The Blue Labour Book embraces paradox, but when some of its thinkers get more philosophical and

less pragmatic, the effects are politically deleterious. Polanyi and, drawing on him, MacIntyre, bring a whole rather dodgy philosophy of history with them. The categories Polanyi employs are so abstract they produce a patterning of history which transcends particular social relations. If, as Hans Blumenberg has argued, opponents of historical periodization have to contend with the implications either that nothing ever happens, or that anything can happen at any time, the latter certainly applies in the case of Polanyis categories of analysis. Thus, for instance, he can group together, as examples of embedded economies, the Trobriand Islands, Athens and Dahomey, and Stalins Russia. The upshot, in Glasman at least, is an anecdotalism in place of analysis which roams a history gutted of intrinsic dynamism, in which, as in a vacuum, nothing prohibits prodigious leaps between distant places. The same abstractness bedevils accounts of the countermovement against the right of the free market, as is evidenced by the fact that in the hands of Polanyis

followers this can be represented by central Europe, by China, by the EU, a Tobin Tax, or even the Russian Mafia! For Glasman, of course, Germany holds the key, and here we see a potential benefit of loose and baggy terminology, which allows impressivesounding announcements to be made, which herald much more modest and achievable aims. Thus, in Unnecessary Suffering, it is announced that Germany is not a market society. Socialism suddenly seems so much more achievable. And yet, as well as such incidental benefits, there is something problematic about an outlook which in some respects coincides with the empiricals of our time sufficiently to gain traction (a need to shrink the state? A reaction against New Labours utilitarian vision of the state as instrument as maximizer of welfare?); yet which in impulse and vision considerably overshoots them in the form of an aversion, only occasionally expressed, to state welfare per se, as in Glasmans remarks about claimaints of disability benefits. Polanyis philosophy of history had a baleful influence on the more properly philosophical of the influences Glasman cites, Alasdair MacIntyre. Indeed, so negative

is MacIntyres view of the state, elaborated by way of an extremely bleak reading of Weber (cp. eg. Habermas), that the only hope he sees, in our new dark ages, is the arrival of another St Benedict, or in living out the times in small communes, especially fishing villages. Perhaps the signal way in which Polanyis influence bears on MacIntyre, for present purposes, is an account of liberalism which finds room for Kant and Rousseau, but not for J. S. Mill, for philosophical modernity for Macintyre is represented to an extent by Bentham (substituted for Rousseau), to an extent by an extremely negative picture of the surpassingly wonderful Hume, and above all by Kant. In other words, MacIntyres account of modern liberalism is overly philosophical, seeing its failure as consisting in failing to provide coherent foundations for its doctrines. Instead, lacking any foundation but what can be found in the individual qua individual either his essential rational freedom, unbeholden to others (Kant), or his irreducibly personal desires and preferences (Hume) liberalism is responsible for the chaos of values and moral arbitrariness he sees as typifying modernity.

What this overlooks is what can be termed a humanistic rather than philosophical Enlightenment, one for which individuals are not punctual or atomistic, and their desires and preferences neither asocial not mere preferences, but socially constituted and a reasonable (= intersubjective) basis for a common good, albeit a somewhat thinner one, more forgiving of pluralism, than that to which MacIntyres Aristotelianism aspires (Gutting on Rorty). MacIntyre possesses too abstract and dramatic, because too philosophical, an idea of the modern individual, and too little sense of how modern society coheres; and sets against it too objective and fixed a common good, too naturalistic a hierarchy of ends. Modernity consists in a complex social order, not disintegration (84), and protects individual freedom and difference (as opposed to the subordination and privilege of earlier societies), while maintaining social cohesion: the modern individual is not a mere atom but rather the product of particular social conditions, and so too for liberal values. (87) It can be argued that a conflictual sensitivity is actually more virtuous than one of rigid harmony (220).

