There are many writers and critics who regard what they call ‘individualist-liberalism’ as the root of many of the evils of the modern world; and the emphasis of their attack is on the individualist half of the term. Those who take this line nowadays often call them-selves ‘communitarians’. I would prefer to call them collectivists, as that brings out their dangerous tendency to regard the group as more important than the individuals of whom it is composed. But in what follows I shall concede on labels and most often refer to them as communitarians

It is now widely accepted that the market is superior to the state as a means of organising economic activity. But there remain a number of significant problems about the proper scope of the market domain, about the range of activities which are appropriately governed by market mechanisms and their associated forms of commercial organisation. Whilst many would agree that the market is an admirable device, provided it is ‘kept in its place’, there is much less agreement about the precise location of that place, about where and on what grounds the boundaries of the market should be established.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning… [O]ne of the games to which it most attached is called… ‘Cheat the Prophet’. [The prophets] took something or other that was certainly going on in their time, and than sait it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened. … The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until att the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else.

The history of liberalism is the history of an ethical ideal as well as a set of political and social arrangements. In the latter sense liberalism entrenches the juridical equality of all citizens, their equal civil and political rights – including among those rights a set of liberties strong enough to restrict the authority of society over the individual in a fundamental way. How to express in institutions this politically fundamental restriction is an important matter of debate, but that debate will not concern us. For present purposes I assume I can refer to liberalism as a set of political and social arrangements without further examination. Our concern will instead be the liberal ethical ideal and its present prospects.

This essay is not a further contribution to the debate about liberal individualism, the chief topic of discussion in political and social philosophy for the last twenty-five years or more. Nevertheless it is necessary to begin by rehearsing some features of that debate, claims that will be very familiar to contemporary political philosophers. Inspired largely by John Rawls, the modern version of political liberalism has tried to make coherent a conception of politics according to which political affairs should be separated, or at least seriously distanced, from the various moral and religious loyalties and programmes of individuals and groups of citizens. This central contention of Rawlsian liberalism has been expressed in different ways, but according to one of the commonest versions, it is to be interpreted as the view that the right must take precedence over the good. That is to say, in the political sphere, the implementation and application of impartial rules of social justice and civil liberty (the right) must take precedence over competing conceptions of what is or is not a valuable way of spending a human life (the good). Another familiar way of expressing the same doctrine says that the state must be neutral with respect to the moral alternatives with which a modern pluralistic society presents its members. This claim about state neutrality is most easily illustrated by a notable example; whether homosexuality is morally wrong or not is not the business of the legislator, and thus the goodness or badness of a gay lifestyle is a matter on which the law should be neutral.

Not long before the change of Government in Britain in 1997, the then Heritage Secretary, Virginia Bottomley, made a speech in which she praised British contemporary art, describing it as the most exciting and innovatory in the world. Unexciting as it seemed, her observation was profoundly innovatory, indeed in its small way historic. To my knowledge no British Cabinet Minister, still less a Conservative, has ever given an official seal of approval to what is conventionally regarded as avant-garde art. The Labour Government has echoed its predecessor's praise at a higher volume, as if determined to out-do it. The sanctification by the state of works of contemporary art has now become part of the discourse of officialdom.

Recently I saw a corporate TV advertisement for the American television network ABC. It showed brief shots of people in other countries—France, Japan, Russia and so on. These people were doing all kinds of things, but they weren't watching television. Americans, the commentary told us, watch more TV than any of these people. Yet America is the richest, most innovative, most productive nation on the planet. ‘A coincidence’, concluded the wry, confident voice, ‘we don't think so’.

Once upon a time, there was a consensus in this country that the welfare state was the jewel in the crown of the post-war settlement. It was a national badge of moral worth. It was held to embody certain virtues that people told themselves were the hallmark of a civilised society: altruism, equity, dignity, fellowship. It defined Britain as a co-operative exercise which bound us together into a cohesive society. Or so we told ourselves.

