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Another Interesting Book
Okay, then you think of a better title for this! Hat-tip InstapunditThe Anglosphere Challenge to the Political Left "People who define themselves primarily as members of collective entities, whether families, religions, racial or ethnic groups, political movements, or even corporations, cannot be the basis of a civil society. Individuals must be free to dissociate themselves from such collectivities without prejudice and reaffiliate with others in a civil society. Societies that place individuals under the permanent discipline of inherited or assigned collectivities, and permanently bind them into such, remain bogged down in family favoritism, ethnic, racial, or religious factionalism, or systems such as the 'crony capitalism' which has marked in particular East Asia and Latin America." -- James C. Bennett, The Anglosphere Challenge The long first chapter of writer James C. Bennett's new book, "The Anglosphere Challenge," is a fascinating combination of cultural anthropology and technological prognostication. It led me to reflect on a number of issues. 1) Our Anglospheric culture, as Bennett calls it, enables people to form and break relationships easily. In economist's terms, the costs of entry and exit are low. 2) The ability to formulate and dissolve partnerships is very important in the real world of business, yet it receives relatively little attention in business school, much less in economics. 3) In the 1960's and 1970's, a book with the ambition, scope, and intellectual power of The Anglosphere Challenge would have been written by an academic. 4) Today's political Left is focused on group solidarity rather than on building a coalition. What Causes Prosperity and Democracy? In Learning Economics, I raise the question What Causes Prosperity?. Bennett answers that economic prosperity and political freedom/democracy both stem from what he calls "civil society." By this, he means the networks of associations that people form, reminiscent of de Tocqueville's observation and so forth A long article, but very interesting. And another addition to my books I want list.
Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-26 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=54647 |