David Marquand

David Marquand's account of how the Labour Party made itself electable and why it remained in the wilderness for so many years now has a new introduction and controversial new chapters on Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair.

This analysis of Britain's current social condition attempts to explain how and why Britain has reached this stage. The author brings together historical, philosophical, political and economic arguments to support his theories and traces the roots of some recent problems back to the 19th century. The text examines particularly the dissolution of Keynsian social democracy, the governing philosophy of the post-war period and the poverty of neo-liberal and neo-socialist policies offered by the New Right and the New Left, which cannot encompass the complexities of an adjustment policy the country is currently facing.

The follies and failures of bankers, regulators and governments have loomed large in public debate over the past five years. In this passionate and hard-hitting book, David Marquand digs deeper. At the heart of our predicament, he argues, lies a profound crisis of our moral economy, our public culture and our democracy. The empire of money has grown remorselessly for three decades, narrowing the space for a common life without which democratic institutions are empty shells. Increasingly, worth is equated with wealth and greed is thought to be good. Inequality has soared as a narrow elite of the super-rich has raced away from the rest of us. Humiliation at the bottom of the pile is matched by callous indifference at the top. Marquand's message is plain: we cannot go on as we are. He sets out the framework of a new public philosophy, based on the values of stewardship, democratic dialogue, civic engagement and freedom from humiliation, to spring the trap into which we have stumbled.--

100 years ago, secular liberals thought religion would gradually recede from the public sphere and become an exclusively private concern. Today, organized religion is still a powerful political force in most parts of the world. But is it an ally or an enemy of pluralist democracy?