Champagne Lifestyles: The Changing Notion of Greed February 23, 2010

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/11/01/The_Good_Society_Virtues_for_a_Post-Recession_World

Journalist Brendan O'Neill criticizes the historical tendency to interpret social crises through the "prism of excess and opulence" and expresses concern that all consumers, not just the elite, have been implicated in fueling the most recent financial meltdown. "This default explanation is far too partial and narrowly moralistic," he says.

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The global crisis is regularly presented as "payback time" for human greed. The Labour-left group Compass notes approvingly that the recession is working as a corrective against "individualistic and materialistic attitudes." Others argue for a "new corporate ethics," with financial risk-taking and rampant capitalism indicted by events. But is the recession really a problem of ethics or morality? Is there a danger the new anti-capitalist ethic amounts to little more than risk-aversion and paralyzing regulation? What about innovation and experimentation? If we demonize the aspiration to wealth as "greed," how will society reward success and encourage ambition, and the competitive spirit that so often drives social progress?

We are told to reject "me, me, me" individualism, but must we choose between selfishness and altruistic sacrifice, or might we form bonds of solidarity around collective self-interest? And is a bit of individualism really so bad anyway? Debating what we mean by the Good Society allows us to imagine how society could be rather than accepting the status quo. But as we search for a new kind of politics, will we rekindle idealism or instead adopt "post-recession virtues" that - far from allowing us to move society forward - will reconcile us to less ambition, less freedom and less capacity to shape society? - Institute of Ideas

Brendan O'Neill is the editor of spiked. He started his career in journalism at spiked's predecessor, Living Marxism, until it was forced to close in 2000 following a notorious libel action brought by ITN.

O'Neill writes widely for publications on both sides of the Atlantic. His journalism has been published in the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, the British Journalism Review, the Press Gazette and the Catholic Herald in Britain. He is also a feature-writer for the Christian Science Monitor in America and for the BBC in Britain. He writes a weekly blog for the Guardian website, Comment Is Free.