Forget about the social contract....
933941
This is the most provocative book Ive read in my adult life.
It powerfully evokes a very civilized despair for the human social condition. It implies that the Western notion of the social contract to be a wistful, romantic notion. I think I said that in a nice way. Shantung Compound was a blunt, clarifying, transformative read for me.
In Gilkeys words, This book is about the life of a civilian internment camp in North China during the war against Japan . . . Because internment-camp life seems to reveal more clearly than does ordinary experience the anatomy of mans common social and moral problems and the bases of human communal existence, this book finally has been written.
Gilkey was a 24-year-old American teacher in a Chinese university when World War II commenced. He and about 2,000 others, mostly Europeans including academics, clergy and businessmen, were imprisoned for more than two years in relatively benign conditions in the Weihsien camp near Shantung. Their Japanese captors provided the bare minimum of food and coal, and told the inmates to run the camp inside the walls.
Shantung Compound is Gilkeys account of the endlessly frustrated attempts, by various camp leaders and elected committees and a few charismatic individuals, to enforce a fair allocation of the smallish rooms and dorm beds, to get everyone to do a fair share of work, to prevent stealing, to settle social disputes, to provide for the exceptional needs of the elderly, the frail, the young kids, the nursing mothers.
The overwhelming truth is that, facing the prospective dangers and daily extremities of camp life, nearly all of the internees didn't rise to the occasion to protect the weak and to cooperate rationally for their own good and the common good.
Instead, this is what nearly all of the interneesmost of them white, educated, Westerntended to do most of the time: they conspicuously looked out for themselves and their families, declined to do more than a modicum of work, refused to give up some of their equal share of food and housing to needier fellow inmates, shied away from volunteer leadership, declined to share the contents of relief parcels sent by their own governments, stole food and supplies whenever possible, refused to punish the egregious wrongdoers among them, and rationalized most of their uncharitable, uncooperative and uncivil behavior in complex variations of religious and humanist moralities.
Mind you, this wasn't humanity in a state of nature. No . . . Nature, red in tooth and claw stuff. The Japanese guards remained aloof from the prisoners largely autonomous camp administration, and permitted black market trading with villagers outside the camp. The internees lived in dismal but not life-threatening conditions. They lived peaceably, often manifesting their shortcomings in a nominally genteel way. In a perverted sense, they were in a protected environment, and really didn't worry much about anything except surviving in a tolerably impoverished condition as part of a generally homogeneous group.
They could have lived an Enlightenment fantasy. They could have established a coherent community with orderly cooperation, consensual leadership and rational allocation of food, housing and civic niceties to appropriately satisfy the disparate needs of all.
But they didnt.
Here endeth the lesson for today.
Read more on my website:
richardsubber.com
1530863
I am stunned. I have tried to present pleasant cogent arguments about the extinction of species and climate change. Not any more. I don't think there is time to dance around with ignorant ideologues. It's time to light fires under peoples asses until their heads are a catchin. Oops! Oh I forgot run away free market capitalism is all that is important to the world. See you all in hell.
3919842
Some interesting thoughts here.  Unfortunately, he makes a good case for the "tyrrany of the majority" school of sales and marketing, which for those of us who don't march to the beat of the mainstream, is without solace.  Armies of market researchers test political language for effectiveness and have found that the term "pro-life" sells better than "anti-abortion," that "climate change" can be more effective than "global warming."  The A-B-Cs of how to manipulate the public-- how to ask the question in order to get the answer you want.  And all in the name of, "give the public what they want," leaving us with the same moral compass as that of a crack dealer.  Welcome to Modern Capitalism 101.  Is this a good thing?  Not if you like your ice cream in a box...
3626700
That is called free market.  Keep your politics to yourself... or not...
2648974
Matt Ridley is a journalist and banking executive who was in charge of Northern Rock bank in the period leading up to its collapse and a multi-billion taxpayer bailout.  This fact is of no small relevance to his book, The Origins of Virtue.  The book is an extended treatise attempting to use evolutionary biology to demonstrate the following propositions:

-- markets and trade long predated government and politics
-- Government, being a monopoly, produces "mostly disastrous results"
  when it interferes with the free market
-- Man's true nature is 'man the exchanger'
-- people are motivated solely by self-interest
-- trade is the basis of world peace
-- environmentalism is a bit of romantic propaganda; government is the cause of most environmental problems
-- private property has "magical" power and is the solution to all our problems
-- When free markets function, "order emerges perfectly from chaos"

And what is the "biological" evidence for these extreme right wing conclusions?  Precious little.  A smattering of abstract game theory, but he relies heavily on a single case study of one people to prove that trade is fundamental to human nature.  He also gives us a potted history of world trade in a mere 2 pages, and one seriously biased (not surprisingly) to proving that commerce is the source of freedom and happiness while government simply gets in the way.

In short, this is an extreme right-wing political tract by a powerful banker, purporting (just like the social darwinists) to have a scientific basis in evolution for his libertarian conclusions.  It is no small irony that the very free market he extols led to the 2007 meltdown including the collapse of his own bank. So much for the invisible hand! When the government stepped in to rescue his bank, I wonder if he considered changing his views that the market produces perfect order while the government always produces disaster.  Then again, I expect he will find a way to blame the government for the excesses of the market one way or another, as an ideologue always will.

I hope one need not even point out that there is a perfectly sensible middle ground in this debate: the market does some things extremely well, but is terrible at other things; the government does some things very well and other things terribly. A regulated free market is the best we will ever do.  In any case, the idea that we can derive radical libertarianism from biology is just a new version of Social Darwinism.
1502410
The Communist Manifesto spells out the plan of the architects of communism (Marx & Engels). This economic model was doomed to failure. It goes against innate human nature. Their ideas on family and the elimination of personal property are simply untenable. However, their position on the money class exploiting the working class, and the resultant effect of this exploitation is evident in today's America. More and more money is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Regardless of your political views, Read this and see if capitalism needs a revamping. My guess you'll say yes... Unless you're in the 2%, of course.
451979
Another book on welfare reform. Dr. Green invokes a long tradition of writers who care about those less able to help themselves but who believes that the best way to help is to help people to help themselves not merely to give handouts.
If this book were only about this then I would heartily endorse it and probably award it five starts. Unfortunately there is another issue which is cleverly incorporated into the text but is really a distinct issue in it's own right which is the thorny issue of what is euphemistically termed lifestyle choice.
The book has much to commend it. Clearly the author has looked into this very seriously and drawn heavily on his work on mutual and friendly societies in arriving at his conclusions. He makes a good case for the ending of the payment of welfare benefits as we know them and the substitution of government assistance whilst restoring independence. There is further work to be done in this area and, in particular, the transitional arrangements to that position but generally speaking he sets out a good case. It seems to me too that there is scope aplenty for some serious research into the costs of social administration involved in taxing incomes and earnings and the payment of social benefits out to millions. How can we as post-modern societies continue to rob Peter to pay Peter and Paul too? However, I digress.
The issue of lifestyle choice is clearly an anathema to the author who sets out his stall for the restoration of the traditional family, a theme which provides a unifying link to the publications of the Health & Welfare Unit now CIVITAS. He attempts to convince libertarians that the family is an essential prerequisite to the maintainance of a free society but does not address any of the fundamental issues which confront such a position. The argument is a crucial one and one which is at the crux of the debate about what sort of society we want. Yhere is a rather unholy alliance of ethical socialists, traditional conservatives and the Christian right who together are campaigning for the restoration of the family as a centrepiece of government and state policies.
This is not the place to debate that issue but in a way it underpins Green's position. His thesis seems to rely on the unstated assumption that for his scheme to work it requires a traditional family structure of the single breadwinner and a stay at home parent. At a stroke this would cut down significantly on the payment of welfare benefits, reduce the demands for childcare and have important implications for all other aspects of social policy.
The problem with this assumption is that it would require the equivalent of putting the genie back in the bottle. However, while this would be popular in some sections of the policy wonk community it would probably dismay many in business who have come to realise the important and growing position of women in the workforce. That said one can conjecture a future in which it is the woman of the household who goes out to work whilst the man remains at home and rears the children.
Food for thought but then one should be careful what one wishes for!
2039034
I have not yet read this book, although I plan to.  Coming from a working-class background, attending an elite law school, and practicing law lend me a keen awareness of the issues of class in American society, issues rarely acknowledged in the general discourse.  Needless to say, this book covers an important and ignored issue in the United States.
Having said that, may of the one star negative reviews seem like carbon copies from people who have never read the book (or perhaps any other book for that matter).  If you have something real to offer to the discussion, please do.  If you merely want to vent that the book fails to match your ideology, save it for your friends.
As for sale rank, that is rather meaningless.  I'm guessing that Homer's The Iliad, Locke's Two Treatises on Government, and Boethius' Consolation of Philospohy are ranked just a bit lower than, say, the latest Harry Potter fare or Danielle Steel flotsam.
4072194
Spartacus, the man Marx described as "the most capital fellow in the whole history of antiquity", is one of my heroes. So I can never resist buying any new book that comes out about him, even though I know that it is unlikely that any new facts will emerge beyond those contained in books I have already read. There is always the chance of an interesting new analysis of the known facts or of the old story being told in a well-written or inspiring way.

