Seminal Books of the past - part II

Apparently I’m not alone in my interest in making a list of “the key books of the century”….I’ve just unearthed the first of what promises to be a series of posts on “the hundred most influential books since the war” – which appeared last month in the Time Literary Supplement and gave us 20 titles from the 1940s….It draws our attention to an interesting initiative of 1986 when

a diverse group of writers and scholars came together to try to assist independent East European writers and publishers both at home and in exile. The Chairman was Lord Dahrendorf, Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford (and prominent German politician!). Other members were the French historian Francois Furet; Raymond Georis, Director of the European Cultural Foundation, Amsterdam; Laurens van Krevelen of the Dutch publishing house Meulenhoff; the Swedish writer Per Waestberg, at the time President of International PEN; the European correspondent of the New Yorker, Jane Kramer; and the historian and commentator, Timothy Garton Ash.

The result, in 1995, was a book “Freedom for Publishing, Publishing for Freedom” which listed 100 key books, listed sequentially on the TLS blog. 

The very first book on the list for the 1940s is one I knew I had forgotten to put on my list – Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” (now rectified). 
I think I should also have included the writings of Max Weber and Raymond Aron……so reserve the right to produce a more definitive list which better reflects my particular criteria of impact, coherence and "sustainability" (ie "lasting power")

I have resisted the temptation to peek at the books the TLS blog gives for each of the following decades – until I have completed my own effort - and simply pass on this list of 20 key books for the 1950s. A few years ago, Time Magazine gave us an interesting annotated list of the 100 best nonfiction books

Of course all such lists are arbitrary – but the last post does give a good sense of the conflict and repression which was the European experience in the first half of the 20^th century with the sense of liberation and assertiveness of the immediate post-war period – as well as the first warnings of the excesses of our way of life in the late 1960s.

I am having much more difficulty identifying “seminal books with a distinctive voice” for the last 40 years. I had little difficulty naming almost 40 books for the earlier 40-year period – but can find less than 20 so far for the period since 1973…..I can suggest at least two reasons for this deficiency -
-  First that the battle-lines on most disputes were drawn in the first part of the century – and we are now operating in the tracks made by more famous (and original) men and women…..
-   University growth, social science specialisation and bureaucratisation has killed off creativity….

Clearly such assertions need to be justified and I hope to post on this shortly.....

For the moment, let me simply list the books which came to mind as I tried to complete the list.....the Peters book is there not for its quality but simply because it reflected the "mood of the time". 

And, so far, I don't feel able to include a book covering the post 2001 anxieties about migration - although Chris Cauldwell's 2009 Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is a front-runner. Nor have I tried to touch the issues related to information and security........and the list does include some mavericks who are personal favourites (eg Kohr, Douthwaite, George, Quinn and Dorling)

So my tentative list for the post 1973 years includes -

The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism – Daniel Bell (1976)

Orientalism – Edward Said (1978)

The Breakdown of Nations – Leopold Kohr (1978)

The Culture of Narcissism – Christopher Lasch (1979)

In Search of Excellence – Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1982)

Imagined Communities – Benedict Anderson (1983)

Casino Capitalism – Susan Strange (1986)

Manufacturing Consent – Noam Chomsky (1988)

The End of History – Francis Fukuyama (1989)

Reinventing Government – David Osborne and Ted Gaebler (1992)

Everything for Sale – the virtues and limits of markets – Robert Kuttner (1996)

Short Circuit – strengthening local economies in an unstable world - Ronald Douthwaite (1996)

The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century – Susan George (1999)

Change the World - Robert Quinn (2000)

A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism – David Harvey (2005)

Injustice – why social inequality persists – David Dorling (2011)

Then there are tens of thousands of volumes which management writers have given us – of which the better have been produced by people such as Henry Mintzberg,  Charles Handy and Ronald Dore

Key Books of the 20th Century - Part I

For the past few days I’ve been engaged in a frustrating and probably useless task – trying to list the non-fiction books I think worthy of consideration as the "seminal books" of the last century….for English-speakers. This links to a table you will find on page 2 of the paper "Ways of Seeing...the Global Crisis" which tries to give a sense of the key debates of the post war period........

