INSPIRATION AND REALITY
by Robert Oakeshott
Michael Russell, £20, pp. 410, ISBN 0859552713

Here are two weighty tomes challenging the morality and practicality of modern capitalism, both of which might have passed unnoticed if they had appeared during the palmy days of the recently expired bull market. Then, it seemed beyond argument that the well-oiled mechanism by which companies make profits which accumulate as investment funds to pay our pensions was truly a thing of beauty, unimprovable by state intervention, or the imposition of unwieldy notions of corporate social responsibility; still less so by the adoption of utopian models of mutual ownership.

But that was last year. Now, the stock market crash, the pension crisis and the Enron scandal are upon us. The money mechanism we thought so marvellous no longer looks capable of providing for our old age, partly because we are all going to live longer but also partly because the mechanism itself has been so incompetently and greedily managed. So maybe we should consider the alternatives after all.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP