Bring Back Barrington Moore The Future He Foresaw is Now Our Present Brexit Included (original) (raw)

Bring Back Barrington Moore The Future He Foresaw is Now Our Present Brexit Included

Abstract. Barrington Moore, writing during the Cold War and shortly after, believed that the most widely promoted models of politics and society on the left and right had lost their legitimacy. In all industrial societies freedom and equality were limited by complexity and the need to impose coordination. Meanwhile, people were keen to evade both uncertainty and responsibility. As a result they were easily seduced by fascism, nihilism or hedonism. Evidence in favour of these conclusions is widely available in the early twenty-first century. Barrington Moore’s work is worth looking into again. It even gives us clues about why the supposed costs and benefits of Brexit are so difficult to debate rationally in UK politics. Keywords. Barrington Moore, democracy, dictatorship, capitalism, communism, politics, violence, values, Britain, France, United States, Germany, Russia, China, morality, fascism, nihilism, division of labour, authority, repression, aristocracy, peasantry, bourgeoisie, states, revolution, rebellion, bureaucracy, Sumner, Kellner, Mosca, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, Brexit.