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f695acc
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Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime efforts. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long without one another. And since the experience of the interwar years had clearly revealed the inability of capitalists to protect their own best interests, the liberal state would have to do it for them whether they liked it or not.
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Tony Judt |
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bd1b1b4
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As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely..
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Tony Judt |
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5b4f600
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We should by now have learned that politics remains national, even if economics does not: the history of the 20th century offers copious evidence that even in healthy democracies, bad political choices usually trump 'rational' economic calculations.
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Tony Judt |
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14f0ac2
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Democracies in which there are no significant political choices to be made, where economic policy is all that really matters--and where economic policy is now largely determined by nonpolitical actors (central banks, international agencies, or transnational corporations)--must either cease to be functioning democracies or accommodate once again the politics of frustration, of populist resentment.
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Tony Judt |
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bbdd789
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Few--very few--graduates before the mid-'70s sought out a 'business' education;
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Tony Judt |
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d24a243
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The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present - and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse that idealising the past - or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber ..
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Tony Judt |
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631860c
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Nothing in its life so became the Soviet Union as the leaving of it
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Tony Judt |
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40da2a8
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Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest:
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Tony Judt |
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6a82c7b
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East and West, Asia and Europe, were always walls in the mind at least as much as lines on the earth
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Tony Judt |
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5f11a99
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life closely track your income: residents of wealthy districts can expect to live longer and better.
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Tony Judt |
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ccdebf6
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History is not written as it was experienced, nor should it be. The inhabitants of the past know better than we do what it was like to live there, but they were not well placed, most of them, to understand what was happening to them and why.
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Tony Judt |
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b6f9d5a
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La psicologia, al fin y al cabo, y en este sentido guarda claras similitudes tanto con el marxismo como con la tradicion judeocristiana, propone una narracion de autoengano, sufrimiento necesario, declive y caida, seguida del alumbramiento de una conciencia y conocimiento de uno mismo, autosuperacion y, en ultima instancia, recuperacion. A mi me llama la atencion, en las memorias de los centroeuropeos nacidos en torno al cambio de siglo, el..
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Tony Judt |
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ac0420a
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Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional 'free market' and the much-advertised horrors of 'socialism'? Our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more. For the last thirty years, when asking ourselves whether..
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Tony Judt |
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ccf1ad8
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if politi-cians--however well-intentioned--were barred from planning, manipulating, or directing the affairs of their fellow citizens, then extremists of Right and Left alike would be kept at bay.
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Tony Judt |
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e392194
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The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is.
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Tony Judt |
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6770126
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How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?
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Tony Judt |
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f342813
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dejiny nacismu - a vubec vsech forem totalitarismu - nelze plne pochopit, pokud je omezime na vypraveni o zlych lidech, kteri se vedome a zamerne dopousteji zlocinu s cilem pachat zlo
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Tony Judt |
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feee657
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So what have Keynes's 'madmen in authority' done with the ideas they inherited from defunct economists? They have set about dismantling the properly economic powers and initiatives of the state.
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Tony Judt |
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439c268
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This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers. But we should never forget that it was first and above all the dream of Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Nazis: if there is nothing that binds us together as a community or society, then we are utterly dependent upon the state. Governments that are too weak or discredited to act through t..
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Tony Judt |
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e44da5f
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No basta, a fin de cuentas, con <>: tambien es preciso comprenderlo. De lo contrario, en el peor de los casos, uno se arriesga a repetir sus mismos errores. Salvo
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Tony Judt |
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a7061ee
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had brought Stalin credibility and influence, in the counsels of governments and on the streets.
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Tony Judt |
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ea70aae
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The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike.
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Tony Judt |
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58d0d8c
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What we have been watching is the steady shift of public responsibility onto the private sector to no discernible collective advantage.
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Tony Judt |
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2099a40
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In the years following 1945 it seemed to most intelligent observers as though the Austrians had made a simple category error. Like so many of their fellow refugees, they had assumed that the conditions which brought about the collapse of liberal capitalism in interwar Europe were permanent and infinitely reproducible.
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Tony Judt |
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0ee906a
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the center of gravity of political argument in the years after 1945 lay not between left and right but rather within the left: between communists and their sympathizers and the mainstream liberal-social-democratic consensus.
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Tony Judt |
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04f32a5
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Governments, in short, now increasingly farm out their responsibilities to private firms
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Tony Judt |
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bc6c04d
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Once upon a time, one looked to society -- or class, or community -- for one's normative vocabulary: what was good for everyone was by definition good for anyone. But the converse does not hold. What is good for one person may or may not be of value or interest to another. Conservative philosophers of an earlier age understood this well, which was why they resorted to religious language and imagery to justify traditional authority and its c..
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Tony Judt |
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a0c75b1
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Marxismus je sekularni nabozenstvi - to je evidentni. Ale ktere nabozenstvi vlastne nasleduje, neni vzdycky zrejme. Zahrnuje v sobe velkou cast tradicni krestanske eschatologie: pad cloveka, Mesiase, jeho utrpeni, zastupne vykoupeni lidstva, spasu, zmrtvychvstani a tak dal.
