James R. Otteson: The end of socialism New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014. xiv + 224 Pages. $29.99 (paperback)

摘要

I first came across the work of James Otteson while rummaging in the bargain book section of Hodges Figgis's bookshop in Dublin some years ago. His book Actual Ethics (Otteson 2006) was available at a spectacular discount and even though I hadn't at the time heard of him, it seemed like a worthwhile speculative purchase. Never was money better spent! Here was someone who, beside myself (Casey 2012), thought that the ethical writings of Adam Smith were the greatest thing since sliced bread. Having finished Actual Ethics, I quickly purchased (at full price!) and read Otteson's Adam Smith's Marketplace of Life (Otteson 2002), a more directly interpretative account of the work of Smith but, once again, superbly written, engaging and insightful. Otteson's latest book, which is written in a neo-Smithian vein, can be seen as a more or less indirect rejoinder to Gerry Cohen's, Why Not Socialism? (Cohen 2009), one of a number of such works (Terry Eagleton's (2011) Why Marx was Right is another) that sprouted up, fertilised by the supposed crisis of capitalism that erupted in 2008.