In this interesting and worthwhile book Christie Davies compares British late Victorian society with modern Britain, particularly since the mid 1950's using his Moralist-Causalist framework.

He applies Moralism to British society in the late 20th Century showing in considerable detail the remarkably low figures for crime of all kinds including drug taking and even disorderly behaviour such a public drunkenness. He quotes the barrister Luke Owen Pike who declared in 1876, “Meanwhile it may with little fear of contradiction be asserted that there never was in any nation of which we have a history, a time in which life and property were so secure as they are at present in England. …..any man of average stature and strength may wander about on foot or alone at any hour of the day or night through the greatest of all cities and suburbs, along high roads and through unfrequented country lanes and never have so much as the thought of danger thrust upon him, unless he goes out of the way to court it.”

Davies is talking about a society that had become more urban (1850 - 50% to 1890 - 80%), that had seen a big rise in it's standard of living, was the center of a world empire, leveraged its industrial dominance through free trade and had a particular ethos with positive and negative aspects. The negative would be the idea of the natural racial superiority of the Englishman (which he doesn't mention) with the positive being strong societal support for the Guardian ethics of duty, loyalty, service, sacrifice and fortitude – in fact the English Gentleman, being an autonomous individual who is responsible for his own actions.

Causalism is a different concept altogether. Causalism looks at individuals as members of a class such that their actions may only be understood through reference to their “class status”. In other words the autonomous individual has disappeared to be replaced by a “class representative”.

It's no accident that Causalism has a Marxist flavour and Davies traces it's growing influence over British society from the early 1900's onwards with a very rapid growth after the mid 1950's accompanied by an equally rapid growth in signs of social failure, such as violent crime, divorce, fatherless children and drug addiction. Davies convincingly shows that the two are connected but first he traces the growth of the British Welfare State starting with the 1911 National Insurance Act.

David Lloyd George (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Herbert Asquith (Liberal Prime Minister) celebrated the passing of the Act with dinner at the Savoy, the Act being the transfer of the work of Friendly Societies (autonomous, self funded, collective associations giving medical care and sickness benefits to members) to the government with obligatory contributions – basically the first in a long line of government actions based on socialist principles, concerned with removing free-agency and being the “...the administration by the high minded of the welfare of the poor”, going on to include other victim classes such women, racial minorities, homosexuals etc.

In psychological terms, the state is taking the role of Adult away from citizens and returning them to the role of dependent Children, or in simpler terms it is just augmenting its power.

In any event it failed, and Davies says on P.32, “Just as many thought that crime “must” be rising in the “anomic” capitalist, inegalitarian 19th century (McDonald 1982), so, too, there have been those in the latter part of the 20th century who have found it difficult to believe that an enormous expenditure of public money on welfare, education, slum clearance and new council houses, community and leisure centers and general social uplift not only had failed to bring about the fall in crime they had hoped for and expected but was followed by an unprecedented rise not just in crime but in all manner of deviant behaviour. Worse still was the suspicion that these very reforms may have caused the crumbling in the social order.”
He sees the “Scientific Socialist” idea that Moral Progress can proceed in tandem with Technical progress as misguided and that the generally “Social Progressive” ideas being implemented wholesale in the 1950's were bound to fail through machine like metaphors applied to human society, eg. Time and Motion.

The author sees government control as central to the “Progressive” world view with another key event being the publication in 1936 of John Maynard Keynes' book, “The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money”. This introduced the novel idea of “investment” (government spending) that was not required to pay back capital or interest. Of course it worked in the recovery from the Great Depression since the government (and anyone else) could find plentiful valid investments, but it was predictably used by expansionist government (including to the present day) to pay for current spending, wars, unfunded benefits etc. generating very high levels of inflation and government debt relative to the pre 1950's. Davies notes that inflation and debt have a moral aspect in that they punish “prudence, foresight and restraint”.

A minor criticism is that perhaps Davies could have taken a more cyclical view of British society. In their interesting book, “The Fouth Turning”, William Strauss and Neil Howe argue that a societies' attitudes changes in a fairly predictable way over various generations with the dominant ethos being very difficult to resist. In these terms Britain and American have finished a decadent decline and are in the first stages of a difficult societal rebirth precisely around the core ethical values that Davies sees as having been lost. This equals a strong and growing reaction in favour of traditional society with Liberalism having arrived at its limits.

Davies does highlight that for example homosexual activists are getting strong push-back against action in schools, marriage and adoption, and shows the government finally baulking at quick no-blame divorce – with an eye on the unequivocal harm caused by the rapid growth in fatherless children.

He often takes a religious line connecting the decline in morality to the collapse of religious activity such as Sunday Schools or church attendance but this may be doubtful as he himself says that Anglicanism in Britain had/has turned into more of a social club and as such has to compete as a social activity with TV, internet etc.

He asks why the Conservative party still exists in the new millennium with the answer hat it is no longer the Conservative party. The traditional, hierarchical party of the gentry, church, military and skilled artisans with its ethos of duty, discipline, loyalty, honour, fortitude and sacrifice has evaporated and been replaced by a “Conservative” party based on the neo-liberal freedoms of free trade, free enterprise, freedom from regulation and freedom from company taxation – with generous funding from backers in finance and commerce.

Ditto for the Labour party now represented by Blairite “New Labour” pushing the same neo-liberal freedoms of free trade, free enterprise, freedom from regulation and freedom from company taxation – with generous funding from backers in finance and commerce.

Perhaps he sums it up on P.227 when he says, “ In a free society, rights are not about liberty, they are about power, about who the guardians of freedom shall be ….” with P.128, “Socialism reducing everything to commands and permeating all relationships with a mixture of ideology and coercion.”

The downside as he points out, is that “What is left is not an amoral or immoral society, but one that can make only limited moral demands on its members”.

Certainly a useful book to help understand “Progressive” politics. ( )