Any such list has to be arbitrary since league tables of book purchases or library loans are difficult to get hold of, unreliable and nationally biased. And note the dual (rather heavy) qualifications "I think" and "worthy of consideration"..... it is a list drawn up by a white male who had a Scottish university education (in politics and economics) in the early 1960s and is limited therefore by that interest in political economy – rather than, for example, psychology…. (although I have included the injunctions of Dale Carnegie and Benjamin Spock as well as the more thoughtful analyses of Carl Rodgers)
But "Mein Kampf" and the writings of Ann Raynd are excluded - despite the influence they had...... I simply can't view them as serious.....

My surfing did unearth some “mega-lists” generated from 107 "best of" book lists from a variety of sources eg this one which is, however, strongly biased to American reading….

As a starter, let me offer this list of 35 books – taking us to 1973. 

Political Parties – Robert Michels (1913)

Public Opinion - Walter Lippmann (1921)
Revolt of the Masses - Jose Ortega y Gasset (1930)

Moral Man and Immoral Society - Reinhold Niebuhr (1932)
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money - JM Keynes (1936)

How to make friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie (1936)
The Managerial Revolution – James Burnham (1941)

Escape from Freedom - Erich Fromm (1941)
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy – Joseph Schumpeter (1942)

The Open Society and its Enemies - Karl Popper (1944)

The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich Hayek (1944)

Baby and Child Care - Benjamin Spock (1946)

Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male – Kinsey (1948)

The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (19949)
The Lonely Crowd - David Riesmann (1950)

The Power Elite – C Wright Mills (1956)

The Future of Socialism - CAR Crosland (1956)

The Hidden Persuaders – Vance Packard (1957)

The Affluent Society – JK Galbraith (1958)

The End of Ideology – Daniel Bell (1960)

The Death and Life of American Cities Jane Jacobs (1961)

On Becoming a Person - Carl Rodgers (1961)

The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin (1962)

Silent Spring – Rachel Carson (1962)

Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedmann (1962)

The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan (1963)

Unsafe at any speed - Ralph Nadar (1965)

Modern Capitalism – the changing balance of public and private power – Andrew Shonfield (1966)

The New Industrial State – JK Galbraith (1967)

The Costs of Economic Growth – EJ Mishan 1967

The Active Society – Amitai Etzioni (1968)

Deschooling Society - Ivan Illich (1970)
Future Shock – Alvin Toffler (1970)

Beyondthe Stable State – Donald Schoen (1971)

The Limits to Growth – Club of Rome (1972)

Small is Beautiful – Ernst Schumacher (1973)

Somehow I think its going to difficult to find an equivalent number for the 40 years which followed!!

Raymond Williams - a voice never stilled

Raymond Williams is a name to conjure with – at least for a Brit of my generation. In 1959 he produced a book “Culture and Society” whose significance as I was starting university I was vaguely aware of but whose very “worthiness” disinclined me actually to read. My loss you might say from glancing at its last chapter and footnotes. 

His name was linked at the time to that of Richard Hoggart who – 2 years earlier – had published Uses of Literacy but, more importantly for my developing politicisation, was that he was part of the group of intellectuals which was then establishing the New Left Review journal and the author of the scintillating Mayday Manifesto 1967/68

Geoff Dyer’s introduction to the reissued “Politics and Letters” tells us why we should be reading Williams these days – and Culture and Society – then and now helps us understand the significance of that first book. I needed little encouragement since I recently got hold of a new version of his Keywords which I had first read in the late 70s….and which was perhaps an unconscious exemplar for my “Just Words - a glossary and bibliography for the fight against the pretensions and perversities of power”. I was glad to see that his book has become an inspiration for a new university project and website  

My morning’s surfing unearthed quite a few inspiring books about the man who died at the height of his powers - at the age of 66 -

- Raymond Williams – a biography by Alan O’Connor

- Raymond Williams - Making Connections - John Elridge

- "Border Country – Raymond Williams in adult education 1946-1961". A collection of his early writings....

