The United States has officially demanded an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Israel has vowed to continue its "war for survival." Meanwhile, the peacemakers shuttle sadly round the Middle East, oblivious to the fact that no one is listening to them. All peace efforts are still based on the resumption of the "Oslo … Continue reading Try Trade for Peace, Instead of Land for Peace
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Maybe the World Hasn’t Changed That Much
It is fashionable to say that the suicide bombing of New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 has profoundly changed the world. All press comment has been based on this assumption, with appropriately "deep" analyses of its effects on international relations, the world economy, globalization and so on. I want to … Continue reading Maybe the World Hasn’t Changed That Much
What Makes the World Go Round?
The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 by Niall Ferguson Basic Books, 552 pp., $30.00 1. In 1987 the historian Paul Kennedy published a controversial book called The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Its message was that the United States … Continue reading What Makes the World Go Round?
The World on a String
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism by George Soros Public Affairs, 365 pp., $26.00 George Soros is the best-known financial speculator of our time, godfather of hedge funds, those fast-moving and largely unregulated raiders in the corporate jungle that make their killings from fluctuations in the prices of stocks, commodities, currencies. When he writes books readers … Continue reading The World on a String
The politics of euro economics
Throughout history there have been governments without central banks. But until the European Central Bank was set up, there have never been central banks without governments. Central banks are modern inventions: governments are very ancient. The logical connection between money and power is potentially contradictory. For trade to take place the value of money needs … Continue reading The politics of euro economics
The case for a smaller state revisited
Conspicuously missing from the coming British general election will be a debate about the size of the state. An uneasy consensus rules that the present scope of activities is about right. The government spends or dispenses 40 per cent of the national income. That is quite a bit more than in 1960 but a lot … Continue reading The case for a smaller state revisited
Essay: Ideas and the world
This week sees the publication of the third and final volume of Robert Skidelsky’s biography of John Maynard Keynes, one of the greatest and most influential thinkers that Britain has ever produced. We asked Lord Skidelsky to tell us about his biographical adventure and, now that the labour is done, to say what he thinks … Continue reading Essay: Ideas and the world
What’s Left of Marx?
Review of Karl Marx: A Life by Francis Wheen Norton, 431 pp., $27.95 1. When Karl Marx was twenty-four, a contemporary wrote of him: "Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel fused into one person…and you have Dr. Marx." Marx was not one of those brilliant young men who fail to live up to their … Continue reading What’s Left of Marx?
Let’s get private
BY the time this article goes to press, Gordon Brown will have delivered his preBudget statement and Michael Portillo will have delivered his attack on it. This predictable swordplay will not conceal the fact that intellectual rigor mortis has long set in over what used to be the liveliest debate in British politics - the … Continue reading Let’s get private
All in the Family
Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia by James Fox Simon and Schuster, 496 pp., $30.00 1. In the early 1980s, the English writer James Fox was shown a large trunk at his grandfather's house in Northamptonshire covered in Cunard and White Star steamship stickers. On inspection it turned out to contain thousands of letters between … Continue reading All in the Family
Robert Skidelsky 