Something like MacIntyres dismissal of Liberalism and rejection of the social complexity to which it bears withness lies behind Glasmans denunciations of the term. And inasmuch as it is anti-Liberal, thus far Blue Labour is nostalgic, whatever its protagonists may protest. Rorty has remarked on the terminal wistfulness which typically comes upon communitarian philosophers at the end of their books, and, while there is little enough in the Politics of Paradox volume to match Johnathon Rutherfords masculinist account of the story of modernity as one of recurrent dispossession (what became of Tony Croslands glee at the fact that Marx and Engels hadnt reckoned into their schemes the effects, for material equality, of universal suffrage?), it is hard to see what can be rescued, and how we are to proceed into the future, if Liberalism is taken to be our enemy. The Politics of Paradox may be more nuanced and pragmatic indeed, Pragmatist in its openness to different traditions and claims, but every time Maurice opens his mouth to denounce Liberalism, he is not just taking a political stand but making a philosophical claim, and one which is

politically damaging inasmuch as it makes opponents of those who are more naturally allies (as has been argued of the earlier Sandels tendency starkly to oppose Liberalism and Civic Republicanism). If Aristotelianism is to be our ally, its chief use may lie not in a philosophical reconstruction, or harking back, to a polis of 300 more than 2,000 years ago, but in the kind of political and poetic effort to determine what necessities are enjoined on the State by dint of a human nature whose chracteristics are gleaned from not just Western philosophy, but the fundamental myths and narratives of world culture, as outlined by quite pointedly and sharply by Martha Nussbaum in her Aristotelian Social Democracy. There will be times when Liberal claims to Liberty will conflict with the social-democratic demands of equality, or justice, but this is a political battle, or negotiation, between competing claims on our attention and resources; not a philosophical contention of opposites.

In effect, the hist incidence of the operation of the mechs is conceived as the empir realisation of essences in diverse form, in the manner of idealist phils of hist. ALMOST AS IF PREHIS CONTAINED UNCHANGING ESSENCE OF MAN RELIG Seems to coincide with empiricals of our time (welfare and dignity) but overshoots them (state is utilitarian and bad compounded by fact it coincides with empir of New Lab state: U.S.: state defines rationality as max interest) BUT overshoots nonetheless Speenhamland and tension welfare / soc status of person [NB HIS MAGIC WORDS what are we to make of status, Person] Sheer ambiguity of countermovement

Ignores Mill for R and K 2 NARRS OF MKT IN ENG Normal and one which sees shift from mercantilism as traumatic break with customary (no hunger) [SCHEMATIC WITH BIG ABSTRACTIONS] Unclear whether things go on mkt or state side of ledger Makes only lib cap active all the others eg state cap are responses, and transient BUT UNDEREST EXTENT TO WHICH MERCANT WAS CAP; AND UNDEREST BY CENTURIES HOW MUCH MAKT SOC - wrong to say no mkt under Speenham cf G;las on Ger Lumps together import duites and tu struggles [IE. LACKS CLASS ANALYSIS!!!!] 87 wrong to say protection of w/c undoes self-reg mkt [NB CONSEQUENCE OF HIS BIG ABSTRACTIONS] 102 WE ARE DEEP EVSLUATORS OF DESIRES BUT MKT TURNS US INTO SHALLOW

UTIKITARIANS [CF MAC!!!!!!!!] cp agrreing collectively on ethical ends 120 Because constructed around formal patterns of locational and appropriational movements, the mechs of integration gp together forms of behaviour that exhib a partic pattern even where the soc relations that express themselves in this way are utterly diverse. [CF GLASMAN LEAPS ACROSS HIST] ALSO REDSICTRIB CAN HAVE V DIFF RESULTS AND INTENTIONS It is no coincidence that Vosss critique echoes that of Weber by Luk in his Destruction of Reason that, because framed at such a high level of abstration, Ws ideal types become empty formal categories around which sprawling segments of hist are assembled, and because they do not req ref to specific types of soc relation they can bring entirely disparate instits under one rubric. [ALSO WHY GLAS THINKS YOU CAN JUST REVIVE THE HUNDREDS] FORMALISTIC, CATEGORIZING 122 DOESNT ANALYZE DOMINATION AND COMPULSION STATIC, INSTIT AND DESCRIPTIVE Because its hist surveys are essentially descriptive, the

prob of explaining the genesis and evol of the embedding instits is not broached directly. [GLAS] HIS integrative mechs are purely descriptive indices: why one, singly or in comb, is dominant at one time or the other is left untheorized. The various modes of integration are seen as the accidental consequence of partic hists, obviating the need to look for mechs governing the transition from one form to another. In effect, the hist incidence of the operation of the mechs is conceived as the empir realisation of essences in diverse form, in the manner of idealist phils of hist. ALMOST AS IF PREHIS CONTAINED UNCHANGING ESSENCE OF MAN RELIG