I was particularly taken with the second book – since it is a very sensitive treatment of his works written by a Glasgow University Professor of Sociology I encountered all too briefly. Here he (Elridge) is reminiscing about the sociologists he knew......he's one of the old guard .......when he talks about Weber, you feel he actually knew him!!!!

How governments have bought - and used up - time

It’s significant that the best expositions of the global economic crisis and its causes do not come from economists……..somehow the framework within which the modern economist operates precludes him/her from even the vaguest of glimmerings of understanding of the complexity of socio-economic events. Their tools are no better than adequate for short-term work…..

For real insights into the puzzles of the modern world, think rather David Harvey (a geographer); John Lanchester and James Meek (novellists and writers); Susan Strange and Susan George (political science); or Wolfgang Streeck – a Koeln Professor of Sociology. All have extensive and eclectic reading; a focus on the long-term; and the ability to provoke and write clearly. 

Streeck is also Director there of the Max Planck Institute and an unlikely scourge of capitalism – but his texts are becoming ever more apocalyptic. 

For my money, his analysis offers much more than everyone's current favourite Thomas Pikety - whose 700 page magnum opus I suspect few have actually read.

The New Left Review is the favoured outlet for Streeck’s long, clear and incisive articles eg one in 2011 on “The Crisis of Democratic Socialism” and then one last summer on “How Will Capitalism End?” introducing an English audience to the arguments of the short book Buying Time – the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism which had appeared in Germany in 2013. European Tribune offered the following useful summary -

Capitalism and democracy were a powerful couple during the "trente glorieuses" post-WWII years. Expectations of economic growth, full employment and increasing prosperity became so entrenched that the fundamental antagonisms between the two were overlooked, or even deemed to have been definitively relegated to the dustbin of history. This, indeed, was the dominant view of the Frankfurt School during Streeck's formative years.

The book's introduction, "Crisis theory : then and now" deals with this historically embarrassing mis-analysis. Jürgen Habermas, in particular, developed the notion of the "legitimation crisis", postulating that people expect governments to intervene successfully in the economy to try and ensure economic prosperity, and that failure would cause the validity of the capitalist system to be questioned, thus undermining its legitimacy.

Streeck presents his book as an attempt to rehabilitate crisis theory, explaining that the postulated legitimation crisis is now upon us... forty years later, having been pushed back by our governments' successive, and moderately successful, attempts at buying time.In fact, the end of the post-war boom indeed led to a legitimation crisis - but it was not the workers/ consumers / electors who revolted. It was capital.

The notion of "Late Capitalism" has been around since the beginning of the 20th Century. But the predicted demise of capitalism is late, and keeps getting later. The error committed by the neo-Marxian Frankfurt thinkers, in Streeck's analysis, was to have considered capital as a resource, more or less biddable and accountable to democracy. Of course, as they should have known, capital is an actor, particularly in class struggle.

Streeck outlines several phases in the attempts by governments to buy time for their socio-economic model subsequent to the boom years : 

Inflation In the 70s, productive investment started to fall short of what was required for full employment. Inflationary monetary policy was the first ploy to buy time, accommodating wage rises in excess of productivity growth. But the replacement of real growth with nominal growth lost its charm with stagflation in the late 70s, which put a squeeze on profits and threatened to lead to a capital strike. 

Public debt The monetarist revolution of Reagan, Thatcher and imitators put capital back in the driver's seat. The recession they provoked, with its mass unemployment, did however require additional revenue to keep the wheels turning, and governments resorted massively to borrowing.

Private debt In the 1990s and 2000s, slashing of public services and reduction of public debt was accompanied by an explosion of private debt. 

Each of these phases is seen by Streeck as a means of conjuring money out of nowhere, in order to enjoy the benefits of growth in excess of growth itself.

The financial crisis of 2008 is seen as the final reckoning, the democracy/capital nexus being confronted with its contradictions.According to Streeck, democracy and capital were forced by circumstances into an arranged marriage after WWII. But each successive crisis entailed the progressive emancipation of capital from democratic constraints. Self-regulated markets were alleged to function efficiently, and government intervention in economic matters was de-legitimised. This ideology is now so dominant that it is hardly even questioned after the massive nationalization of private losses which was imposed on the citizen/taxpayer as the price to prevent economic collapse in the recent crisis.