In this case I was disappointed on these counts. Firstly, although the book is not badly written overall, the author does at times slip into pretentious language. How about this for a sentence? "So there took shape an elastic and multiform space of cultural intertwinings, of social practices and power, of relations and exchanges, shared by the world of the free and by that of the slaves."

Secondly, the flow of the narrative of the slave revolt is frequently interrupted by Schiavone's social analysis of the Roman world at the time. In my view it would have been better to put the analysis and the narrative into separate sections.

Thirdly, the author constantly warns against going beyond the evidence and trying to get inside the mind of Spartacus. But he then goes straight ahead and gives his own interpretation of what he thinks Spartacus was trying to achieve.

Finally, and most importantly, Schiavone makes the ridiculous claim that we cannot talk about there having been "classes" in the ancient Roman world. He claims that classes only exist when a modern-style labour market exists. The definition of "class" that he uses is one which would only be applicable to a modern capitalist system.

But Karl Marx himself and modern writers such as G.E.M. de Ste Croix, in his masterpiece "The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World", show us that "class" is the key concept for understanding the ancient world and the medieval world, as well as modern capitalism.

Class is a social relationship based on exploitation. As Marx wrote: "The essential difference between the various economic forms of society (between, for example, a society based on slave labour and one based on wage labour) lies only in the mode in which surplus labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer..."

The slave revolt led by Spartacus was a class-based revolt. This does not mean that it was necessarily a "class-conscious" affair in the sense of the participants having a worked-out programme of aims for an alternative society. No Marxist would expect slaves in ancient Rome to have a fully-developed Bolshevik programme!

At that stage of development a classless society was not a material possibility. If the slaves had won, the only possible outcomes were either escape from the control of the Roman state or the slave leaders becoming a new ruling elite. Nevertheless, the Spartacus revolt was an inspiring example of an exploited class rising up against their rulers.

There are several books available on Spartacus that are better than this one. A good starting point is the one by Theresa Urbainczyk, also entitled "Spartacus". There is also a very interesting one entitled "Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents", edited by Brent D. Shaw, which mainly consists of extracts showing what the ancient writers themselves said about slavery and the slave revolts.

Phil Webster.
(England)
1336583
Waaahhhhh!!! Life is so hard, so I am going to whine about it. I thought this book would give me some compassion. Instead, my belief that poverty is a mindset problem is confirmed.

And by the way, anyone making $20,000 per year (especially married filing joint) does not pay federal or state taxes. And they receive tax credits! Maybe she is referring to social security, which is a kind of forced saving plan? Or maybe she withholds too much?? Anyways, 'poor' people do not pay "plenty of taxes."

Another fun fact - anyone can be fired "at will" in most states. Whether you work in fast food or a cubicle, the laws are the same.

I can't figure out what this author wants. Handouts? Sympathy? I don't really care, I need to get back to my own life now.
3319078
Excellent.  What Merrill Ring shows is that the Conservative/Libertarian interpretation of Aesop's fable wrongly assumes that people are tied together only by a system of negative rights and obligations  i.e. the right not to have one's life interfered with by others, and the obligation to refrain from doing harm to others.  On this individualistic interpretation, there are no positive rights and duties, i.e. the right to be helped by others in times of need and the reciprocal obligation to do the same for them.  But what Ring also correctly points out, this Conservative narrative completely ignores the fact that people live in communities (families, friends, colleagues, neighbors, tribal members, etc.) in which we are bound to one another by a network of positive rights and obligations.  In communities we operate as morally connected beings, not as disconnected strangers ("atoms") tied together only by a network of rights specifically defined by rules.  The overwhelming reaction of people to the plight of their neighbors during the recent disastrous hurricanes in Florida and Texas are prime examples of the community model of rights and obligations.  And it puts to the lie the recommendation of Conservatives that we owe nothing to each other in times of distress.
4228409
Stupid naive joke of a book based on some idiotic fantasy of trusting people in business. It will not be happening in this world at any time ever. Idealistic to an extreme to expect capitalists to embrace any of this. If they could it would be utopia. But it ain't happening.
3129659
This book should be read in school so that we quit turning out students who have no idea of the principles this country was founded on and how they are being destroyed by our politicians. Of course those politicians get elected by ignorant voters because they are clueless about justice. Justice in this book  focuses on justice as it relates to liberty. I sent the following to the peoples forum of our local left wing rag for the Fourth of July and of course they didn't publish it.

