The value of virtue

At last evening’s packed event to discuss Unjust rewards: exposing greed and inequality in Britain today by Polly Toynbee and David Walker it was clear that most of the audience agreed there are problems with the super rich.

 These problems range from the minimal tax many of them pay, to the impact on social norms of highly ostentatious but unmerited wealth, to the disastrous consequences for business and society (ie the credit crunch) of a ‘heads you always win tails you never lose’ bonus culture.

Polly and David propose solutions in their book including closing tax loopholes, increasing taxes on the super rich and putting individual tax returns in the public domain. But despite the various policy options on offer there was also last night dismay that the super rich (especially those who avoid paying tax) don’t themselves feel embarrassed or ashamed by the scale and injustice of their privilege.

Will Hutton argued that we needed a kind of moral awakening among those he described has the ‘have lots of yachts’ (as in ‘the have’s’, ‘the have nots’, ‘the have yachts’, and ‘the have lots of yachts’)   

It is interesting how often questions of values and norms are surfacing in debates on social and public policy. Richard Reeves, the new Director of DEMOS, has been talking and writing about character. In this month’s Prospect Edward Skidelsky asks ‘what happened to goodness?’, and earlier this week Independent columnist Deborah Orr, writing about the problems of prosecuting date rapists, argues ‘the truth is human beings really do have to take some responsibility for the moral policing of themselves’.

The underlying sense here is that there has been a decline in people ‘doing the right thing’, whether that is taking moral responsibility or displaying civic virtue.

In this sense, berating the rich for their unjust rewards and ostentatious shows of wealth goes along side David Cameron’s Glasgow speech telling the overweight and unemployed that they must take responsibility for their condition.    

This I think begs three question to which I will return in future blogs and on which it would be interesting to have thoughts from my reader (see you at the weekend Mum):

• Is it really true that there has been an aggregate decline in moral responsibility and civic virtue. The counterfactuals here might include the decline in crime over the last twenty years or the healthy level of volunteering?

• Why is it that issues of morality, virtue and character have moved from the domain of philosophers and preachers to political and policy debate? 

• What are the main schools of thought about how we might increase the stock of responsibility and virtue in society?

All this goes back to core RSA concerns about pro-social behaviour and who we need to be to thrive in the future. The link with an earlier blog this week is that as we seek to align the RSA behind this focus we need also continually to deepen our understanding of the issues and challenges involved.                     

• Richard O - 08 Sep 2008 7:25pm

  I've just discovered this site and am delighted by the selection of video lectures and by the archive of intriguing nuggets that is this blog. So thankyou for that. On the questions you ask, I can't address the second with any great authority but I would presume that political interest in virtue relates to the fact that (so people claim) more political challenges must address behaviour directly (obesity, smoking, climate change, etc). Also, politicos are surely drawn to talking about a decline in character because the uncertainty as to the causes allows them to propose those remedies that fit with their own concerns and preconceptions. Thus Richard Reeves exonerates market liberalism and stresses the importance of the family unit. My own view is that if there has indeed been a decline in morality and virtue it has been as a result of the breakdown of communities, and hence of culture and custom, at the hands of urban capitalism. Custom helps to manage the social tensions that other aspects of our evolved psychology might foment... For instance, caring for elderly parents; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7601603.stm There is a lot I could say about all this, but I want to make a point about scale. Custom works best in the sorts of communities that humans have spent much of evolutionary time in - ones small enough for a type of Tit for Tat reciprocity to function. (Religion might have allowed the size of these communities to increase by ensuring a commitment to shared values, but that doesn't interest me here). From Peter Singer: "In ethics and the formation of a community there are virtuous spirals and vicious spirals. If Aristotle was right to say that we become virtuous by practising virtue then we need societies in which people are encouraged to begin to act virtuously. In major cities whose populations are imbued with the individualistic ethos of material self-interest, the green shoots of mutual trust or a virtuous disposition struggle to survive, let alone grow and flourish. Bizarre as it may seem ... enemy soldiers facing each other from the trenches of World War 1 had a better basis for practising reciprocity than do the anonymous members of modern cities..." In the same book (How are we to live?), Singer talks about Raoul Naroll's "moralnets" "that is, family and community connections that tie people together and provide an ethical background to what each individual does... According to Naroll, strong moralnets are built by deep social ties, emotional warmth between members of the community, social and economic support for those who fall on hard times, and various common emblems, ceremonies, traditions, myths, and ideologies that bind the society together." These moralnets, these communities, are the social environment in which people operate, and they define what is considered virtuous. They are necessarily small - surely not much bigger than the Dunbar number of about 150. If we want to increase the stock of responsibility and virtue in society, I would suggest, we need to provide opportunities for small, meaningful communities of this scale to exist. As you have said elsewhere, "...[some] ideas work much better at the local level. That’s why the Conservatives are arguing for their policy to be a council initiative. However English Council areas are so big that to many residents the town hall is as distant and oppressive as Whitehall." Of course, most people feel no connection even to their ward councillor. Obviously 'communities' don't have to be concerned with governance, or even geographically localised, but both factors increase their relevance to our lives and give them meaning. You have spoken of building a 'New Collectivism' which respects today's expectations and lifestyles, but surely you would agree that, like 'old collectivism,' it must respect and replicate the psychological environment in and for which our social minds are evolved. By the way, have you read The Happiness Hypothesis, by psychologist Jonathan Haidt? At times it comes over a little self-help, but Chapters 8-10 provide a rich vein for thinking about virtue, and its connection to community and 'spirituality.' (If you are familiar with it, then I suggest a solution to the counterfactual of falling crime - the strong ethic of autonomy that sits alongside the withered ethics of community and divinity.) P.S.> Look forward to your own answers to your questions.