The expansion of the financial sector, and the ever-increasing mobility of capital, have made the capital markets a harsh and fickle mistress for democracy. In fact, Streeck identifies the fact that governments are now accountable to two distinct constituencies : their citizen electors, or people of the nation (Staatsvolk), and their creditors, or people of the market (Marktvolk). The characteristics of these two constituencies of what he calls the “debt state” can be portrayed thus -

Staatsvolk	Marktvolk
National	international
Citizens	investors
civil rights	claims
Voters	creditors
elections (periodic)	auctions (continuous)
public opinion	interest rates
Loyalty	"confidence"
public services	debt service

Other useful resources on the book are -

https://vimeo.com/113376601

http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2015/1488

http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2642

http://www.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/pdf/2014-MT/20141020-Streeck-PPT.pdf

http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/interview-capitalism-neo-liberalism-and-democracy

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n16/susan-watkins/vanity-and-venality

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2014/8/17/152951/315

http://www.resetdoc.org/issue/01/05/2014

http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/downloads/14-10-00_Streeck_Renewal.pdf

The crisis in context – democratic capitalism and its contradictions (2011)

The painting is one from the current exhibition in Sofia's National Gallery - on Industrial Landscaoes. It's Lavrenov's marvellous "20 years of socialist construction"!!

The C word

We don’t need anyone these days to tell us that we’re in a mess. Nor to explain why. The libraries are groaning with books on globalization…… deregulation…..privatization…. debt….neo-liberalism…. greed……inequality…. corruption….. pollution…… austerity……… migration.

I’ve just finished a book by Jerry Mander - The Capitalism Papers – Fatal Flaws of an Obsolete System (2012) (the link gives the entire text) which is as good a moral critique of the system which few dare to name as you’re likely to read – “Jerry!”, one of his friends, says – “I hope you’re not going to use the “C” word”!!

I wondered about this reluctance to talk about capitalism – and duly googled the word, unearthing quite a few treasures I have so far missed, two of them produced in 1999 and clearly major works. The New Spirit of Capitalism is a French contribution by L Boltanski and E Chiapello whose main focus is -

management literature, and the ways in which it shifted between the 1960s and the 1990s in tone, content, and the general set of assumptions about capitalism and the role of management. Boltanski and Chiappello, as their title suggests, draw directly on Weber’s classic analysis of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. Put simply, Weber’s account maintains that the emergence of a full-scale capitalist economy depended in part on a change in the habits of commercially-successful merchants, master craftsmen and entrepreneurial farmers, whose forebears might have spent their profits on luxurious lifestyles and, if sufficient, on the land, titles and symbolic goods necessary to gain admittance to the aristocracy.

The pursuit of such worldly glories might always have diverted resources away from investment in further productive capital if the ideology of Puritanism had not motivated the proto-capitalist actively to avoid them in favour of dedication to the singular vocation of his ‘calling’.

Boltanski and Chiapello derive from this account the axiom that capitalism requires from its key agents a degree of dedication, hard work and self-sacrifice which does not come naturally or easily. As such, capitalism must always be animated by a ‘spirit’, an ideology which inspires and motivates not the entire population, but the key sections who must be committed quite explicitly to the project of capital accumulation if it is to carry on successfully.
 Boltanski and Chiapello identify three such ‘spirits’, the first being Weber’s; the second being the bureaucratic ‘spirit’ of the era of high Fordist industrialism (the ideology of the ‘company man’), and the third being the ‘new spirit’ of the highly flexible, network-intensive knowledge economy

The Cultural Studies journal gives a well-referenced review of the book which was only translated into English in 2006 and was in 2013 paid the tribute of a book-length analysis - New Spirits of capitalism? Crises, justifications and dynamics (2013) by Paul du Gay, Glenn Morgan. The language of both books is, however, a bit off-putting and presumably explains their lack of impact on the general public. Another review of the original 1999 book is here.....

1999 also apparently saw the first appearance of what looks to be a blockbuster of a book - The cancer stages of capitalism by John Mc Murtry reviewed here whose author gave us, more recently, both a second edition and a summary of his argument. Again, however, I have a reservation about the writing style - I really do believe that poor writing reflect poor thinking.......

