Surviving Capitalism: how we learned to live with the market and remained almost human by Erik Ringmar Anthem Press, 210pp, £16.99 Erik Ringmar has written a fascinating short book about the different forms of historical resistance to capitalism. Since its earliest appearance, capitalism has called forth social arrangements designed to maintain our humanity in the … Continue reading Truck and Barter
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Essay: A Chinese Homecoming
I had been plotting my return to China for about a year, and now an invitation from Lanxin Xiang, author of a book on the Boxer rebellion, to lecture in Shanghai in September 2005 made it possible. I say "return," because the last time I had been on the mainland was in 1948, when I … Continue reading Essay: A Chinese Homecoming
The Chinese Shadow II
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz Basic Books, 321 pp., $26.95 China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 342 pp., $26.00 China's Urban Transition by John Friedmann University of Minnesota Press, 168 … Continue reading The Chinese Shadow II
Dag Hammarskjold’s Assumptions and the Future of the UN
Published in The Adventures of Peace: Dag Hammarskjold and the future of the UN, edited by Sten Ask and Anna Mark-Jungkvist (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Hammarskjold’s Context The United Nations, of which Dag Hammarskjold became Secretary-General in 1953, had already had to establish itself in a world very different from the one imagined by those who … Continue reading Dag Hammarskjold’s Assumptions and the Future of the UN
The Chinese Shadow
Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz Basic Books, 321 pp., $26.95 China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World by Ted C. Fishman Scribner, 342 pp., $26.00 1. The "rise" of China has suddenly become the all-absorbing topic … Continue reading The Chinese Shadow
A fatal flaw at the heart of Bush and Blair’s democratic crusade
THERE ARE TWO competing visions of international relations. On the one side is the Blair-Bush “new” doctrine, which links world security to the spread of Western values. On the other side is the traditional doctrine of national sovereignty, which precludes intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. In between wobbles the United Nations, whose … Continue reading A fatal flaw at the heart of Bush and Blair’s democratic crusade
The Reinvention of Blair
Published in The Blair Effect 2001-5 edited by Anthony Seldon and Dennis Kavanagh (Cambridge University Press, 2005) In 1992, when Tony Blair was Shadow Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, the actual Home Secretary, said of him ‘he’s so shadowy it’s ridiculous’, and went on to quote a jingle: ‘As I was going up a stair, I … Continue reading The Reinvention of Blair
A cautionary tale about how we got terrified of the risk monster
CLEVER ELSIE, soon to be married to Hans, was sent down to the cellar by her mother to get some beer. She saw a pickaxe above her which had been forgotten by the masons. Clever Elsie was paralysed by the thought that “if I should marry Hans and we should get a little baby, and … Continue reading A cautionary tale about how we got terrified of the risk monster
Arrested Development
The End of Poverty: economic possibilities for our time by Jeffrey Sachs; with a foreword by Bono Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 397pp, £20 Jeffrey Sachs has the mind of an economist but the temperament of a missionary. His thought and striving are in the service of his passion to make humans materially better off. … Continue reading Arrested Development
Why a weak government would mean better rule
The first question to ask about a political system is: what are the checks on the uncontrolled exercise of executive power? Britain does not have a written constitution with a formal division of powers, but the traditional answer would have been parliament, which, by successfully asserting the right to authorise spending, was able to check … Continue reading Why a weak government would mean better rule
Robert Skidelsky 