"This country was founded because of a desire for freedom and established on 2 principles from natural law.  (1) do all you agreed to do (2)do not encroach on other persons and their property. It was implemented through scientific law. We now have political law, i.e. ever changing and growing made up by legislators, understood by no one, and enforced by political power. The difference is eloquently explained in Richard Maybury's book "Whatever Happened to Justice".
He shows how political law and political power is used by the left to encroach on your property and the right to encroach on your person. Politicians encroach on #1 above all the time.
Ayn Rand has written about many of the same ideas in her famous novel "Atlas Shrugged" and non-fiction books e.g. "The Virtue of Selfishness" and "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal".
I'm sure that a large majority of readers and the publisher and editors of this paper have no understanding of what freedom really means, how much weve lost, and what's required to regain it. Although I prefer Rand's views, Maybury is probably more accessible to the majority and should be read by all starting in junior high. Become informed before voting!"
2172222
The author (Ayn Rand) makes a case for the value of individual responsibility and rewards, but it's got serious holes.

For instance:
1. She would have us believe that all needy people are lazy leeches and communists. This simply isn't true. Our outcomes do not always reward our effort. Some people are hit by tragedy and we should feel some obligation to help them in a way that gets them back to self-reliance as quickly as possible.

2. Her "ideal" world would ensure every act, down to the smallest gesture of kindness, is financially rewarded. Research shows, however, that people will often work harder and more joyously when working under a "social contract" rather than a "business contract". Her world would be stiff and dark.

I do believe we would be better to move closer toward her view of government's role, but she goes much too far. We do have too many ill-advised government handout programs, which often do more to undermine the self-reliance of the recipients. She, unfortunately, doesn't provide a viable alternative in this book.

It's too bad she took such an un-nuanced approach because, philosophically, I think she's in a better space than today's public-pandering politicians.
3299904
I am appalled at this book that is explicit in its philosophy of violence.  I was told by an associate that I should read this.  I am not a socialist and at this point realize that, in a country like Russia, men will continue to want to control their destiny.  The point in the long, long introduction that hit home with me was that violence was the only way to get anyone's attention.
I cannot comprehend why a privileged woman would sacrifice someone's life to make a point, no matter how terrible times were.  I guess I am just too "privileged" myself, by living in a country with a certain amount of free speech.

This book does make a point.  The point these stories make for me is that we had better appreciate - even with all of our flaws, what a great country of opportunity we have and get our act together.  The food industries and the pharmaceutical industries are running rampant in America and endangering people who innocently still believe that all is well and that food additives are not dangerous and damaging to the brains of children, especially.  The belief that a pill will fix everything.....we are headed where with the "leader" (translate that as puppet) we have.

America, you might want to read this book, not for seeing how brave five women were, but to further understand the threats of socialism and bullheadedness of controlling leaders in other countries.

Oh, and as a parting thought....what good was it to kill Alexander II when that only put his son in his place.  Granted, someone else took care that the entire family then was eliminated....I can not comprehend how you can kill a living thing, let alone a person, let alone to decimate an entire family, and probably the cute little dog too.  It must have been great fun.
Anonymous for obvious reasons
3701795
I abhor these men from the core of my being.  Our civilisation's obsession with wealth is a symptom of our corruption and decay.  I work in a bookstore and battle with the urge to take the display stand of this book outside and set them all on fire.

Money is not infinite.  Not everyone can be rich.  When more people become wealthy, more and more people become poor.  As Sarah McLachlan said "The more we take, the less we become.  The fortune of one man means less for some".

If you despise the growing gap between the rich and the poor, then why try to exacerbate it by pursuing riches for yourself?

"It is harder for a rich man to go to Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle".  A belief in Heaven is not necessary for the damning sentiments of that statement to register with your conscience.

Don't buy this book for two reasons.

1) It fuels the fire of wealth obsession - the source of greed, corruption and injustice that already has the world set ablaze with suffering.

2) It's just making THEM rich, not you.
4579360
Saul Alinsky is the most un-American intellectual to ever befall 20th century.  Pray tell, Mr. Alinsky, what alternative to the American constitution do you envision?  Liberals are trapped in toddler mentality-"it's not fair!!!!!!!"  I'll just stomp my feet until I get my way.  Mob rules!  Sorry liberals, life is NOT fair.  And your vision of fairness is the exact opposite of fairness-reward the failures and the cheats and your friends in power, punish the successful and the ones who want to be taught to fish, not given a fish for free. The one thing liberals hate, and base their entire existence rebelling from, is the idea that you can't get something from nothing.  This book is dedicated to the devil, Lucifer. Enough said.