Since 2008's financial crisis, we have heard much about the failures of bankers, regulators and politicians. David Marquand sees a wider issue: the fall of the public realm. The crisis, he argues, is one of our moral economy as much as of our political economy. Already, we are well advanced towards a near-Hobbesian state of genteel barbarism - and greed is all-pervasive. Setting out a framework for a new public philosophy founded on civic conscience and cooperation, Marquand seeks to spring the trap into which our culture has stumbled. The message is plain: we cannot continue on our present path.

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David Marquand is one of the leading left of centre political philosophers in the UK. He is a former Labour Member of Parliament and Chief Advisor in the Secretariat General of the European Commission, and from 1996 to 2002 was Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. His many books include Ramsay MacDonald, The Unprincipled Society: New Demands and Old Politics, The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair, Decline of the Public: The Hollowing-out of Citizenship, Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy and The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe. He is a Fellow of both the British Academy and the Learned Society of Wales. In 2001 he received the Sir Isaiah Berlin Prize for a lifetime contribution to Political Studies.