The fundamental ethical question is, Bernard Williams argues, Socratic: ‘How should one live?’ The question is both reflective and practical – it requires deep thought, but should also issue in action. Ancient though the question is, Rutger Bregman believes that he has an answer that is, if not new, then at least correct. And that answer is especially addressed to those with what society deems ‘talent’ – intellect, passion, and resilience.
As Bregman sees it, the situation is quite simple: many talented people waste their talents, and could make the world a far better place if they were to behave differently. The brightest minds at top universities currently pursue careers in finance, consulting, law and technology – which, even on a weak thesis of their moral neutrality, are not doing much to make the world a better place, says Bregman. If you end up being paid millions to defend oil companies in court, or to push the financial system closer to another global crisis, the situation is surely much worse.
This fundamental argument is compelling and Bregman’s analysis is astute. He observes, for example, that many students reassure themselves ‘I’ll only be in this job a few years’ or ‘I need the money so I can give it to better causes’, only to spend the next five decades doing nothing of the sort – reasoning which is naïve at best, and self-deceptive at worst. Bregman appeals in particular to those who are not solely driven by a desire for luxury, and who recognise the importance of a common welfare beyond their own person, asking: are you sure you aren’t acting in bad faith?
Bergman is very strong on one particular justification or rationalisation that people may give when faced with an argument like this (the basics of which has plenty of utilitarian precedent). That is to accept that the world would be (much) better if living standards were raised, poverty abolished, and inequality reduced, but to argue that one person acting alone could never change the status quo. Sometimes, this is just a case of feeble excuses, but it also finds support in schools of thought that see every problem as structurally-determined, every problem a symptom of a global ‘polycrisis’ started long ago and now inevitable. Bregman utterly refuses to countenance such arguments. He very effectively demonstrates that, contra some rhetoric found in progressive circles, individuals can make a difference – and do. He discusses inventive, creative, and industrious people who (almost) single-handedly do enormous amounts of good. A case in point is Ralph Nader, an American lawyer who made huge strides in a number of different areas, including road safety, insurance, banking, and pensions. (He also arguably gave the 2000 US election to George W Bush, as Bregman is not afraid to admit – his models are not saints.)
Moral Ambition can be particularly excoriating for those people who have studied or thought about ethics at any length, and yet not acted on the conclusions of arguments they themselves have formulated. It’s all well and good to believe in human rights, global justice, and the greater good, Bergman suggests, but it’s not much worse to think the contrary, if you don’t do anything about it. His focus is virtually always on practice – whilst he doesn’t deny the importance of theory and thinking, the book is very sharp on distinguishing means from ends, and on getting halfway towards a goal rather than getting nowhere because you can’t get all the way. Examples abound: governments launch endless inquiries and commission reports rather than taking action to make things better; policies that fix problems get rejected because there are other issues they neglect. Bregman’s book makes you all-too-aware of the absurdity of not doing anything, simply because you can’t do everything.
Yet despite the fact the book contains much wisdom which would be useful to policy-makers, Oxbridge graduates, and committed altruists, it fails to address the audience it’s intended for. The arguments are clearly of most relevance to ambitious students or young professionals considering what to make of their lives, yet it is all written in such desperately unacademic prose that a children’s publisher might want to tighten some sentences. The repeated use of meaningless Venn diagrams and tick boxes is bizarre, coming at the expense of genuinely insightful research which can be found in many of Bregman’s other works. The majority of the book is taken up with recounting stories of various do-gooders: from Englishmen combatting the slave trade to financiers-turned-philanthropists. Whilst they may make for fun trivia questions, there’s little of substance to be drawn here from the tentative analogies, besides platitudes like ‘you too can make a difference’.
The similarities with a self-help book aren’t just stylistic: there’s a breeziness to the content which leaves much to be desired. For all the talk of ‘moral ambition’, it’s never quite clear what it is Bregman thinks we ought to be doing; he never discusses what it is that the ‘moral’ part of the titular phrase consists in. Most of the suggested work centres around reducing extreme poverty and raising global living standards—very much in the vein of Effective Altruism (EA). Immensely important, of course; but Bregman offers no suggestion as to why this particular datum—the suffering of others—is so bad. Clearly a lengthy meta-ethical debate has no place in a popular text, yet without any sense of the bigger picture (think back to the Socratic question), Bregman seems to just ask us to reduce suffering. There’s no hint of a goal beyond getting everyone to a minimal standard of living; no sense of what makes a life worth living.