But my failure to register his book makes one wonder about the motives behind the high profile of writers such as Naomi Klein…..is it just her beauty that impacts I have to wonder………

Richard Sennett is a better known writer – although hardly a rabble-rouser…..I was disappointed by his book about cooperation but his The Culture of the new capitalism (2006) looks much more interesting and seems to link up with The New Spirit of Capitalism – see this review

The Great Recession is a Marxist treatment of profits and this particular post from the blog behind it gives the sort of longitudinal treatment of the subject which is so often missing from discussions

Those preferring more journalistic approaches could do a lot worse than read this Spiegel article about the world view of the new billionaires.

I’m reminded of a wave of books in the 1970s which were early harbingers of this sense of crisis - James Robertson’s The Sane Alternative (1978) and Ronald Higgins’ “The Seventh Enemy” (1978) were typical examples. The second described the 7 main threats to human survival as the population explosion, food shortage, scarcity of natural resources, pollution, nuclear energy, uncontrolled technology - and ……human nature. The author’s experience of government and international institutions convinces him that the most dangerous was the moral blindness of people and the inertia of political institutions.

A lot has happened in the subsequent 47 years – new pressing issues have been identified – but who would gainsay Higgins’ identification of the “seventh” enemy? These days, there would probably be a majority in favour of stringing up a few bankers, politicians and economists – “pour encourager le autres” – were it not illegal…

Over the years, I’ve read and collected books and articles to help me identify the sort of agenda and actions which might unite a fair-minded majority.

Like many people, I’ve clicked, skimmed and saved – but rarely gone back to read thoroughly - for example this post of last September which listed books about "the crisis" which were waiting for me in a special pile few of which I have yet got round to...............

The folders in which they have collected have had various names – such as “urgent reading” or “what is to be done” – but rarely accessed.

Occasionally I remember one and blog about it.

I need to be more disciplined………………

An Etzioni resource

Last week’s sad funeral at least gave me the chance to retrieve a package which had been waiting for me since November in my neighbour’s house in my Carpathian village. By great coincidence it included a copy of Etzioni’s 2003 autobiography My Brother’s Keeper - which tracks the life of a rare character who managed to straddle successfully the worlds of academia (he is an organisational sociologist) and activism and therefore thoroughly to warrant the label of public intellectual

Etzioni’s has worked as a theorist, researcher, and political advisor, and has even developed his own political strategies. Only a few social scientists have been as active as Etzioni (born in Koeln in 1929) in all four of these fields. He follows in the footsteps of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, all three of whom were not just theorists, but were also able – although each in his own manner – to act as polemicists and political activists…..

Instead of being demoralized by the power of the market and the state, Etzioni places faith in the citizen’s practical abilities of self-organization. Etzioni counterposes the failures of the market and the state by pointing to a third social sector, the communitarian society. Even in his first important book on social theory, “The Active Society” from 1968, Etzioni formulates the ambitious goal of “societal guidance”.

His multiple roles and activities are nicely set out in an assessment of his work by David Sciulli - Etzioni’s Critical Functionalism – communitarian origins and principles (2011) and another book (produced in 2005) The Active Society Revisited took another look at one of his classic 1968 productions which I remember being a bit too overwhelmed by to venture far into….

The Communitarian Reader (2004) is a useful collection of articles by his major associates in the venture to sketch out an alternative to neo-liberalism and collectivism which became known (in Europe at any rate) as the “third way” and which, arguably, somewhat tarnished his reputation – by virtue of the charlatans (such as Blair and Schroeder) with whom he associated

Nothing daunted, he ran a journal - The Responsive Community journal – for almost a decade; inaugurated the International Communitarian Society and broadened his application of his approach in the book The New Golden Rule

For my money, the one weakness of his analysis is that it does not properly take on board issues of power and profit. 

