How much better if we recognised the fact and opted for leisure? Alternatively, and much more realistically, how about creating more purposed companies and more purposed work? There is more than enough to do. “Work”, in terms of executing a craft or attempting to make the world a better place, is becoming the preserve of too few. As he argues, too many of today’s jobs are ephemera, creating little or no value and making their holders despair, and if they ceased there would be little or no discernible fall in our living standards. The proposition is that because a rogue capitalism is going to automate away most of our jobs, human wellbeing can only be assured by everyone receiving a universal basic income.īut his joyful dissection of much of the purposeless work thrown up by modern “bullshit” capitalism hits home. Financially, behaviourally and organisationally bonkers, this idea is gaining traction on the bien pensant left.

My biggest beef is the idea that increasingly grips liberal thinkers desperate for anything radical – the concept of a universal income for all. Gone is a belief in socialism, science, great international institutions or even a willingness to experiment with new ways of living.īut if this is the book’s big insight, much of the rest fluctuates from the genuinely challenging to politically correct tosh. Liberals can hardly inspire themselves, let alone the electorate. Working family tax credits or spending 0.7% of GDP on aid simply don’t cut it. The liberal left, declares Rutger Bregman, a 28-year-old Dutch historian, has no comparable vision.

The best help we can give the poor in the less developed world is to give them access to our land of plenty, he argues It is Mr Trump and Mr Farage who dream of a world of America and Britain first, revelling in low taxes and little or no state, liberated from the dark forces of the UN, World Trade Organisation and the EU. Utopia has become the preserve of the right. The trouble with today’s liberals – witness Hillary Clinton or any of Labour’s recent past or present leadership – is that they have lost any comparable vision, however far-fetched or unrealistic. Medieval idealists imagined a land of plenty – Cockaigne – where rivers ran with wine, everyone was equal and partied and drank all their lives. Celebrate the grip that utopia has on our imagination. It was the hope we could fly, conquer disease, motorise transport, build communities of the faithful, discover virgin land or live in permanent peace that has propelled men and women to take the risks and obsess about the new that, while not creating the utopia of which they dreamed, has at least got us some of the way. It is utopian visions that have driven humanity forwards. T his is a book with one compelling proposition for which you can forgive the rest.

Rutger bregman utopia