Preface
Though this book leans on political philosophy, economics, and history, it leans on each lightly enough to remain accessible to the educated general reader, for whom it is mainly intended. Its central theme—how state and society interact to disappoint and render each other miserable—may concern a rather wide public among both governors and governed. Most of the arguments are straightforward enough not to require for their exposition the rigour and the technical apparatus that only academic audiences can be expected to endure, let alone to enjoy.
If nothing else, the vastness of the subject and my somewhat unusual approach to it will ensure that specialist readers find many parts of the reasoning in need of elaboration, refinement, or refutation. This is all to the good, for even if I wanted to, I could not hide that my object has been neither to provide a definitive statement nor to solicit the widest possible agreement.
The reader and I both owe a debt to I. M. D. Little for scrutinizing the major part of the original draft. It is not his fault if I persevered in some of my errors.
Paluel
Seine Maritime
France
1997
K. Marx, “The Jewish Question,”
Early Writings, 1975, pp. 220, 226, 222.
As one of the founders of this school puts it, welfare economics is about market failures, public choice theory is about government failures (James M. Buchanan,
The Limits of Liberty, 1975, ch. 10). Note, however, the different tack adopted by certain public choice theorists, referred to in chapter 4, pp. 270-1, n. 38.
The term “political hedonist” was coined by the great Leo Strauss to denote Leviathan’s willing subject.
Marx, “The Jewish Question,” p. 219. . The Capitalist State