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Tony Judt |
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0448dc4
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Ztrata viry samozrejme zdaleka neni tak atraktivni jako vira; i kdyz odklon od ni muze byt racionalni, ztracite tim vic, nez ziskavate.
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Tony Judt |
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e3cdc95
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Cela kultura ,,cesty vzhuru" do Izraele, alija, predpokladala pretnuti vsech spojnic a zajmu smerem k diaspore. Predaci mladeznickeho hnuti velmi dobre vedeli, ze pokud teenager setrva v Anglii ci Francii i po dobu univerzitniho studia, je nejspis pro Izrael navzdycky ztraceny. Oficialni postoj byl proto takovy, ze kandidati univerzitniho studia se maji evropskych prijeti vzdat, zapojit se nekolik let v kibucu pri sklizni pomerancu, rizeni ..
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Tony Judt |
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90e6c52
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Mladi dustojnici, s nimiz jsem byl v kontaktu, pochazeli predevsim z metropoli a mest, ne z kibucu, a diky nim jsem pochopil, co jsem mel chapat uz davno: ze sen o venkovskem socialismu je prave jen sen. Teziste zidovskeho statu budou a musi predstavovat mesta.
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Tony Judt |
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b9ce1a3
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V nasledujicich letech Izrael znehodnoti, podkopa a nakonec znici vyznam a vyuzitelnost holokaustu a omezi jej na to, co v nem jiz dnes priznane mnoho lidi vidi, totiz izraelskou vymluvu pro vlastni neblahe pocinani.
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Tony Judt |
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0fd89cc
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Odjet do Spanelska bojovat za republiku bylo nesmirne lakave. Byl to zpusob, jak se stat antifasistou, v atraktivnim prostredi se zapojit do spolecnosti celici velmi prostym dilematum.
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Tony Judt |
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cde67b7
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Even after the Allies emerged triumphant in 1945, these concerns were not forgotten: depression and fascism remained ever-present in men's minds. The urgent question was not how to celebrate a magnificent victory and get back to business as usual, but how on earth to ensure that the experience of the years 1914-1945 would never be repeated. More than anyone else, it was Maynard Keynes who devoted himself to addressing this challenge.
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Tony Judt |
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ad50665
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stejne jako mnoho dalsich prezivsich se v teto dobe citili bezpecneji v porazenem Nemecku nez v osvobozenych zemich na vychode.
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Tony Judt |
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c70f621
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Specialne v Ceskoslovensku dospel ustup od politiky a nazorova privatizace od rozdrceni prazskeho jara velmi daleko. ,,Normalizace", tedy cistky, jez odstranily tisice muzu a zen ze vsech verejnych ci verejne viditelnych funkci a profesi, probehla uspesne. Cesi a Slovaci se vzdali verejneho zivota a misto toho se uchylili k materialnimu konzumentstvi a formalnimu politickemu konformismu."
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Tony Judt |
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424b409
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Schopnost evokovat Hitlera, Osvetim nebo Mnichov ma sve prednosti: alespon se tak soucasnost dovolava minulosti, misto aby ji zcela ignorovala. Dnes to cinime amatersky a stale vice zpusobem, kterym sami sobe skodime, ale aspon to delame. Nemame se techto aktivit vzdat, nybrz provadet je s vyssi mirou historicke informovanosti a vnimavosti.
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Tony Judt |
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1a264f3
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Zkratka a dobre - lidem, kteri mluvi o vsem, hrozi ztrata schopnosti mluvit o necem.
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Tony Judt |
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a605834
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Namisto abychom verejne priznali potrebu urciteho spolecenskeho vybaveni (muzei, sportovist, verejne dopravy), vyhybame se nepopularnimu daneni tim, ze podobne vydaje kryjeme z loterii - jichz se v disproporcni vysi ucastni, a tedy je financuji hure informovane a chudsi segmenty spolecnosti. Britsti delnici, kteri mozna za cely zivot nenavstivili divadlo, operu ci balet, dnes svymi sklony k hazardu financuji kulturni aktivity uzce vymezene ..
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Tony Judt |
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953da97
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Conservatism--not to mention the ideological Right--was a minority preference in the decades following World War II.
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Tony Judt |
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9a8eb92
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re-surfaced.
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Tony Judt |
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1c552ca
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As a consequence, the thick mesh of social interactions and public goods has been reduced to a minimum, with nothing except authority and obedience binding the citizen to the state.
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Tony Judt |
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4fc076d
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The chief shortcoming of the old public services was the restrictive regulations and facilities--one-size-fits-all--with
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Tony Judt |
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95b6af6
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tax farming is absurdly inefficient. In the first place, it discredits the state, represented in the popular mind by a grasping private profiteer. Secondly, it generates considerably less revenue than a well-administered system of government collection, if only because of the profit margin accruing to the private collector. And thirdly, you get disgruntled taxpayers.
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Tony Judt |