I said I would be spending time thinking and that I would be revisiting my hastily written 2011 book, The Courageous State, when doing so.

I have done that, and am pleased with some of what I have found, although it most definitely has serious gaps within its structure. which my more recent work has been addressing.

But I liked my rediscovery that on page 114 I said:

The achievement of potential is the goal of economic entities; the reasons why we fail to achieve our potential are the issues that require explanation.

In what follows, the core economic objective for people is the achievement of potential. The reason for government involvement in the economy, which underpins the whole logic of this book, is that nothing guarantees that the widespread achievement of potential will happen, but government intervention definitely helps it to do so.

That was the kernel of the section on economic theory in the book, which I strongly suspect is the part no one has read.

How would I put that now? Not in quite the same way, I think. My writing style has changed. I have changed. The world has changed. I might try this now:

Human beings are social, caring, creative and interdependent creatures. The purpose of society is to create the conditions in which every person can realise their potential. The purpose of the economy is to support that task. The purpose of the state is to help society achieve it.

Contrast this with the neoliberal objective, which might be summarised as:

Human beings are autonomous individuals pursuing their own interests. The purpose of society is to facilitate voluntary exchange between them. The purpose of the economy is to maximise efficiency, growth and consumer choice. The purpose of the state is to protect property rights, enforce contracts and otherwise stay out of the way of the achievement of individual's objectives.

The contrast is this:

Neoliberalism tends to begin with suspicion of the state. The state is viewed as inefficient, bureaucratic, potentially coercive and a threat to freedom.

The Courageous State begins with a different question. If there are things we can only achieve together, how do we organise ourselves to achieve them? The state becomes not a threat but a possibility, a mechanism through which society acts collectively and a means of creating capabilities that individuals could never create alone.

If reduced to a single sentence, the neoliberal worldview says:

Human flourishing emerges when individuals are left as free as possible to pursue their own interests through markets.

The Courageous State worldview says:

Human flourishing emerges when society deliberately creates the conditions in which every person can develop their capabilities and participate fully in collective life.

Discussion about everything else, whether it be tax, spending, regulation, public services, ownership, social security, growth, sustainability, debt and democracy, is ultimately an argument about which of these two propositions is closer to the truth.

Is that fair?

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