He is now 89 and still going strong - Last year he issued The New Normal and also an interesting paper on Politics and Culture in an age of Austerity which spends too much time for me on issues of “happiness” but which makes the following critical comment on one of the recent key books on that subject

Skidelsky and Skidelsky’s seven elements of a good life are decoupled from consumerism but not necessarily from self-centeredness. Two goods are dedicated to creature comforts, namely security and good health. In their rendering, security is of the person, not the nation; health is that of the individual, with little attention to public health. The inclusion of respect and friendship (akin to Maslow’s self-esteem and affection) in the list of goods is a major step forward, as gaining these goods is disassociated from buying things to enhance one’s status or to express friendship.

Skidelsky and Skidelsky enrich Maslow by adding three goods. First is harmony with nature, which for them is not an expression of concern for the environment but, rather, a quest for inner tranquility of the individual (Skidelsky & Skidelsy, 2012).

Next on the list is personality, which is “the ability to frame and execute a plan of life reflective of one’s tastes, temperament and conception of the good… as well [as] an element of spontaneity, individuality and spirit” (ibid., p.160). Both are self-centered.

Finally, while Maslow put selfactualization at the pinnacle, Skidelsky and Skidelsky crown leisure at the top of the list of the goods. Leisure is defined as “self-directed activity” and “purposiveness without purpose” (ibid., p. 9). It is an intrinsic good wherein people can and should flourish by doing well in whatever they choose to undertake: “The sculptor engrossed in cutting marble, the teacher intent on imparting a difficult idea, the musician struggling with a score…such people have no other aim than to do what they are doing well” (ibid.)

At the peak of his European peregrinations selling the “third way” he wrote this short piece for The New Statesman – and this longer pamphlet for the Demos ThinkTank

This review of his autobiography not only gives a good sense of the trajectory of his life but sums up my own feelings that he got his wings sizzled by supping too close to the devil….

Despite this reservation, however, he is one of these rare individuals I feel who has used his endowments to create a real and original sense of the "public good"......   

Those wanting to know more about Etzioni can access archives here and interesting comments here

Thought for the Day

“Lower standards” has been a common complaint in society for decades. Indeed things have been going downhill for many European commentators for most of the past century

The 20^th century began so hopefully but the first world war – and its aftermath - destroyed these hopes and led to the ideological struggles which ended only 25 years ago.

Jose Ortega y Gasset's 1930 The Revolt of the Masses blamed in 1930 the "political domination of the masses" for the decline in standards. Ortega believed that the rise of the masses threatened democracy by undermining the ideals of civic virtue that characterized the old ruling elites.

Loss of religious authority is often regretted as having created a moral vacuum leading irresistibly to the present-day culture of instant gratification

Television; parental laxness; the language of entitlement; political correctness; and multiculturalism are variously identified as the main culprits…..

If we can agree that the balance between freedom and authority has gone too far, how do societies pull back? 

Most people assume that some sort of behavioural change is needed – along the lines perhaps of Ametai Etzioni’s Communitarianism which sets out ways in which the ethic of social responsibility can be brought back into our schools and workplaces. 

But a growing number of people see that as impossible to achieve against the power of consumerism and commodification which advertisers thrust on us every minute of the day - and are simply choosing to opt out of the materialist society. 

Of course, that in itself is a highly individual choice and fragments us socially even more……

This is part of a series of thoughts sparked off by my use of the word "amoralism" to describe contemporary Romania......

Survival in Romania

I referred briefly yesterday to the scandal which is currently gripping Romania – that of ex-Presidential candidate Elena Udrea. Anyone familiar with the writings of Tom Gallagher would have evinced not an iota of surprise at the revelations of greed and illegality. They loomed large in his most recent book on the country - Romania and the European Union – how the weak vanquished the strong which had followed his 2005 book Theft of a Nation itemising the kleptomania which has been a feature of the country’s political class for centuries….. 

Yesterday’s post used the phrase “consumerist amorality” of contemporary Romania – the last word alluding to Edward Banfield’s study in the early 1950s of a small town in southern Italy whose inhabitants displayed loyalty only to the members of their nuclear family and who had absolutely no sense of social responsibility for wider circles. The book (published in 1955) was called “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society” 

Banfield concluded that the town's plight was rooted in the distrust, envy and suspicion displayed by its inhabitants' relations with each other. Fellow citizens would refuse to help one another, except where one's own personal material gain was at stake. Many attempted to hinder their neighbours from attaining success, believing that others' good fortune would inevitably harm their own interests. "Montegrano"'s citizens viewed their village life as little more than a battleground. Consequently, there prevailed social isolation and poverty—and an inability to work together to solve common social problems, or even to pool common resources and talents to build infrastructure or common economic concerns.

