The table below identifies some of the central issues which have rocked public debate in the West in each of the decades since the 1930s - something I first doodled 20 years ago (with updates from time to time). We think, for example, that populism is something new - but talk of “populism” surfaces whenever things seem to be slipping from the control of “ruling elites”. Such talk has occurred every 30 years or so in the past 150 years – the 1880s in the US and Russia; the 1930s in Europe and Latin America; the late 1960s globally; the late 1990s in Europe. It’s just that we lack the sense of history to appreciate this.…
Decade
|
Themes of intellectual discussion |
Key authors |
1930s |
End of capitalism Fascism |
J Strachey, H Laski G. Sorel, Gramsci |
1940s |
The managerial revolution Keynesianism Realism in politics |
James Burnham John M Keynes Reinhold Niebuhr, Edward H Carr |
1950s |
Totalitarianism Brainwashing Meritocracy Revisionism Private affluence/public squalour |
Hannah Arendt; Zevedei Barbu. Vance Packard Michael Young Anthony Shonfield; Tony Crosland, J K Galbraith |
1960s |
End of ideology Corporate planning, management Modernisation of society Participation critique of professionals |
Daniel Bell Russell Ackoff, Peter Drucker Peter Berger Paolo Freire, Colin Ward Ivan Illich |
1970s |
Costs of economic growth, ecology Public choice theory Small is beautiful Change Corporatism Feminism |
Edward J Mishan, James Lovelock, Club of Rome James Buchanan Ed Schumacher, Leonard. Kohr Alvin Toffler, Donald Schon Andrew Shonfield Betty Friedan |
1980s |
Deindustrialisation Privatisation decentralisation globalisation racial equality |
Frank Blackaby; Ken Dyson Consultancies; World Bank OECD Joseph Stiglitz, Martin Wolf Bhikhu Parekh |
1990s |
End of history Flexibility and reengineering Reinvention of government; NPM Climate change The learning organisation Washington consensus |
Francis Fukayama Mike Hammer David Osborne, OECD and Scientific community Peter Senge World Bank |
2000s |
Good governance Neo-liberalism Environmental collapse Migration and social integration Populism |
World bank; OECD David Harvey Scientific community Chris Cauldwell Cas Mudde |
2010s |
Migration Climate warming Capitalism Austerity Inequality Populism |
Everyone Everyone Joseph Stiglitz, Jerry Mander, Paul Mason, Paul Collier Mark Blyth, Danny Dorling, Richard Wilkinson, Thomas Pikety Jan-Werner Mueller, |
2020s |
Migration Populism Extinction AI, robots, future of work Surveillance, big data Pandemics |
Everyone Everyone Rupert Read, Jem Bendell ILO, Richard Baldwin, Geoff Mulgan Shoshana Zuboff Adam Tooze, Niall Ferguson |
Note to table; I do appreciate that the allocation is arbitrary and therefore contentious….and that the table gives no indication of how long each “debate” lasted….Managerialism, for example, seems to have had several phases….and various forms of human rights were being argued throughout the entire period. Nor do I try to justify detail with google analytics. My purpose is simply impressionistic – to remind us of the ebb and flow of ideas…
Our constant preoccupation with what is new and modern has a name – ”neophilia” – which makes us too easily the prey of the latest political and intellectual fashions. We drift into without exploring why we dropped our previous enthusiasm develops in us what Clive James called “cultural amnesia” – an almost fatal inability to look back at what people much wiser than us were saying in previous generations
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