It has always seemed to me that one of my father's great contributions to monarchical practice was the manner in which, without apparent design, he managed to resolve the internal contradictions of monarchy in the twentieth century that requires it to be remote from, yet at the same time to personify the aspirations of the people. It must appear aloof and distant in order to sustain the illusion of a Monarch who, shunning faction, stands above politics and the more mundane allegiances. At the same time it must appear to share intimately the ideals of the multitude, whose affection and loyalty provide the broad base of constitutional Monarchy. My father, with the instinctive genius of the simple man, found the means of squaring the apparent circle within the resources of his own character. By the force of his own authentic example – the king himself in the role of the bearded paterfamilias … he transformed the Crown as personified by the Royal Family into a model of the traditional family virtues, a model that was all the more genuine for its suspected but inconspicuous flaws. The King, as the dutiful father, became the living symbol not only of the nation, but also of the Empire, the last link holding these diversified and scattered communities.

There is a country where teachers have high status, and in which they have qualifications on a par with members of other respected profession. Parents and children have high aspirations and high expectations from education. Children are fully aware of the importance of hard and consistent work from each pupil. Schools open on 222 days in the year, and operate on the belief that all children can acquire the core elements of the core subjects. It is not expected that a class will have a tail. Those in danger of becoming part of an incipient tail have to make up work in their breaks or after school. If the worst comes to the worst poor pupils have to repeat a year, while those who are exceptionally able will move up a year. In the primary schools, children are kept as one large group whatever their individual ability. The teacher teaches the whole group, largely from a text book, though interspersing exposition with focused questioning and discussion, so as to ensure the matter in hand has been properly assimilated by all. Lessons last 40 minutes each, with frequent breaks for letting off steam, after which it is down to work again. Pupils are frequently tested and the school Principal makes a couple of unannounced checks on homework books each term. Secondary schools are selective (grammar, technical and secondary modern), allowing whole class teaching and whole class progression to predominate up to the end of schooling. The teacher indeed is in contact with the whole class for up to 80 per cent of the lesson time. While the school certainly does have non-academic aims, the focus is clearly on academic work. There is a conviction, shared by all involved, that the social and moral dimensions of the curriculum will tend to look after themselves and emerge as by-products of a properly conducted academic study.

Although this essay focuses on the ideas of one individual—the American philosopher of education, John Dewey—its purpose is to raise questions about those ideas rather than their author. Dewey is famous for inventing (or spreading) some familiar ideas: that educational reform is at the heart of creating a democratic society, that the classroom is as important to democracy as the polling booth, that the central aim of education is to foster the individuality of the child and that teachers must teach children how to think for themselves rather than pass on cut and dried knowledge. These ideas have been resisted by philosophers who have thought that the aim of education is to teach children some defined and circumscribed skills, or to transmit to them as much factual information as they can usefully be given during their school years. They have also been resisted by thinkers who have wanted to limit the scope of education, to say that schools exist to serve limited, non-political purposes, and that ‘schooling’ properly ends at sixteen, eighteen, or twentyone when it sends adequately educated students out into the world to earn a living, raise a family, and do their wider social and political duty.

Two short paragraphs, 42 and 43, in the White Paper, Excellence in Schools, published in July 1997, announced the UK government's intention to educate for citizenship:

Schools can help to ensure that young people feel that they have a stake in our society and the community in which they live by teaching them the nature of democracy and the duties, responsibilities and rights of citizens.

In February 1997, following the announcement that the Roslin Institute in Scotland had successfully cloned a sheep (‘Dolly’) by means of cell-nuclear transfer, US President Clinton requested the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to review legal and ethical issues of cloning and to recommend federal actions to prevent abuse. In the meantime he directed the heads of executive departments and agencies not to allocate federal funds for ‘cloning human beings’. The Commission consulted with members of relevant academic disciplines and other professions, representatives of interest groups and members of the general public, and received written submissions. Unsurprisingly, given the prospect of human cloning and the sensational announcement in January 1998 by the American physicist-cum-embryologist Richard Seed that he would aim to clone himself (subsequently he has decided that his wife would be a better subject), public debate in the US has been fairly voluble.