"A New Politics of the Common Good"- The final Reith Lecture

APTSec finally got around to listening to this year's final Reith Lecture (originally broadcast 30/06/09) in which Professor Michael Sandel talked of, "A New Politics of the Common Good".

Leading from a statement that;

"For three decades, the governing philosophy of the United States and Britain was defined by the faith that markets are the primary instrument for achieving the public good."

Professor Sandel presented some interesting views to challenge the idea that,

'...the primary purpose of government is to correct what economists call “market failure”.'

After a very interesting set of examples of the use of cost benefit analysis he then moved on to talk about the wider social impacts of reducing all things to monetary terms; he also considered the widening gap between rich and poor and the wider impact on society:

"Too great a gap between rich and poor undermines the solidarity that democratic citizenship requires. As inequality deepens, rich and poor live increasingly separate lives"

He concluded;

"In the course of these lectures, I’ve argued for a greater role for a moral argument in public life, and for the need to keep markets in their place. I would like to conclude by anticipating one possible objection. The distinguished economist Kenneth Arrow once wrote - and I quote: Like many economists, I do not want to rely too heavily on substituting ethics for self-interest. I think it is best on the whole that the requirement of ethical behaviour be confined to those circumstances where the price system breaks down. We do not wish, he said, to use up recklessly the scarce resources of altruistic motivation."

"The notion that ethics, altruism and fellow-feeling are scarce resources, whose supply is fixed once and for all and depleted with use, this idea seems to me outlandish - outlandish but deeply influential. My aim in these lectures has been to call this idea into question. I’ve tried to suggest that the virtues of democratic life - community, solidarity, trust, civic friendship - these virtues are not like commodities that are depleted with use. They are rather like muscles that develop and grow stronger with exercise."

"A politics of moral and civic renewal depends, it seems to me, on a more strenuous exercise of these civic virtues. Thank you very much."

The Professor answered a number of questions after the lecture and judging from the questions it is reasonable to assume that not all of the audience were in agreement with the views the Professor aired.

[The quotations I have used were taken from the programme transcript which began as follows:

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS ISSUED ON THE UNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS TAKEN FROM A LIVE PROGRAMME AS IT WAS BROADCAST. THE NATURE OF LIVE BROADCASTING MEANS THAT NEITHER THE BBC NOR THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE PROGRAMME CAN GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION HERE

The transcript can be found at:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/20090630_reith_anewpolitics.rtf

and you can listen to the lecture on i player at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00lb6bt