“Acknowledgements” are normally
the least-read section of any book – into which are pored often embarrassingly-excessive
expression of thankful debts. Indeed if the book is American, the section will read
like an Oscar speech.
But Paul Collier’s “Acknowledgements”
(unusually in the end-section) made me think about the whole issue of who an
author thinks (s)he is writing for – and how that affects the style and content
of a book
He explains that, having
started with a review of some books, he realised that what was really needed was
“a synthesis of moral philosophy, political
economics, finance, economic geography, social psychology and social policy”
and that he then proceeded to
identify and work with a small “brains trust” of individuals in these various
fields he was able to find within the enclaves of Oxford University
We imagine that an author is
writing for us – if not personally, that he has a mental picture of the sort of person likely to pick the book
up…But Collier reveals here that the people whose opinion he sought and listened to were a small group of specific
individuals. This perhaps explains a couple of things - one of which I only noticed
when I went back to reread the book. First, as I had
signalled last week, I found it curious that
he failed to acknowledge the range of others who have explored similar themes –
from GDH Cole, through Paul Hirst to the Third Way and beyond. I’m sure Collier
is familiar with those strands but perhaps not the specialists he consulted….
It’s rare for me to return to a book for a second, closer reading
within a month of the first read. But it’s perhaps something I should do more
often since, this time around, I found myself scribbling quite a few question
marks and remarks against sections that I simply couldn’t understand. I had the
feeling, quite frankly, that one of the experts on his Brain’s Trust had
advised him to include something which he didn’t quite feel he could explain
properly….
And, as several of the reviewers have noticed, there were too many
sections which aere too scrappy and need a lot more thought….particularly in
Part II in the chapters on the “ethical company, family and world”
Future of Capitalism - Useful
References and follow-up reading
The wide ranging
nature of Collier’s book threw up an unusually wide assortment of papers and
blogs….
Branko
Milanovic honoured it with two separate posts – the first suggesting that it
smacked of “nostalgia for a past that
never was”;
the second exploring what he has to say about healthy
families, organisations and worlds
The radical
American economist James K Galbraith (son of JF) reviews it along with a
new book from Joseph Stiglitz and a forthcoming one from Branko Milanovic
The author
of “TheThird Pillar” can be heard discussing his book in
transcript and on
podcast
The
Denmark Lesson; short piece commenting on Collier’s Danish comments
Why
the third way failed – economics, morality and the origins of the “big society”;
Bill Jordan (2010) is a very thoughtful treatment of the experience…..reviewed
here
Revisiting
Associative Democracy; ed Westall (2011). An overdue assessment of the
relevance of Paul Hirst’s ideas more than a decade after his death
Beyond
the Third Way (Geyer 2001)
Can
Democracies tackle illiberal and “inward-looking” drives?; Daniel Danaiu (Romanian
Jounral of European Affairs June 2019) A broad-ranging overview of recent
trends and writing by an ex-Governor of the Romanian National Bank
The
Fix – how nations survive and thrive in a world in decline; Jonathan Tepperman
(2016) one of the positive analyses selected by Collier
There’s
a useful discussion here
on how the concept of meritocracy has become obsolete…
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