The Fight for the Future

As intemperate, sustained assaults on accepted wisdoms go, Will Hutton's The World We're In (Little Brown; 409 pages) is world class. The British author and economist's basic premise is that the world stands at a critical juncture faced by the "unlovely and dangerous prospect" that American security concerns will become paramount and all other global worries will be subordinated in an exercise of unilateral "brutish American power." Only the European Union, argues Hutton, has the democratic values and social and economic models to offer a counterweight. What sets Hutton's passionate cri de guerre apart from the usual left-of-center orthodoxy is its root-and-branch critique of contemporary American society and the explicit claim it makes that a united Europe now offers a better, fairer, more successful and more democratic model for the future than the U.S.

Hutton piles one alleged American failing on top of another:

? American democracy today is "an offense to democratic ideals."

? "The object of the U.S. corporation is now naked and unashamed: it is to maximize financial gain for those who own it."

? "The U.S. system is not only socially unjust but also calamitously economically inefficient."

The cause of this sorry state of affairs, in Hutton's eyes, is simple: the ascendancy enjoyed over the past 25 years by the American brand of fundamentalist conservatism with its mulish stress on the rights of the propertied and the freedom of business. "American conservatism," he writes, has "wrought contemptible damage on its own society [and] cannot be allowed to repeat the carnage in Europe." Civility is now under siege in the U.S. because of the triumph of the market economy. The corporate bottom line dictates values. Social mobility has ground to a halt as bitterness and cynicism have risen. Meantime, American unilateralism is threatening the fabric of global interdependence and understanding so painstakingly constructed since 1945. Europe, in contrast, is a land of milk and honey. Europeans generally favor those things Hutton defines as "good": a dominant role for the state; income redistribution; a wider definition of "rights" including free health, education and unemployment benefits; international organizations and supranational authority. "Europe stands alone in offering hope and opportunity to the destitute of the world," argues Hutton. "If this clash is at bottom a moral argument, the Europeans win hands down."

A subplot running throughout the book is the argument that Britain must choose once and for all whether it "sides" with the U.S. or Europe as the relationship between the two power blocs becomes more competitive and the euro transforms relationships in Europe forever. Hutton, of course, has no doubt that Europe offers Britain far more than the U.S. does. If Hutton's purpose is to start a debate about America's or Europe's future, he may well succeed. But if his object is to change minds, change policies, change values, change priorities — on either side of the Atlantic — this angry book is far more likely to end up worsening divisions and heightening misunderstandings.