Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt Read Free Book Online

life’s necessities were covered by their taxes, the European middle class found itself by the 1960s with far greater disposable incomes than at any time since 1914.
    Interestingly, these decades were characterized by a uniquely successful blend of social innovation and cultural conservatism. Keynes himself exemplifies the point. A man of impeccably elitist tastes and upbringing—though unusually open to new artistic work—he nonetheless grasped the importance of bringing first-class art, performance and writing to the broadest possible audience if British society were to overcome its paralyzing divisions. It was Keynes whose initiatives led to the creation of the Royal Ballet, the Arts Council and much else besides. These were innovative public provisions of uncompromisingly “high” art—much like Lord Reith’s BBC, with its self-assigned obligation to raise popular standards rather than condescend to them.
    For Reith or Keynes or the French Culture Minister André Malraux, there was nothing patronizing about this new approach—any more than there was for the young Americans who worked with LBJ on the establishment of a Corporation for Public Broadcasting or the National Endowment for the Humanities. This was “meritocracy”: the opening up of elite institutions to mass applicants at public expense—or at least underwritten by public assistance. It began the process of replacing selection by inheritance or wealth with upward mobility through education. And it produced a few years later a generation for whom all of this seemed self-evident and who thus took it for granted.
    There was nothing inevitable about these developments. Wars were typically followed by economic downturns—and the bigger the war the worse the dip. Those who did not fear a resurgence of fascism looked instead anxiously eastwards at the hundreds of divisions of the Red Army and the powerful, popular Communist parties and trade unions of Italy, France and Belgium. When US Secretary of State George Marshall visited Europe in the spring of 1947 he was appalled by what he saw: the Marshall Plan was born of the anxiety that the aftermath of World War II might end up even worse than that of its predecessor.
    As for the US, it was deeply divided in those early postwar years by a renascent suspicion of foreigners, radicals and above all communists. McCarthyism may have posed no threat to the Republic, but it was a reminder of just how easily a mediocre demagogue could exploit fear and exaggerate threats. What might he not have done had the economy reverted to its low point of twenty years before? In short, and despite the consensus that was to emerge, it was all more than a little unexpected. So why did it work so well?

THE REGULATED MARKET
    “The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.”
     
—JOHN STUART MILL
     
     
     
     
    T he short answer is that by 1945 few people believed any longer in the magic of the market. This was an intellectual revolution. Classical economics mandated a tiny role for the state in economic policymaking, and the prevailing liberal ethos of 19th century Europe and North America favored hands-off social legislation, confined for the most part to regulating only the more egregious inequities and dangers of competitive industrialism and financial speculation.
    But two world wars had habituated almost everyone to the inevitability of government intervention in daily life. In the First World War most of the participant states had increased their control (hitherto negligible) of production: not just of military matériel but clothing, transport, communications and almost anything relevant to the conduct of an expensive and desperate war. In most places after 1918 these controls were lifted, but there remained a significant residue of government involvement in the regulation of economic life.
    Following a short, illusory era of retreat