In the Critics section of this week’s New Statesman, our lead book reviewer John Gray reviews The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism’s Future by Geoff Mulgan. “The assumption underlying Mulgan’s analysis,” Gray writes, “is that … capitalism is the only game in town”. The problem with Mulgan’s thesis, Gray continues, is that his definition of capitalism detaches it from “any particular mode of production”. And we know from recent history that “an elastic understanding of capitalism allows governments to condemn the market’s excesses while continuing to entrench market forces in every corner of society”. Mulgan, argues Gray, has not eluded the logic of market-based thinking. “Where [his] argument is problematic is in accepting that all human relations can be understood as forms of exchange and that we can enjoy the market’s benefits without any of its hazards”.
Also in Books:
Novelist and critic Philippa Stockley reviews Amanda Mackenzie Stuart’s biography of former American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland (“Vreeland lived out her fantasies and for decades encouraged others to invent and imagine theirs”); David Shariatmadari reviews Revolutionary Iran: a History of the Islamic Republic by Michael Axworthy (“Axworthy has confirmed his position as one of the most lucid and humane western interpreters of Iran writing at the moment”); Leo Robson reviews new novels by J M Coetzee and Jim Crace (“The Childhood of Jesus, Coetzee’s most freewheeling work so far, might be seen as a homage to Beckett … The most seductive and enthralling of Crace’s novels, Harvest is also likely to be his last … Ending is its theme – or if not ending, then the destructiveness inherent in change”); Olivia Laing reviews The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman (“[T]he true message of the Aids years should have been that a small group of people at the very margins of society succeeded in forcing their nation to change its treatment of them”); and Rachle Bowlby reviews Jane Dunn’s biography of Daphne du Maurier and her sisters (“Daphne du Maurier was one of three sisters but the Brontes they weren’t, however much this book tries to present a picture of collective creative achievement”).
Elsewhere in the Critics:
Ryan Gilbey reviews Park Chan-wook’s new film, Stoker (“This [film] left me stoked”); Rachel Cooke watches Sue Perkins’s comedy Heading Out and ITV’s Glorious Food, hosted by Carol Vorderman (“Vorderman … appears to be about as interested in cooking as I am in who wins this shameless, muddled rip-off”); Antonia Quirke bemoans the quality of football phone-ins (“programmes such as … Radio 5 Live’s 606 are increasingly hard to listen to”); Jason Cowley reviews Jamie Lloyd’s production of Macbeth, with James McAvoy in the title role (“Jamie Lloyd’s production is as visceral and boisterous as any I have seen”); Alexandra Coghlan hears Maxim Vengerov and Itamar Golan at the Barbican and Nicholas Daniel and friends at the Wigmore Hall (“The quality of [Vengerov’s] playing … is a rather mixed bag”).
Plus:
Meeting Peter Porter a Year After His Death, a poem by Tim Liardet, and Will Self’s Real Meals.
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