Our speechless outrage demands a new language of the common good [View All]

[CHIMO]

There was a coterie of economists in the 50s in Chicago intensively working on a set of ideas that were widely regarded at the time as marginal. They had little influence on mainstream public debate for another 20 years, and their ideas didn't win votes for nearly 30. But the story is now familiar of how Friedrich Hayek and his associates produced the intellectual roadmap for both Thatcher and Reagan, and the notions cooked up in Chicago – such as efficient market hypothesis – have dominated political economy for the last 30 years. Hayek's legacy, which now lies in ruins all around us, is still brightly promoted, but its claims to fairness and freedom have been utterly discredited.

The institutions that so benefited from Hayek's legacy – in the financial sector – seem oblivious to the crisis of legitimacy they have stumbled into. That's because the public outrage they prompt has no language or intellectual framework to make sense of itself, or to shape a new settlement. But it's only a matter of time.

But don't look to economists to get us out of this hollow mould of neoliberal economics and its bastard child, managerialism – the cost-benefit analysis and value-added gibberish that has made most people's working lives a mockery of everything they know to value. Economics developed brilliant technical skills for monitoring and managing complex economies, but an interpretation that allied them to grossly crude understandings of human nature came to dominate.

We need to be looking to political philosophy. I'm as hazy on the subject as the next person, but in the beautifully concise explanations of American philosopher Michael Sandel, I see great insight into our current predicaments. If any political reckoning is on its way – patience is the key lesson of the Chicago school, such shifts can take a generation – then perhaps it might come from the philosophy department of Harvard.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/18/ethics-society-values-economy