"Montegrano"'s inhabitants were not unique nor inherently more impious than other people. But for quite a few reasons: historical and cultural, they did not have what he termed "social capital"—the habits, norms, attitudes and networks that motivate folk to work for the common good.

This stress on the nuclear family over the interest of the citizenry, he called the ethos of ‘amoral familism’. This he argued was probably created by the combination of certain land-tenure conditions, a high mortality rate, and the absence of other community building institutions.

Sixty years later, Ronnie Smith profiled (in “City Compass Guide Romania”) the ordinary Romanian in a similar way -

If you are fortunate enough to drive in Bucharest you will witness what is probably the clearest evidence of mass individualism in global human society. Romanian people, of all shapes, sizes, social and educational backgrounds and income brackets will do things in their cars that display a total disregard for sanity and other drivers.

Manoeuvres such as parking in the middle of the street, u-turning on highways without any warning and weaving between lanes in heavy traffic at 150 kilometres per hour are commonplace and point to an extreme lack of concern for the safety or even the simple existence of others.

The next time you are waiting to get on a plane at Henri Coandă airport, take a little time to observe how queuing in an orderly and effective manner is clearly regarded as an af­front to the sovereignty of the Romanian individual. Enjoy the spectacle of the pushing, shoving and general intimida­tion that follows the arrival of the airport staff to supervise boarding. Even while watching an international rugby test match you will only occasionally see the same intense level of barely controlled aggression.

Outside of their core social networks Romanians closely follow the rule stating that it is every man, woman and child for themselves. ……There is an opinion poll, published in early 2012, show­ing that around 90 percent of the Romanian population regards almost all of their compatriots as utterly untrust­worthy and incompetent. At the same time 90 percent, possibly the same 90 percent, see themselves as being abso­lutely beyond reproach. This is clearly an extreme response no matter how you view it and provides evidence of an ex­traordinary and troubling imbalance within the generality of Romania’s social relationships.

There is a well-known prayer in Romania, which roughly goes: “Dear God, if my goat is so ill that it will die, please make sure that my neighbour’s goat dies too.”

So what does this commonality suggest? The EU’s first Ambassador here was Karen Fogg who gave every consultant who came here in the early 1990s (like me) a summary of what can be seen as the follow-up to Banfield’s book – Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work – civic traditions in Italy (1993) which suggested that the laggardly nature of southern Italian Regions was due entirely to this “amoral familism”.  Putnam made an even greater play oF missing “social capital” – indeed spawned an incredible technocratic literature on the concept and ideas on how it could be “engineered” to deal with the new alienation of modern capitalism..

Romanian communism, of course, had almost 50 years to inculcate more cooperative attitudes and behaviour – but the forced nature of “collective farms”; the forced migration of villagers to urban areas to drive industrialisation; and the scale of Securitate spying created a society where, paradoxically, even fewer could trusted anyone.      

From 1990 the market became God; Reagan and Thatcher had glorified greed; the state was bad; and television – which had been limited by Ceaucescu to 2 hours a day - the great good……As the commercial stations and journals spread, the values of instant gratification became dominant. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the average Romanian seems to behave in such an aggressive and selfish if not amoral way………

Grancea’s article on “the concept of freedom in Romania” may be a very bad translation but does emphasise a crucial point – that the words foreign business men, consultants and academics have brought to Romania do not resonate in people’s minds the way we imagine them to…..They have in fact become simply another series of verbal weapons to use in the struggle for position..........

Almost 5 years ago I quoted this poem –

Smuggler
Watch him when he opens
His bulging words – justice
Fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace. Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visa, his stamps
and signatures. Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light
Nobody with such language
Has nothing to declare

My E-book Mapping Romania - notes on an unfinished journey tries, in various places, to deal with some of these cultural aspects - particularly section 7.2 at page 31 and all the annexes