The Good Society (Lippmann)
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Good Society (Lippmann)
| Full title | An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society |
|---|---|
| Author | Walter Lippmann |
| Published | 1937 |
| Pages | 402 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Walter Lippmann’s 1937 argument, written at the height of the New Deal and the European dictatorships, that a planned economy and a liberal society are incompatible in principle — and that the alternative is not laissez-faire but a liberalism whose instrument is law, general rules that adjust conflicting claims, rather than administrative command. |
The Good Society (Lippmann)
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in Liberalism, Democracy, and Pluralism, between Charles Murray and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn — the section on what a free society owes its members and where liberty and equality collide, March 2026. Full list: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
About this edition
The book’s influence reached well beyond Lippmann’s usual readership: the 1938 Paris colloquium convened to discuss it is generally treated as the origin of the neoliberal movement and a forerunner of the Mont Pèlerin Society.
Connections
- Walter Lippmann — the author.
- Liberalism — the tradition the book sets out to reconstruct.
- Collectivism — the planning impulse Lippmann argues cannot coexist with a free society.
- The Road to Serfdom — Hayek’s later and better-known version of the same argument, also on McCord’s list.
- The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.