Ill Fares the Land (22 page)

The silence with which western European social democrats greeted the atrocities in the Balkans—a faraway region of which they preferred to remain ignorant—has not been forgotten by the victims. Social democrats need to learn once again how to think beyond their borders: there is something deeply incoherent about a radical politics grounded in aspirations to equality or social justice that is deaf to broader ethical challenges and humanitarian ideals.

George Orwell once observed that “[t]he thing that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for it, the ‘mystique’ of Socialism, is the idea of equality.”
³⁸
This is still the case. It is the growing
inequality
in and between societies that generates so many social pathologies. Grotesquely unequal societies are also unstable societies. They generate internal division and, sooner or later, internal strife—usually with undemocratic outcomes.

I found it particularly reassuring to learn, from my twelve year old interlocutor, that such matters are once again being discussed by schoolchildren—even if mention of ‘socialism’ does bring the conversation to a shuddering halt. When I began university teaching, in 1971, students spoke obsessively of socialism, revolution, class conflict and the like—usually with reference to what was then called ‘the third world’: nearer to home, these matters appeared largely resolved. Over the course of the next two decades, the conversation retreated to more self-referential concerns: feminism, gay rights and identity politics. Among the more politically sophisticated, there emerged an interest in human rights and the resurgent language of ‘civil society’. For a brief moment around 1989, young people in western universities were drawn to liberation efforts not only in eastern Europe and China but also in Latin America and South Africa: liberty— from enslavement, coercion, repression and atrocity—was the great theme of the day.

And then came the ’90s: the first of two lost decades, during which fantasies of prosperity and limitless personal advancement displaced all talk of political liberation, social justice or collective action. In the English-speaking world, the selfish amoralism of Thatcher and Reagan—“Enrichissez-vous!”, in the words of the 19th century French statesman Guizot—gave way to the vacant phrase-making of baby-boom politicians. Under Clinton and Blair, the Atlantic world stagnated smugly.

Until the late ’80s, it was quite uncommon to encounter promising students who expressed any interest in attending business school. Indeed, business schools themselves were largely unknown outside of North America. Today, the aspiration—and the institution—are commonplace. And in the classroom, the enthusiasm of an earlier generation for radical politics has given way to blank mystification. In 1971 almost everyone was, or wanted to be thought, some sort of a ‘Marxist’. By the year 2000, few undergraduates had any idea what that even meant, much less why it was once so appealing.

So it would be pleasing to conclude with the thought that we are on the brink of a new age, and that the selfish decades lie behind us. But were my students of the 1990s and after truly selfish? Assured from all quarters that radical change lay in the past, they saw around them no examples to follow, no arguments to engage and no goals to pursue. 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. As we know from Tolstoy, “[t]here are no conditions of life to which a man cannot get accustomed, especially if he sees them accepted by everyone around him.”

In writing this book, I hope I have offered some guidance to those—the young especially—trying to articulate their objections to our way of life. However, this is not enough. As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must
act
upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.