Response to Simon Griffiths

Abstract

I am second to none in my admiration for Raymond Plant as a political philosopher and a man. In consequence, I regard commenting on his work — even vicariously — as an act of shameful lèse-majesté. It is an impertinence for me to write that I share his positive view of justice and freedom. For it was he who made sense of my instincts about ‘agency’ and gave an ideological meaning to the old Bernard Shaw aphorism about every Englishman being free to have tea at the Ritz as long as he can afford to pay the bill. That being said, it has always seemed to me that he is overgenerous in his attitude towards Friedrich Hayek. He is absolutely right to say that the apparent success of the free market — combined with the advance of the global economy — has had a profound effect on social democratic thinking, but it is the competitive system’s visible popularity with an expanding middle class, rather than the force of the supporting theoretical argument, which has commended it to politicians.