Will Hutton

You can hire Hutton for your own purposes via The London Speaker Bureau. Formerly editor of the Observer, Hutton is Chief Executive of the Industrial Society, Employment Policy Institute and The Work Foundation who do much the same job. From 1990 to 1996 he had been economics editor of the Guardian. A former stockbroker, from 1983 to 1988 Hutton was economics correspondent for BBC 2's 'Newsnight'. He is a member of the governing council of the Policy Studies Institute, the Institute for Political Economy and Charter 88. He is on the editorial board of New Economy and is a governor of the London School of Economics. A trustee of the Scott Trust that owns the Guardian Media Group, rapporteur of the Kok group, a member of the Design Council's Millennium Commission and a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute.

For the (you should get out more) Telegraph he is 'Britain's foremost critic of capitalism.' Before the reader adds that the word 'pet' seems to have eluded the proof readers there, the Telegraph says this to point out that as "an outspoken advocate for affordable social housing. Mr Hutton's wife heads a company called First Premise, which owns and manages dozens of commercial and residential properties in London. The company specialises in renovating rundown properties - often with the help of public grants - and then makes a profit by selling or renting them out."

The Telegraph (former proprietor Conrad Black) added the humiliation of Ann Widdecombe's scorn: "I have nothing against property developers. However, the word hypocrite might be useful here. Mr Hutton has displayed a typical socialist attitude - 'do as I say, not as I do'." Quite the socialist, Mrs Hutton, uses her maiden name for the venture, and adds that First Premise's (thanks to the third way) spin is that it has a proud track record of regenerating areas that other developers had been unwilling to take on — otherwise known as the Rackman defense. The Telegraph could have added that Mr Hutton sits on ERA: an organisation run by multi-millionaires who pirate social fund money for pet schemes, but we are attacking socialism here not capitalism. The Telegraph followed up with the gory details with the subtle Will Hutton is the Left-wing commentator famed for his attacks on Britain's landlord culture ... yet his family's housing empire is a monument to the profit motive. That was all back in 2004 and it seems to have helped Hutton's career no end.

Hutton edited On The Edge with Anthony Giddens above. Largely a defense of capitalism (its subtitle is a vested interest-like resigned sigh of 'living with global capitalism' — surely 'dying' ) that brought together George Soros, Manuel Castells, Paul Volcker, Jeff Faux and Larry Mishel, Vandana Shiva, Arlie Russel Hochschild, Robert Kuttner, Ulrich Beck, Richard Sennett, Polly Toynbee. With a dialogue from Tony and Will stealing the show there is no authentic debate as such other than tokenism. The argument is settled. They believe that markets are basically benevolent — a wealth creating process generating efficiencies. Yet this has not precluded the endless blather of 19th century gentlemanly capitalism recast by think tanks (funded by big business) as 'social entrepreneurs,' 'conscious capitalism,' 'infusing corporations and businesses with spirituality', 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR), the 'triple bottom line', 'putting values first before profit' (in your PR material) or Capitalism infused with “soul.” A discourse perversely redolent of Walter Benjamin's “Capitalism as Religion,” written back in 1921 (and inspired by Weber), on the elective affinity between the Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. Benjamin goes further than Weber: not only does capitalism have religious origins, it is a religion in and of itself:

"Capitalism is the celebration of a cult sans trêve et sans merci. There is no ‘weekday,’ no day that would not be a holiday in the terrifying sense of the unfolding of all of its sacral pomp, of the most extreme tension of the worshipper."

Ignoring his place alongside Lord Stevenson on ERA, Hutton writes in the Guardian on Private Equity Companies in the usual contradictory/third way manner.

"This is not pro- but anti-wealth-creation. In this respect the attitude of private equity closely mimics that of the Chinese communist party. Both conceive of companies as networks of contracts between capital and labour that generate revenue streams to be manipulated by whoever has central control for personal or political advantage [...] Private equity cannot be outlawed; in any case it can do a good job."

And so too — in capitalist terms — have the Chinese communist party without capitalism. In his Guardian epistles what congregation (some community of flagellants) is Hutton talking to? And why all the dodgy analogies:

"The British middle class is operating a national, de facto closed shop, very much like the old print unions or dock workers. By ensuring that it is largely their children who win degrees, they keep hold of the entry tickets to high-status jobs."