Mr Hutton on the glories of Europe - Will Hutton, The World We're In - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Jan, 2003 by George Wedd

The World We're In. Will Hutton. Little, Brown. [pounds sterling]17.99. 409 pages. ISBN 0-316-85871-4.

A few years ago, Will Hutton, then a journalist and now of the Industrial Society, wrote The State We're In, an influential plea for some sort of social democracy and the Third Way, which this reviewer remembers principally because it had absolutely no reference to computers, the Internet or IT generally. His latest effort, which has a broader sweep across Europe and the US, shows that he has taken this on board; there are now five entries in the index for IT.

Mr Hutton's thesis is a simple one: the US has been taken over by a conservative revolution whose hallmarks are individualism, corporate growth, globalisation and selfishness. This is a Bad Thing. The European Union, in contrast, largely thanks to its Christian tradition, has the potential to develop a better-rounded culture with a sense of community. This does, however, depend on the completion of the political union. You only have to get to page two to find Mr Hutton declaiming that 'the quest for European union is one of the great rousing and crucial political projects of our time', and throwing in for good measure 'we should, of course, join the euro'.

The author's attack on American society and its economy is rousing, sustained and on the whole well-researched, if rather one-sided. He thinks it derives from John Locke's ideas falling into the fertile soil of the frontier, with its cult of the individual struggling with nature to make his own way in the world, neither helped nor hindered by government. His ideas about America's intellectual history, at least as set out here, are flimsy and superficial; there is no mention of Jefferson, for instance, or the 'Federalist' debate, and one soon realises that this is not trying to be a magisterial, historic survey but simply a tract to argue a case. He thinks America is obsessed with the rights of property. Who owns a company? The shareholders, of course. What, therefore, is the company's duty? To maximise shareholder value, and nothing else. Has it no duty to its employees, the community in which it is set, to the nation or to the environment? No: it has, of course, contractual duties, and legislation may constr ain its behaviour; but there is no 'public domain' of which it forms part.

Will Hutton goes further than merely making a moral attack. America, he thinks, is not even very successful on its own terms. A good idea of its corporate success is 'smoke and mirrors' (Enron comes in handy here). The average working man in America leads a hard life, not particularly well-paid, insecure in his job, working the longest hours in any Western country bar Portugal, unsupported by public health care and constantly under threat from even cheaper labour in Mexico. The poor are poorer (relatively speaking) and the rich richer (absolutely). This is all true, but two hundred pages of it do become rather wearisome. The English is clear, simple, and good-quality journalism, but unvaried in tone and implacable in making its case. It never becomes a rant, but occasionally one finds oneself echoing Cromwell's words: 'think it possible that you might be mistaken...'.

When Mr Hutton turns to Europe, his tone is rather less confident. Europe has the seeds of greatness and goodness in it (he thinks), but, my goodness, the seedlings do require tender loving care. He traces Europe's belief in a 'public domain' back to the early Church; he might have gone back to the New Testament, but he sticks at St John Chrysostom. Perhaps the fourth century will do. This leads him to a general preference for the southern and Catholic traditions and attitudes, and he does not have much to say about the northern, Protestant and capitalist streak in the European character: one did not see any reference to Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism--old stuff, probably.

Wisely, he never discusses the European Union we actually have--slow, obstructive, and riddled with minor corruption (and sometimes, as the Santer Commission showed, not so minor) most of which, in this reviewer's experience, comes from the southern half. Say what you like about Germans, Danes, Swedes--and Brits--they all hold corruption in horror. They are only half the union, and will soon not even be that.

Will Hutton's argument is that Europe believes in a 'public domain', where a wider range of public goods than America accepts can be created. They range from justice (needless to say, he approves of Rawls) to clean air by way of health, old age pensions and anything you like to think of. All might roughly be described as 'Third Way Social Democracy', in which the market is tamed by making companies aware of all their stakeholders, workers, customers, pensioners and people living down-wind of their smokestacks, and in which we are all willing to pay higher taxes. It does not occur to him that we have had half a century of this, and there is a good deal of disillusion with the whole concept of a 'public sector' with a higher, nobler ethos than the common herd.