Abstract
In previous chapters we have looked at the foundations of economic nationalism. Now we need to see how the state was able to build on these foundations to produce the so called ‘golden era’. To do so we need to go back to the close of the Second World War. For it was the lessons learned during the war the enabled consensus about the future direction of the economy and society to be established. At the same time, the way that consensus was built was itself flawed and so carried with it the ultimate destruction of economic nationalism.
Keynes had a solution without a revolution. Our pleasant world could remain; the unemployment and suffering would go. It seemed a miracle.
J. K. Galbraith
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Sonia Orwell and lan Angus (eds) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume III London: Secker and Warburg, 1968, p. 119. The quote is from a review of
F. A. Hayek’s, apologia for the free market, The Road to Serfdom, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1944.
Seymour E. Harris, (ed.) Postwar Economic Problems, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1943, p. 6.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, London: Macmillan, 1936, p. 383.
See Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes: The Economist As Saviour, 1920–1937 London: Macmillan, 1992, chapter 7.
John Maynard Keynes, ‘The end of Laisser-Faire’, reprinted in Essays in Persuasion, London: Macmillan/Cambridge University Press, London, 1972.
T. H. Marshall, Sociology at the Crossroads, London: Heinemann, 1963, p. 222.
The figures are taken from John Cornwall, The Theory of Economic Breakdown, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Quoted in Philip Armstrong, Andrew Glyn and John Harrison, Capitalism Since World War II, London: Fontana, 1984, p. 194.
Keith Middlemass, Politics in Industrial Society: The Experience of the British System since 1911, London: Deutsch, 1979, p. 300.
Richard Titmuss, War and Social Policy, Essays on the Welfare State, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 85.
For a theoretical critique of the gender bias in welfare state arrangements see Carol Patemen, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989, Chapter 8.
Quoted in Alan Cochrane and John Clarke (eds) Comparing Welfare States, London: Sage/Open University Press, 1993, p. 21.
For further development of these points see Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.
Peter Baldwin, The Politics o fSocial Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare States, 1875–1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 121.
T. W. Hutchinson, Economics and Economic Policy in Britain, 1946–1966, London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.
Dexter Whitfield, The Welfare State, London: Pluto Press, 1992, pp. 114–115.
Frank Levy, Dollars and Dreams: The Changing American Income Distribution New York: W. W. Norton, 1988, Tables 3.4 (p. 39) and 9.2 (p. 196).
John Burnett,A History of the Cost of Living, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969, p. 303.
Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity: Economic Sense and Nonsense in An Age of Diminished Expectations, New York: W. W. Norton, 1994, p. 131.
Robert Skidelsky, ‘The decline of Keynsian politic’, in Colin Crouch (ed.) State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism, London: Croom Helm, 1979.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘The manifesto of the Communist Party’ (1848) in L. S. Feuer (ed.) Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, New York: Anchor Books, 1959.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2001 Phillip Brown and Hugh Lauder
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brown, P., Lauder, H. (2001). The End of Consensus. In: Capitalism and Social Progress. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985380_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333985380_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-92291-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-333-98538-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)