How good we can be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country

Will Hutton

Little, Brown, 285pp

Since writing The State We’re In in 1995 Will Hutton has developed a reputation as one of the most prominent and out-spoken British political economists. This latest book builds on that previous analysis, providing an updated analysis of the trends that formed Hutton’s previous expectations and predictions. The astonishing thing, for Hutton, is that so many of what he thought were dire warnings and predictions then transpired in fact to be under-estimations of the problems.

Hutton notes, for example, that while he predicted a threat to labour rights and inequality, he did not foresee the extreme, but now all too common, end of that spectrum in zero hour contracts. Nor were his expectations of the changing financial sector able to see the collapse caused by reckless lending, the LIBOR scandal, or other examples of institutionalised malpractice.

As one would expect Hutton is excellent in making his critique of current economic issues. The first half of the book almost overwhelms you with a fiery litany of facts, evidence, critiques and arguments. The scope is remarkably broad, covering the short-termism of the current financial system, the failure to support innovation, the irrational “cashing out” that characterises so much of privatisation, the use of mergers to artificially drive up short term share values, and a host of other failings. It reads as a bold and lucid case for the prosecution against Thatcherism, Conservative economic policy and the behaviour of business executives and shareholders. 

Refreshingly (in that so many books of this type fail to do so) the latter half actually proposes some solutions to the issues. It lays out a proposed reform of the Companies Act to change the way company ownership and voting shares operate (encouraging long-term thinking and stewardship more than short-term value stripping), in reforming Trade Unions, the House of Lords, new funds to support innovation backed by national targets and a reformed social contract (among others).

Few of the ideas are new; readers of previous books by the same author will recognise at least most of them. He acknowledges they will be perceived by some as too statist and left wing and will be unpopular with those who support a self-regulating market. New Labour, it ought to be said, get off rather lightly given that they dominated the greater part of the period since The State We’re In was published in 1995. Despite that, one would hope that even natural ideological opponents might find much here of interest in the wake of a succession of succession of very public financial scandals.

Where the book works less well is when it departs from economics (on which Hutton is naturally very strong) to other fields, and particularly where he tries to ground his economic arguments in a philosophical or emotional basis. Hutton notes of the Scottish referendum debate that the pro-union side, despite ultimately winning the vote, consistently failed to make an emotional case for Scotland to stay in the UK. He is certainly correct – but rather falls into the same trap himself. The proposed solutions are technical, the result of academic analysis rather than a moral cause.

This is clearest when Hutton tries to build an argument that the matter of inequality and reforming business is a matter of justice and morality. He makes the point on several occasions without ever developing a strong basis for what he means. The case he tries to build is that it is matter of proportionality and fairness – and rests in part on some sense of contribution to the whole. He is at his best when he defines much of “our liberal society” as being a thin veneer over a broad “disinterested indifference”.

However, Hutton never really gets to the heart of what his proportionality really entails. We might intuitively accept, for example, as Hutton does, that executive pay is too high compared to those on zero hour contracts,  or on the lowest rungs of a business. However, what is the right ratio, how do we calculate what is proportional and why beyond a sort of unspecified sense of fair play, ought the boss at the top be concerned for the worker at the bottom? The chapter on justice and fairness certainly knows what it thinks is wrong, but is the weakest chapter in the book at making its case.

It was at that point in the book when it might have been interesting to see a fuller drawing on some other traditions. Hutton approvingly cites a number of movements including Catholic Social Teaching. It might have strengthened that section on morality to have had a more thorough exposition of CST and what an economic policy that put the inherent dignity of the worker within a model of solidarity at the centre of the overall vision. There is considerable possible overlap in a number of areas. For example, Hutton wants Unions reformed to be closer to the old guilds, an idea supported in CST ever since the publication of Rerum Novarum in 1891. Hutton wants a more locally responsive politics and economy – which has serious overlap with the CST concept of subsidiarity. There is more in common than might be expected on the dignity of workers and solidarity too. More exploration of the overlaps might have given Hutton an easier place to start for his definition of fairness and justice and some additional tools in thinking about the formation of society as a whole. 

This article first appeared in 'Third Way Magazine'

Ben Ryan is a Researcher at Theos. @BenedictWRyan

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Image by Claude Money from wikipedia.org available in the Public Domain