Money and the pursuit of happiness

Sunday 15 July 2012

In a 1930s essay, John Maynard Keynes ventured an optimistic prediction about the future of Western capitalism: with the help of technological advances and savvy economic management, incomes would continue to soar, everyone's basic material needs would be met and, within a hundred years or so, people would only have to work for a maximum of 15 hours a week.

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How Much Is Enough? The Love Of Money And The Case For The Good Life by Robert and Edward Skidelsky Allen Lane, £20 Reviewed by Jonathan Wright

One suspects that Keynes, who was no fool, was indulging in an academic flight of fancy and we can now confirm that his forecast was wide of the mark. This Utopia, like all Utopias, never had the slightest chance of coming into existence. Incomes did rise, but so did our insatiable acquisitiveness. As soon as we were in thrall to capitalism, meeting our needs was never going to be enough: we also became addicted to satisfying our wants and these, it seems, are endless. The trouble with capitalism is that it doesn't come with a switch to turn off the baser instincts and bad behaviours it provokes.

There have always been two solutions to this problem. The most efficient strategy would be to realise that capitalism is a grotesque system and to replace it with something more equitable. Regrettably, this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future: mainly because no viable alternative has presented itself. The less radical option is to make the best of a bad job: to identify capitalism's deepest flaws and worst excesses and take appropriate action. It is a matter of revolution versus alleviation and, all things considered, alleviation seems like the safer, more realistic route. Words to make a Marxist growl, no doubt, but there we go.Enter then Robert and Edward Skidelsky. They are not cheerleaders for capitalism — they talk about "chaining up the monster" — but they realise that it is here to stay and they believe it can be improved. The trick, they suggest, is to return to the old philosophical nostrum of the "good life". We should set limits and identify what we truly need to pursue a satisfying, comfortable existence. We can then determine how to pay for it. How much cash do we really need? How hard do we have to work? Here is the Skidelskys' list of goals. We should all aim for health, security (the absence of wars, revolutions and crime) and respect — a sense that our views are deemed worthy of consideration by our peers. Harmony with nature also counts, as does the opportunity to develop friendships, and we must be allowed to live according to our "personality", that is, in a way that reflects our tastes and moral sensibilities. Finally, we should expand the amount of time devoted to leisure, though this isn't to be understood as idly whiling away the hours. Rather, it refers to significant pleasurable activities that we do for our own sake, on our own time, and without any external compulsion. In order to accomplish all this, the Skidelskys recommend a significant shift in our political and economic attitudes. We would have to jettison our obsession with the GDP (not the most reliable measure of the 'good life' because it takes no cognizance of many important factors) and we might want to ditch the assumption that constant economic growth is an absolute necessity. We already have enough and the desire to produce and consume more and more is precisely what gets us into such choppy economic waters with such regularity.Government would have to play a major role. Its primary duty would be the provision of an economic situation which allowed its citizens to pursue the 'good life'. The key tasks would be to dampen our consumerist insatiability, achieve a fairer distribution of wealth, and establish more sensible working practices. Taxes would have to rise and it might be worth considering a progressive "consumption" tax: the more you spend, especially on unnecessary luxuries, the more you pay. Power relationships in the workplace would also have to change. Bosses and employees would join forces to create a system that allowed for fewer hours at the coal face and encouraged beneficial schemes such as job-sharing.It all sounds rather lovely but there is a conspicuous drawback. Agreeing upon the elements of the 'good life' might be rather tricky. Who has the final say? Government, presumably, but granting our leaders such interventionist powers in the realm of ethics would make the blood of some modern Liberals boil. The state announcing what is morally 'good' for the citizenry is a risky business. The Skidelskys talk about "non-coercive paternalism", which would involve encouraging righteous behaviour, but what happens if a mischievous government is elected? History shows that the line between well-intentioned social improvement and illiberal policy-making, even totalitarianism, is perilously thin. The motives of Robert and Edward Skidelsky are pure and worthwhile. They want to make capitalism a more decent system, they want us to stop spending money on things we don't need, and they want to improve the quality of everybody's lives. They make their case with great skill, and this is a wonderfully cogent and challenging book. The problem is that not everyone, least of all the power-hungry politician, shares the Skidelskys' kindliness. It might therefore be safer, at least for the moment, to allow people to make their own decisions about what constitutes the 'good life'. This results in a messy, imperfect, but freer world. "This book is an argument against insatiability, against that psychological disposition which prevents us, as individuals and as societies, from saying 'enough is enough'. It is directed at economic insatiability, the desire for more and more money. It is chiefly directed at the rich parts of the world, which may be reasonably thought to have enough wealth for a decent collective life - But in rich and poor societies alike, insatiability can be seen wherever the opulence of the very rich runs wildly ahead of the means of existence of the many."

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