December 03, 2017

From The New Yorker:

In his 1970 book, “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty,” the economist Albert O. Hirschman described different ways of expressing discontent. You can exit—stop buying a product, leave town. Or you can use voice—complain to the manufacturer, stay and try to change the place you live in. The easier it is to exit, the less likely it is that a problem will be fixed.

From The New Yorker:

Americans, [Albert] Hirschman wrote, have always preferred “the neatness of exit over the messiness and heartbreak of voice.” Discontented Europeans staged revolutions; Americans moved on. “The curious conformism of Americans, noted by observers ever since Tocqueville, may also be explained in this fashion,” he continued. “Why raise your voice in contradiction and get yourself into trouble as long as you can always remove yourself entirely from any given environment should it become too unpleasant?”

From The Economist:

Hannah Arendt, in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, cautioned against the glib application of the T-word. The distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism in political theory is not one of degree—with totalitarianism at the top of an ascending scale of evil—but one of kind. Totalitarianism combines a system of terror, single-party rule, a centrally planned economy, command over the army and the media, and an all-encompassing ideology. Such states exercise total control of their citizens’ lives, whereas authoritarian ones stipulate the observance of certain rules and allow limited liberty as long as it does not challenge political power. Where totalitarianism mobilises the people, authoritarianism breeds passivity.

From The Economist:

Sloppy use robs terms of their meaning. It also shapes perceptions.

From The Guardian (John Banville on Best books of 2017):

Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (Harper) has annoyed a great many people in the US, though its message is nothing but common sense: in the age of Trumpery, nothing can be done for vulnerable minorities unless liberals get themselves elected to positions of influence. An urgent and important book by one of the clearest and most inspired political thinkers of the day. There Your Heart Lies by Mary Gordon (Pantheon) takes us back to an earlier time of crisis, the 1930s and the Spanish civil war, and an American woman’s experiences in it. A thoughtful, provocative and beautifully written novel. Michael Longley’s Angel Hill (Cape) is at once elegiac and celebratory, and achingly beautiful. Longley has honed his poetry to the bone, but how the bone does shine.