Why is it that so many people around the world appear willing to give up freedoms in return for either security or prosperity? For the past 60 years it had been assumed that capitalism was intertwined with liberal democracy, that the two not just thrived together but needed each other to survive. But what happens when both are undermined? Governments around the world -- whether they fall into the authoritarian or the democratic camp -- have drawn up a new pact with their peoples. These are its terms: repression is selective, confined to those who openly challenge the status quo, who publicly go out of their way to 'cause trouble'. The number of people who fall into that category is actually very few. The rest of the population can enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as they wish, and to make and spend their money. This is the difference between public freedoms and private freedoms. We choose different freedoms we are prepared to cede. We all do it. Freedom for Sale will set a new agenda. Mixing narrative from different countries around the world, it breaks new ground in revealing the extent to which the old assumptions and securities have died. It will crucially ask why so many intelligent and ambitious citizens around the world, particularly among the young, seemed prepared to sacrifice freedom of the press and freedom of speech in their quest for wealth. A new world order may well be upon us, and in this gripping and devastating book John Kampfner reveals how it may just be too late to stop it.
Freedom For Sale: How We Made Money and Lost Our Liberty
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'A wake-up call for the Dr Faust in all of us' -- Rory Bremner
'In this timely book John Kampfner challenges the easy assumption that freedom and democracy inevitably go hand in hand with security and prosperity. This is a stimulating, provocative and important book'
-- John Humphrys
'Liberty has never felt so threatened. This is the big question which Kampfner rightly identifies and dissects with the precision of a master surgeon. Read this book if you want to know just how much is at stake' -- Misha Glenny
'In this timely book John Kampfner challenges the easy assumption that freedom and democracy inevitably go hand in hand with security and prosperity. This is a stimulating, provocative and important book'
-- John Humphrys
'Liberty has never felt so threatened. This is the big question which Kampfner rightly identifies and dissects with the precision of a master surgeon. Read this book if you want to know just how much is at stake' -- Misha Glenny
Review
'Liberty has never felt so threatened. This is the big question which Kampfner rightly identifies and dissects with the precision of a master surgeon. Read this book if you want to know just how much is at stake'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
By Glen Ponda
Format:Hardcover
I am a great fan of BLAIR'S WARS and so I had high expectations for this book, and I am happy to say I was not disappointed. This is a comprehensive and often very alarming survey of the state of democracy in the world today. The whole book has been immaculately researched and Kampfner makes his case clearly and persuasively. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in global politics at what is such an extraordinary time in world history.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
An intriguing book that examines how democracy and capitalism have been undermined by unscrupulous governments across the world - most notably our own. Kampfner raises tough questions that, luckily, he's deft enough to answer, and the resounding silence after the book is finished is enough to raise even scarier prospects: such as, if we're willing to disregard civil liberties in pursuit of wealth, how long many can be taken before we no longer have the right to choose?
A fascinating, insightful and intelligent argument. Well worth a purchase.
A fascinating, insightful and intelligent argument. Well worth a purchase.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Catinthehat
Format:Hardcover
John Kampfner has written an insightful book about the perennial political issue of how the powerful threaten personal liberty, and not just by traditional methods of coercion. These days, he suggests, we have traded our liberties in return for permission to get stinking rich. And if some must suffer the consequences it will be surprisingly few, to encourage the others, and certainly not us. He explores the buy-in culture in Singapore, where it is just not done to criticize those in authority, and the way in which almost universal CCTV surveillance has become a silent fact of life for a seemingly anaesthetized British public. His survey also takes in countries as diverse as China and the USA. As a Russia buff, his Moscow chapter is particularly well-researched and deeply felt, showing Putin in particular as ruthless power-grabber, sustained by lackeys growing rich on his patronage. Kampfner is a born radical and his book is an impassioned plea to us to keep tight hold of our liberties or lose them by default.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Oliver Wates
Format:Hardcover
When a book is described as "important" on its front cover, it's usually shorthand for "worthy, but dull"; "provocative" indicates "codswallop", etc. Not so in this case. Kampfner has written a book which is both absolutely vital to our political debate and full of penetrating and incontestable insights, but also vividly entertaining. He's got the journalist's nose for the killer quote and the novelist's eye for the telling detail which brings meaning and context. It's full of anecdote and colour and is well-written. The subject may be politics, but this is no dry, academic treatise. The range of people he quotes is huge. His access in Russia is particularly valuable. You don't have to agree with everything he says -- in particular the perculiar idea that those on the "Left" are somehow automatically more interested in liberty than those on the "Right" is a bit Islington. But this book needs to be read. And taken much further, whether by Kampfner or by others. We are in danger of sleepwalking into something seriously unpleasant.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By P. Napier
Format:Hardcover
Clearly written and well researched, John Kampfner's book looks at the trade off people in different countries are asked to make between freedom and economic security. It is of great relevance to anyone living in the UK today where in the name of the war against terror we have been forced to compromise so many of our liberties.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Antenna
TOP 500 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
The journalist John Kampfner examines in turn a wide range of modern states which have to varying degrees traded personal freedom for the promise of increased security, prosperity or both.
He opens with a fascinating chapter on Singapore, the self-styled "most successful state in the history of humanity" where Lee Kuan Yew has micro-managed his state to create a well-behaved, conformist population, in which extreme poverty has been eradicated, people are kept happy with shopping and recreational facilities, and alarm bells only begin to ring when you realise that free speech is trammelled, dissenters are harshly punished, and the rate of capital punishment is "regarded as secret" but said to be among the highest in the world. As a local sociologist observes, "Understanding the limits of freedom is what makes freedom possible". As Kampfner adds, "perhaps it depends on which freedoms and which limits."
Subsequent chapters cover China and Russia, where the West made the cardinal error of assuming that the encouragement of the free market after the collapse of communism would automatically lead to greater democracy. Then we move on to the "consumer excess" of the United Arab Emirates, supported by near-slave immigrant labour, the "functioning anarchy" of India, and Italy under Berlusconi.
The next section on Britain with a focus on the development of the "surveillance state" under Blair, seems the least successful, perhaps because the details are already familiar but too condensed and partial.... Read more ›
He opens with a fascinating chapter on Singapore, the self-styled "most successful state in the history of humanity" where Lee Kuan Yew has micro-managed his state to create a well-behaved, conformist population, in which extreme poverty has been eradicated, people are kept happy with shopping and recreational facilities, and alarm bells only begin to ring when you realise that free speech is trammelled, dissenters are harshly punished, and the rate of capital punishment is "regarded as secret" but said to be among the highest in the world. As a local sociologist observes, "Understanding the limits of freedom is what makes freedom possible". As Kampfner adds, "perhaps it depends on which freedoms and which limits."
Subsequent chapters cover China and Russia, where the West made the cardinal error of assuming that the encouragement of the free market after the collapse of communism would automatically lead to greater democracy. Then we move on to the "consumer excess" of the United Arab Emirates, supported by near-slave immigrant labour, the "functioning anarchy" of India, and Italy under Berlusconi.
The next section on Britain with a focus on the development of the "surveillance state" under Blair, seems the least successful, perhaps because the details are already familiar but too condensed and partial.... Read more ›
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2010
'John Kampfner's strengths as a reporter are used here to illustrate the trade-off in various economies around the world between freedom and material comfort and security. Read more
Published on 26 May 2010 by The Orwell Prize
2.0 out of 5 stars
Emotive and Undefined
What is liberty and freedom, but the freedom to express and act upon one's ambitions? How can such a right not be up for sale? Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2009 by Weisi Guo
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