Here is R.H.Tawney writing in 1946: “The state is an important instrument and we must use it. But it is an instrument and nothing more. Fools will use it, when they can, for foolish ends, and criminals for criminal ends. Sensible and decent me will use it for ends which are decent and sensible.”

And Keynes: “It is fatal for a capitalist government to have principles. It must be opportunistic in the best sense of the word, living by accommodation and good sense.”

These pleas for decency and pragmatism in the post-war years are quoted in a terrific book by Jan-Werner Muller, [amazon_link id=”0300113218″ target=”_blank” ]Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-century Europe[/amazon_link]. The book takes a chronological approach to the evolution of the dominant political philosophies from the high classical liberalism prevailing at the start of the 20th century to the neo-liberalism of the last two decades of the century. This makes for fascinating reading at a moment when that neo-liberalism itself is disintegrating as a coherent philosophy. And at a time of crisis like today’s, when the future of the EU seems in real doubt, it is instructive (but not encouraging) to look back at the earlier crises of capitalism, in the 1930s and 1970s, to try to foresee where the dynamics of public political philosophy will head now.

One of the features of the book I greatly appreciated is that it includes all of Europe, not just the west. This is rarer than one might imagine – Tony Judt’s superb [amazon_link id=”009954203X” target=”_blank” ]Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945[/amazon_link] is one of the few examples I can think of. It was also useful to be shown the continuity of political thought, which I have previously seen as a succession of unrelated ideas and philosophies, without understanding the dynamics of one manifestation of, or reaction to, Enlightenment reason and liberalism giving way to another.

This book is also sobering in showing how often – and how violently – apparently permanent world views can change utterly. Muller obviously wrote the book well before the European financial crisis became the existential political threat to the EU that it has proven. He ends by saying that in the reunified continent, Europeans can have some confidence in their achievements. But ends by saying: “no single master idea or value will furnish European democracies with certainty about their future…..Democracy is institutionalized uncertainty.”

[amazon_image id=”0300113218″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-century Europe[/amazon_image]