Is military intervention over Kosovo justified? Dear Michael 3rd May 1999 I have been instinctively against Nato's bombing of Serbia from the day it started on 24th March. I was-I dare say like you and many others-incredulous that Nato seemed to have no military strategy except to bomb Serbia to smithereens. I could not believe … Continue reading Debate: Is Military Intervention over Kosovo Justified? Skidelsky vs. Ignatieff
Author: Robert Skidelsky
Economist and member of the House of Lords
Giant
Morgan: American Financier by Jean Strouse Random House, 796 pp., $34.95 When John Pierpont Morgan died in 1913, he was the most powerful banker in the world. As the main conduit for British foreign investment into North America he helped transform the United States from a society of yeoman farmers into an industrial colossus. More … Continue reading Giant
Doing good and being good
Shaw was much older than Keynes. He was born in 1856, Keynes in 1883. He was a Victorian, Keynes an Edwardian. When their lives started to criss-cross after the First World War, Keynes was in his forties, Shaw already in his seventies. There is a photograph of them together on the steps of the Fitzwilliam … Continue reading Doing good and being good
Essay: The real problem with capitalism is the markets
IN RECENT weeks the newspapers have been full of the world financial crisis. Experts have seriously wondered whether it will lead to a global recession, even another Great Depression. Underlying that question is an even deeper one: will the new globalism that arose from the ruins of Communism and statism in the Eighties have an … Continue reading Essay: The real problem with capitalism is the markets
Diary: Gulag Baden-Baden
Friday 27th March Edward (my son) and I board the flight to Moscow at Terminal 4, Heathrow. I am to take part in a conference at Perm, organised by the Moscow School of Political Studies. Perm is on the edge of Siberia; a city of more than 1m people with a cultural past (Diaghilev was … Continue reading Diary: Gulag Baden-Baden
Beyond Statism
Writing at the turn of the century, the English jurist A.V. Dicey predicted that the age of individualism would give way to an 'age of collectivism'. Collectivism, he wrote, meant 'government for the good of the people by experts and officials who think they know what is good for the people...better than the mass of … Continue reading Beyond Statism
What’s wrong with global capitalism?
False Dawn: Delusions of global capitalism by John Gray Granta Books £17.99 While reading John Gray's False Dawn, a diatribe against global capitalism, I had to keep reminding myself that I was reviewing a book, not a person. Gray's intellectual gyrations have become legendary. I am told he was a socialist in the 1970s. He … Continue reading What’s wrong with global capitalism?
The First 100 Years: A policy that crippled: The Gold Standard debate
A hundred years ago all the main countries of the world adhered to a fixed-exchange rate system known as the gold standard. Their domestic currencies were freely convertible into specified amounts of gold; they maintained fixed proportions between the quantity of money in circulation and the gold reserves of their central banks. An ounce of … Continue reading The First 100 Years: A policy that crippled: The Gold Standard debate
Ownership in a Post-Collectivist Society
The two key terms in the discussion 'ownership' and 'post-collectivism' are notoriously difficult to define. Perhaps I can give a better account of my position if I approach it from standpoint of 'post-collectivism'. In standard political (and I think economic) thought, collectivism is synonymous with collective, usually state, ownership of the means of production,distribution and … Continue reading Ownership in a Post-Collectivist Society
Book Review: Marquand’s Missing Link
Review of The New Reckoning: Capitalism, States and Citizens by David Marquand Polity Press, 1997 David Marquand is an engaging and stylish political thinker, who moves adventurously across academic frontiers and straddles the worlds of scholarship and politics. His main interest is in what may be called the "government of Britain" question; the failure, as … Continue reading Book Review: Marquand’s Missing Link
Robert Skidelsky 