READING ZYGMUNT BAUMAN

The reader likes the name: Zygmunt Bauman. It has a sci-fi twang to it, though Zygmunt Bauman is very much a writer working now. He is an Emeritus (retired) Sociology professor in Leeds (53 degrees North, 1 degree West), a city in central England with a museum to the work of sculptor Henry Moore and a soccer team known for it's passionate supporters.

The reader likes the name of the book.

Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?

The reader likes the words 'Few' and 'Us' and, in particular, likes the fact that the title is in the form of a question.

The book is short. Not like the more famous and more widely read Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, which covers much of the same ground. The reader rates brevity.

Zygmunt Bauman is not convinced of the benefits of continuing economic growth. He goes back to John Stuart Mill in 1848 for the wisdom that

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement.

Zygmunt Bauman is not the first and won't be the last thinker to zone in on 'wealth distribution' not 'wealth creation' as the major problem facing the world.

Indeed, nearly all the increase in the gross national product that has been achieved in the US since the credit collapse in 2007, more than 90 percent of it, has been appropriated by the richest 1 per cent of Americans.

This is true not only in America. The reader senses that the word 'gross' is ironically appropriate and enjoys the two uses of the word 'appropriate'.

Zygmunt Bauman cites four tacit presumptions commonly accepted as 'obvious' (needing no proof) for the way that we live now and are predetermined to live forever.

Economic Growth is the only way to handle our problems.

Perpetually rising consumption is the most effective way to gratify the human pursuit of happiness.

Inequality of humans is natural.

Rivalry is a necessary and sufficient condition of social justice.

Zygmunt Bauman argues against each of the presumptions in turn, using inequality studies by diverse writers such as James B. Davies, Jeremy Warner, Stewart Lasnsey, Glen Firebaugh, Francois Bourguignon, Joseph E. Stiglitz and, perhaps his favourite, Daniel Dorling. The notes at the back of the book offer plenty of possibilities for further reading.

Instead it (economic growth) portends for an already overwhelming and fast-rising number of people yet deeper and starker inequality, a yet more precarious condition and so also more degradation, chagrin, affront and humiliation – an ever tougher struggle for social survival.

The reader enjoys the language. Using words like 'chagrin' and 'affront' in a book of political economy and philosophy pleases the reader. The book is rigorous and argumentative, but also engaging. Some of the sentences are overly long and occasionally infelicitous, but overall it's a good – short – read.

Does Zygmunt Bauman offer a response to these presumptions and the terminal illness they inflict on society? Not really. Having proved his point, he chastises himself with the thought, developed from the work of Elias Canetti, that there is a gap between our words and our deeds. He offers writers to us as people who may help us bridge that gap.

Ask people about the values dear to them and the odds are that many, probably most, will name equality, mutual respect, solidarity and friendship among the top most. But look closely at their daily behaviour, their life strategies in action, and one can bet that you'll derive from what you've see an entirely different league table of values. You will be astonished to find out how wide the gap is between ideals and realities, words and deeds.

Zygmunt Bauman gets a little Beckettian at the very end of this fine book, when he writes

We will never know unless we try: again and again, and ever harder.

The reader notes that you can now have Beckett's great injunction from his novel Murphy printed on a key-ring, a mug, a tee shirt or the case for your smart-phone.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

The reader thus notes that more writing by Zygmunt Bauman and others may be necessary to bridge the gap between words and deeds in the face of The Four Great Presumptions of our age.

It may be almost as hard as bridging the gaps in one of Henry Moore's statues in Leeds.

Does the Richness of the Few Benefit Us All?; book; Polity; Cambridge; 2013

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