Bregman’s assumption may seem eminently reasonable given the scale of global suffering, yet it points to a significant problem in the book: it brooks no opposition. Many sections castigate academics and ostensible empathisers for their ‘thoughts without action’. So much time is wasted on thinking about what we ought to do, that there’s none left over for the ‘doing’ part. In an age of endless ‘statements’ and performative declarations, there’s no doubt merit in these attacks, but this is very far from thinking that it’s always clear exactly what one should do. Bregman acts as if the thousands of pages of ink spilled on debates like global justice, liberty, and humanitarian obligations were spilled in vain, an attitude in line with his strategy of never giving reasons why someone should do the things that he suggests.
Yet even the briefest of reflections on justice is enough to make evident the endless tensions and trade-offs involved in any policy or attempt to make the world better – just think of the debates over interventionism or co-operating with dictators. To take the overdone example: Isaiah Berlin’s influential yet light-hearted essay separated thinkers into ‘hedgehogs’ and ‘foxes’ – the former ‘relate everything to a single central vision … a single, universal, organising principle’ whilst the latter ‘pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way’. A deep, if unconscious, belief that good things can only be mutually reinforcing, that one doesn’t have to adjudicate over which good things one wants, is a view that too many succumb to, and it can be found, if unexpectedly, in Moral Ambition as well.
This monism moves us to another issue in the book: its latent anti-statism. Of the many stories that Bregman regales, none focus on institutional action. The words ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘innovator’ are everywhere; ‘government’ is nowhere to be seen. Moral Ambition is permeated with a strange kind of individualism: indeed, Bregman occasionally even uses the second person to make his appeals as direct as possible. Bregman seems to conflate ‘individuals have power’ with ‘the only power is individual’. The former is inspiring; the latter is damning.
This is unfortunate for two reasons. First: practically. Whilst NGOs and charities do a huge amount of good, freer and more dynamic than governmental bodies, they are also inherently limited in scale and power. Flashy start-ups can mobilise quickly and innovate, but they ultimately rely on state institutions to deliver medical care or inform citizens. Indeed, Bregman completely and unexpectedly overlooks the power of government to do good, even from the most rigidly consequentialist viewpoint.
Second: politically. ‘Democracy’ is another word which doesn’t get a look-in in the book. As mentioned above, Bregman’s preferred argumentative strategy is assertion, hence it’s not a surprise that he doesn’t even consider what Rawls would call ‘public reason’—the kinds of justifications that would be publicly acceptable. He doesn’t discuss why we should reduce suffering; and he doesn’t consider any reasons for not doing so. Perhaps this is because saying that talented individuals should devote their lives to altruism is unlikely to meet resistance, whereas proposals to turn on the treasury’s spending taps would. Yet this just serves to highlight an oddity, if not contradiction, in Bregman’s thought: he seems to suggest that each of us, individually, should do something to make the world a better place, yet not that we should do so collectively.
This neglect of public interest and reasoning is a severe shortcoming: it offers nothing to someone who is simply disinclined to the whole project of global justice and altruism. He doesn’t stop to consider those who scrape enough money to get buy, and see any state spending as money being taken away from themselves. Bregman, ever the ‘optimist’, seems merely to assume that everyone reading the book will naturally assent to his – and my – conviction that the greater good should take precedence over self-interest. Yet if the history of the world, and the persistence of mass-scale suffering and inequality is anything to go by, that this is not a reliable assumption to make.
Stepping back, it’s clear that Bregman intends the book – and the website that accompanies it – to live up to its ‘impact-focused’ principles: being the most significant contribution to society and the good which it can be. Through writing a text which is accessible and easy-going, Bregman hopes to expand the reach of vital ideas beyond universities and fringe EA groups. His broad points are pertinent, and may well just succeed in turning away a few graduates from their cushy Morgan Stanley jobs. Appealing to the individual as the locus of power can be uplifting in a time of ‘polycrises’ that seem to negate any shred of human agency. There’s a lot to like about the book, and Bregman has been rightly praised as an inspiration for those with global horizons. Yet in presenting an offering to those who wouldn’t otherwise read his work, Bregman fails to offer much to those who would.
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