost. To a very considerable extent, the dilemmas and shortcomings of the welfare state are a result of political pusillanimity rather than economic incoherence.

if we accept some limitations—and we always do—why not others? Why are we so sure that some planning, or progressive taxation, or the collective ownership of public goods, are intolerable restrictions on liberty; whereas closed-circuit television cameras, state bailouts for investment banks ‘too big to fail’, tapped telephones and expensive foreign wars are acceptable burdens for a free people to bear?

We cannot hope to reconstruct our dilapidated public conversation—no less than our crumbling physical infrastructure—unless we become sufficiently angry at our present condition.

But republics and democracies exist only by virtue of the engagement of their citizens in the management of public affairs. If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants.

Elections to Parliament, congressional elections and the choice of National Assembly members are still our only means for converting public opinion into collective action under law.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Only in countries where any liberal reform was prevented by authoritarian rulers did the social question rephrase itself as a political challenge, typically ending in violent confrontation.

Nor can we retreat to religion: whatever we think of accounts of God’s purposes and His expectations of men, the fact is that we cannot hope to rediscover the kingdom of faith. In the developed world especially, there are fewer and fewer people for whom religion is either a necessary or sufficient motive for public or private action.

It is the gap between the inherently ethical nature of public decision-making and the utilitarian quality of contemporary political debate that accounts for the lack of trust felt towards politics and politicians. Liberals are too quick to mock the bland ethical nostrums of religious leaders, contrasting them with the complexity and seduction of modern life.

To convince others that something is right or wrong we need a language of ends, not means.

the idea of moderation—so familiar to generations of moralists—is difficult to articulate today. Big is not always better, more not always desirable; but we are discouraged from expressing the thought.

What we lack is a moral narrative: an internally coherent account that ascribes purpose to our actions in a way that transcends them.

we are all by now familiar with the tension between wealth creation and environmental protection. Some sort of mutual restraint will be required if we are to take seriously all of our desires: this is a truism for any consensual system. But it speaks volumes to the degradation of public life that it sounds so idealistic today.

increasing opportunity for those at the bottom does nothing to reduce the prospects for those already well-placed.

Whatever Americans fondly believe, their government has always had its fingers in the economic pie. What distinguishes the USA from every other developed country has been the widespread belief to the contrary.

We have freed ourselves of the mid-20th century assumption—never universal but certainly widespread—that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is—by definition and always—the worst available option.

But that the state needs an agenda and a way of carrying it out is uncontentious.

Karl Popper, Hayek’s fellow Austrian, had something to say: “[a] free market is paradoxical. If the state does not interfere, then other semi-political organizations, such as monopolies, trusts, unions, etc. may interfere, reducing the freedom of the market to a fiction.”

The problem here is that the market cannot cater to every case of what economists call ‘option demand’: the amount that any one individual would be willing to pay to have a facility to hand for those infrequent occasions when he wants to use it.

A stable authoritarian regime is a lot more desirable for most of its citizens than a failed democratic state.

why have we been in such a hurry to tear down the dikes laboriously set in place by our predecessors? Are we so sure that there are no floods to come?

If the purpose of life as lived by everyone you see is to succeed in business, then this will become the default goal of all but the most independent young person.