Tony Judt; Reappraisals, Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century

En samling essäer av varierande kvalitet. Emellanåt insiktsfullt och lärorikt, emellanåt upprört antikommunistiskt på ett sätt som inte känns övertygande. Följande citat ur förordet säger någonting jag tycker är viktigt om ekonomismen som så helt tagit över i politiken;

”The paradox,  of course, is that the very succes of the mixed-economy welfare states, in providing the social stability and ideological demobilization which made possible the prosperity of the past half century, has led a younger political generation to take that same stability and ideological quiescence for granted and demand the elimination of the ”impediment” of the taxing, regulating, and generally interfering state. Whether the economic case for this is as secure as it now appears – whether regulation and social provison were truly an impediment to ”growth” and ”efficiency” and not perhaps their fascilating condition – is debatable. But what is striking is how far we have lost the capacity even to conceive of public policy beyond a narrowly construed economism. We have forgotten how to think politically.”