Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics (1962)

This is a stimulating meditation on politics, which Crick defines, borrowing from Aristotle, as the "master science." It is this master science because politics, on Crick's definition, means the hard work of conciliating the plural interests in a given society, a balancing act that is the prerequisite for individual freedom and the pursuit of all other worthwhile activities. Early in my reading, I wondered whether the book wasn't merely a defense of pluralism and "open access socities," which I thought had been made earlier (the Federalist Papers, especially nr. 10) and perhaps more persuasively elsewhere (Mill? Hayek? Popper? North?). As I read on, though, I began to think that Crick's argument was something else - namely, not just a defence of pluralism as a necessary evil, but a positive endorsement of the compromises, empathy, fallibilism, etc. necessary for such conciliation. These original elements came out especially when Crick drew contrasts between politics in his sense, on the one hand, and "ideologies" - whether of Communism, democracy, nationalism, technology - on the other. There were some echoes in the book of Max Weber's "Politics as a Vocation."

Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991)

Though written in what now feels like an entirely different epoch, this carefully argued book addresses a problem that still plagues us. Since the 1950s, more and more of our politics has been defined and argued over in terms of individual rights, which ostensibly are absolute, inhere in solitary rights-bearers, and imply no corresponding responsibilities. As a result, Glendon argues, complexity gives way to black-or-white thinking, legal conflict over these all-or-nothing stakes replaces compromise, and politics as the art of negotiation withers. The emphasis on hyperindividualistic rights fostered in our legal system subsequently shapes talk - and thought - in politics and everyday life. Occasionally the book addresses cultural and social changes, for example, the decline of civil society organizations. But mainly Glendon focuses on the early modern philosophical origins of rights talk and, especially, on the decisions of prominent American jurists. British and American law first deviated from continental law in this regard when Hobbes and Locke painted pictures of monadic individuals asserting their rights, while Rousseau retained more of the classical and Biblical traditions that had always paired responsibilities with rights. This distinction was wholly new to me. A further step on the American path to hyperindividualist conceptions of rights was taken by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who argued that law has no basis in morality. An especially valuable part of the book are Glendon's detailed comparisons of American and European or Canadian rulings on issues such as abortion or the legal duty to come to the aid of strangers. Rights Talk nicely complements the work of Michael Sandel, whom Glendon acknowledges as an influence, and other communitarian thinkers.

Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (2006)

I just finished this for my Zoom book club. Four of us (the others are Paul Lachelier, Eric Kurlander, and Christian Thorne) have been meeting every few months since 2015! Sometimes we share some comments ahead of time (more often, though, afterwards). Here's what I wrote to the others ahead of our meeting: The book is well argued and full of shocking data and descriptions. I hadn't read or thought much about the problem of slums. Now it's on my radar. However, I have two main critiques: 1) What is the scope of the problem, exactly? The title, of course, would seem to suggest that much of the world's population will one day fill the slums. Davis's observations that the world is becoming more urban and that urban residents are increasingly slum dwellers point to the same apocalyptic end-state. But what do the numbers so far show? I found Davis frustratingly elusive about the scope of the problem. Of course, Davis does include lots of data -  we hear estimates of the numbers of slum-dwellers in many places and even globally. But we never hear, as far as I remember, about proportions. Has the percentage of the world's population living in slums grown over time? What was it in, say, 1945 and 1970 and at the time of writing (2006)? Most of the things I've read about global trends in income and wealth (and by extension, in slum-dwelling) over the last 50 years, say, suggest that the problem of dire poverty has remained intractable for some billion people. That accords with Davis's numbers. However, the other six to seven billion have fared better (of course, with tremendous internal variation) over the same period. As a proportion of the world's population, dire poverty is a diminishing - not a growing - problem. Two relevant, widely cited works are Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion and Angus Deaton's The Great Escape. And this is a great website with all sorts of data: Our World in Data. Davis's work would be just as searing - and more credible - if it dropped the apocalyptic framing. 2) Davis's Causal Account He points the finger at neoliberal policies from the 1970s to 1990s. But much of his own evidence attributes the growth of slums to other factors, many predating the 1970s. The drive to industrialize and urbanize at any cost characterized both communism (at least in its Soviet form) and import-substituting industrialization, the policy pursued in many newly independent countries after 1945. This isn't to discount the role of neoliberal policies in perhaps accelerating slum formation in some or even many cases - just to suggest it's implausible to pin all of the blame on them. I also wonder about population growth as a driver of slum-building and the "bright lights" phenomenon attracting people from the dreary (and dark) countryside.

Bruce K. Alexander, The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in the Poverty of Spirit (2008)

This is a remarkable book - quietly, and often persuasively, radical. I was alerted to it by David Courtwright, in Age of Addiction. Alexander makes three main claims: 1) what he calls "psychosocial integration" - basically, people's embeddedness in community - is necessary for human well-being; 2) in modern times, the spread of the free market ineluctably destroys communities, thereby "dislocating" individuals; 3) addictions - which Alexander defines as negative "overwhelming involvements" - are an adaptation to this dislocation. I agree with these points, though I think Alexander could have spent more time fleshing out what, exactly, psychosocial integration looks like. This is all the more necessary because Alexander defines addiction (and by implication the absence of psychosocial integration) so broadly. "Overwhelming involvements" with alcohol and drugs are only a small fraction of addictions in his eyes; other addictions are to gambling, eating, love, work, attention, fame, having more stuff, religion, etc. By contrast, he implies, only a life of balance, and in a community, is whole, healthy, and integrated. The majority of the world's population is addicted, Alexander speculates. This broad definition of addiction, and the damning picture of modern, capitalist life that follows, is what makes the book so radical. Questions remain - for example, is there any place here for Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "flow" state? According to Csikszentmihalyi, this is the "optimal experience" that occurs when we are fully engaged (overwhelmingly involved?) in mastering a challenge. Alexander does make room for positive addications, but seems to imply that these, too, may be incompatible with complete psychosocial integration. Alexander aknowledges the enormous material gains brought about by capitalism; he doesn't advocate its overthrow, only its taming. I think this non-Marxist stance made the radical arguments go down easier for me. I found myself nodding along to thinkers I had previously scorned, such as Karl Polanyi and even Noam Chomsky! It would be worthwhile to weigh this book's arguments against those in Angus Deaton's Great Escape to develop an overall assessment of capitalism and modernity.