Affluenza
Oliver James
Vermillion, 400pp, £17.99
Capitalism in English-speaking countries makes people miserable and mentally ill. That’s the essential message of Oliver James’s Affluenza. ‘Getting and having’ have replaced our quest for activities that are worthwhile in themselves.
James’s dislike of the current political dispensation only becomes really clear in his final chapter, when he launches a series of wholly unnecessary personal attacks on prominent figures in government. The rest of the book is a rather readable account of middle-class angst. As psychology, the story seems moderately persuasive, but as political economy, James’s account is unconvincing.
He asserts that the problem in the Anglophone world is ‘selfish capitalism’, but offers little to help us understand the origins of this phenomenon. Thatcherism looks like a natural disaster foisted on an unsuspecting populace, rather than a conscious choice of the British people ratified in four general elections.
The message that inequality is bad for both the poor and the rich will be received with enthusiasm on the centre left, as will his plea for less income inequality, more effective redistribution and a stronger public realm – in James’s words, making Britain look more like Denmark. Of course, there is only one party with even the slightest ambition to move the UK in the direction of Nordic social democracy. Come the next general election, James will have no alternative but to hold his nose and vote Labour.