As the enterprise culture crumbles, and a sadder and wiser society begins to count the cost, two connected themes - one novel and surprising, at least in its present form, the other a ghost from a half-forgotten past - have acquired an unexpected urgency. The first is the theme of citizenship, of civility, of membership of and participation in a community bound together by ties of mutual obligation. The second is the theme of the mixed economy or the developmental state, of a socially just and economically productive balance between market forces and public intervention.

LRB 20 December 1990 | PDF Download