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Title: On the Edge: Living With Global Capitalism by Anthony Giddens, Will Hutton ISBN: 0-09-927368-3 Publisher: Random House (UK) Pub. Date: 01 August, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.01

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Average Customer Rating: 1 (2 reviews)

Rating: 1
Summary: Shoddy effort to justify a failed economic system
Comment: In this dreadful little potboiler, Anthony Giddens, LSE Director and Blair's favourite guru, ex-Observer editor Will Hutton and ten contributors, including gambler George Soros, tell us to live with global capitalism. To justify this absurd diktat, they put forward some remarkably untenable ideas.

Hutton claims that the USA has more class mobility than Europe. Wrong - Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danzinger showed that US workers are less socially mobile than low-paid workers in European countries. Hutton predicts, "the German economy will start to pick up quite smartly." Wrong - unemployment in Germany has now risen to more than four million.

Giddens writes that capitalism is 'fairer than most socialists tended to assume'. Wrong - 86% of Wall Street's gains go to the richest 10% in the US, and US Chief Executive Officers get on average 475 times what their blue-collar workers get. Poverty, he grandly proclaims, is no longer a condition, just the odd brief episode. Wrong - in Britain, three million old people live in poverty, and worldwide, ten million more people now live in poverty than in 1990. He writes, "capitalism has buried the working class." Wrong - worldwide, there are more workers than ever before.

Giddens tells the German government to reform its labour market and welfare system to make it more like the market, because "existing structures of the welfare state are no longer able to deliver". Wrong - it is the market that doesn't work: the average investing household in the USA, forced into stock market gambling to fund their health care, pensions and children's education, has lost $45,000 since the 2000 crash.

They tell us that after the coal-based industrial revolution, then the oil-fired economy, we are now in the third revolution, the third way of the 'knowledge-based', services economy. Wrong - Britain's decline in manufacturing is due to the dominance of finance capital, not to 'a worldwide trend towards a services economy'. Between 1973 and 1992 manufacturing output rose by 25% in Germany, 27% in France, 85% in Italy and 119% in Japan, while in Britain it rose by just 1%.

Rating: 1
Summary: Pretentious, wrong-headed windbags!
Comment: Blair presses on, trying to impose privatisation through PPP on hospitals, schools, colleges, London Underground, etc., as part of his modernising 'Third Way'. What is this? Peter Mandelson recently gave the game away when he described modernisers like himself as 'all Thatcherites now'. The Blairite pundits Anthony Giddens and Will Hutton claim to be pro-market but anti-Thatcherite.

In this book, they tell us how and why we must live with global capitalism. Hutton claimed that there is more class mobility in the USA than in Europe. Wrong - a study by economists Peter Gottschalk and Sheldon Danzinger showed that US workers had less class mobility than low-paid workers in European countries. Hutton predicted, "the German economy will start to pick up quite smartly." Wrong - unemployment in Germany has now risen over four million.

When the governors of Haringey's schools invited Hutton to put their case against a proposed Private Finance Initiative scheme, he helpfully declared that it was "the closest thing to a free lunch I have seen in 20 years of economic journalism." Wrong - under the scheme, Haringey council was forced to agree to pay the building firm Jarvis an extra £2 million a year for the next 25 years.

Giddens believes that capitalism is 'fairer than most socialists tended to assume'. Wrong - 86% of Wall Street's gains went to the richest 10% of the US population, and US Chief Executive Officers get on average 475 times what their blue-collar workers get. Poverty, he grandly proclaims, is no longer a condition, just the odd brief episode. Wrong - in Britain, three million old people live in poverty. And world-wide, 100 million more people now live in poverty than in 1990. He writes, "capitalism has buried the working class." Wrong - world-wide, there are now more workers than ever before.

He says that the German government will have to reform its labour market and welfare system to make it more like the market, because "existing structures of the welfare state are no longer able to deliver". Wrong - relying on the stock market doesn't work: the average investing household in the USA, forced into gambling to fund their pensions, education for their children and health care, lost $45,000 after the 2000 crash wiped $2.2 billion off the Nasdaq (new technology) stock market.

Hutton and Giddens tell us that after the coal-based industrial revolution, then the oil-fired economy, we are now in the third revolution, the third way of the 'knowledge-based', 'weightless', 'dematerialised' economy. Wrong - Britain's decline in manufacturing is not due to 'a worldwide trend towards a services economy'. When, between 1973 and 1992 manufacturing output in Britain rose by just 1%, it rose by 25% in Germany, 27% in France, 85% in Italy and 119% in Japan. This pure idealism implies that earlier industrial revolutions were powered by ignorant (workers), not clever like 'us' moderns. Tony Blair's favourite guru, Charles Leadbeater, recently wrote a book entitled, Living on thin air. This absurd vision of the future allows no production, no industry, no nation, no economy, no materiality - and this idealist rubbish passes as 'new' wisdom! Workers having to live on thin air - no thanks!