Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong - Hardcover

Leadbeater, Charles

3.71

7 ratings by Goodreads

9780670913220: Up the Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670913227 ISBN 13: 9780670913220

Publisher: Viking, 2002

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The 1990s were utopian. The Cold War ended; democracy spread around the world. At home the new economy, New Labour and new Britain declared a decisive break with the past. The roaring nineties came to a final end on September 11. But then, with the collapse of the high-tech stock boom and increasing fears about globalisation, the shadows had been gathering for some time. Here Charles Leadbeater argues that pessimism is the most powerful ideology of our times, and it is wrong. Rather, the fundamental forces shaping our society - innovation and technology, globalisation and education, democracy and self-government - should give us grounds for optimism.

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Review:

Up the Down Escalator is a commendable book by Charles Leadbeater, one of the leading lights of New Labour thinking, who claims that contemporary thinkers are too pessimistic in analysing the effects of globalism. In response to both radical and conservative critics of globalisation, Leadbeater offers what is often a painfully cheery and upbeat assessment of the ways in which global science, technology and business will affect all our lives for the better, suggesting that "far from retreating from globalisation we should take it forward and deepen the process, from markets and trade to society and governance".

Leadbeater spends a long time analysing just why everyone has been so relentlessly pessimistic about globalism; instead, his book "challenges the power of pessimism: arguing against pessimism feels like walking up the down escalator, it is quite hard work. Yet there are strong grounds for thinking quite optimistically about what the 21st century might hold". Rejecting the 20th century belief in utopias, Leadbeater argues for a personal and political investment in technology, which he argues "will open up ways to transform our world far more than politics". The book is full of interesting discussions of the importance of the Internet, but often descends into rousing but ultimately opaque political rhetoric, like "dispense with the vocabulary and social security and instead focus on policies for learning and the family". Terrorism, religious fundamentalism, Africa and Asia hardly figure in Leadbeater’s book (which annoyingly lacks an index). These are curious omissions in a book that claims to point the global way forward. Up the Down Escalator is elegantly written, but at over 300 pages its argument is just too broad and lacking in specific analysis to be convincing, however pleasant the picture he paints of the future. –Jerry Brotton

Synopsis:

After the optimism prevalent during the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, the dawn of the 21st century has seen a shift in attitude in line with the emergence of other negative forces in the world, the events of September 11th 2001 a stark example. Charles Leadbeater argues that pessimism is the most powerful ideology of our times, but claims that it need not be so. He offers an alternative vision for the future: that the fundamental forces shaping our society - innovation and technology, globalization and education, democracy and self-government - should give us grounds for optimism.

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