• Robin Smith - 05 Sep 2008 4:23pm

  I was there last night and the main focus that came out of the debate for me was about the super rich and how bad they are. Not how to resolve the wealth divide and that this can be achieved by seeking the root cause at the heart of the political economy. This tells me people (at least those present) are not that interested in resolving the question in hand. More to punish those who have what they are jealous of perhaps? For me, Will Hutton and Jon Moulton made the best points when they stated a "systemic reform was needed" and "power is the oft overlooked driver for these unjust rewards" I didn't manage to get my question in which went something like: "I'm amazed no one has mentioned that the wealth divide problem was resolved more than 100 years ago. By Henry George. Do you understand his proposals and if so how plausible do you think they are today". It was rhetorical really because if you know anything about economics George talks directly to what the debate was seeking a resolution on. You have to ask why the leading experts on the panel have overlooked this. Nay most economists. We seem to be in a collective denial about the main issue, I can only guess because of special interests Toynbee proposes solutions that would actually widen the gap: minimum wage would not make take home pay much more for the poor due to forgone welfare, and penalising high earners would force them into yet further, reckless land speculation. Heart in the right place, courageous work, but please don't make any further proposals. Thanks once again to the RSA for a rewarding evening. But I am shocked at how little our leaders and experts understand about the problem. Robin Smith http://sites.google.com/site/systemicfiscalreform/Home/policy-briefing

• Robin Smith - 05 Sep 2008 1:11pm

  I was there last night and the main focus that came out of the debate for me was about the super rich and how bad they are. Not how to resolve the wealth divide and that this can be achieved by seeking the root cause at the heart of the political economy. This tells me people (at least those present) are not that interested in resolving the question in hand. More to punish those who have what they are jealous of perhaps? For me, Will Hutton and Jon Moulton made the best points when they stated a "systemic reform was needed" and "power is the oft overlooked driver for these unjust rewards" I didn't manage to get my question in which went something like: "I'm amazed no one has mentioned that the wealth divide problem was resolved more than 100 years ago. By Henry George. Do you understand his proposals and if so how plausible do you think they are today". It was rhetorical really because if you know anything about economics George talks directly to what the debate was seeking a resolution on. You have to ask why the leading experts on the panel have overlooked this. Nay most economists. We seem to be in a collective denial about the main issue, I can only guess because of special interests Toynbee proposes solutions that would actually widen the gap: minimum wage would not make take home pay much more for the poor due to forgone welfare, and penalising high earners would force them into yet further, reckless land speculation. Heart in the right place, courageous work, but please don't make any further proposals. Thanks once again to the RSA for a rewarding evening. But I am shocked at how little our leaders and experts understand about the problem. Robin Smith http://sites.google.com/site/systemicfiscalreform/Home/policy-briefing

• Making this blog more accessible - 05 Sep 2008 12:12pm

  Matthew - top-level blogging, if I may say so, that really deserves the level of commenting you used to get on the old blog. Others are better placed to comment on the topic of this item ... but may I suggest some technical changes that night increase traffic. * I think the blog deserves a top-level link, rather than under About us * The RSS feed only gives headlines which makes it useless in an RSS reader: offer a full feed * You can't see whether anyone has commented unless you go through each article. Offer comments in the sidebar and through a comment feed * Promote through Twitter

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