The March of Folly - 26 March 2009 |
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It’s not often you find such an insightful historical text written from a non-Christian perspective as Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly.
Folly, in Tuchman’s definition, is ‘the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved’ (p. 5). Though many of her examples are drawn from follies at the national level, the principles are by no means restricted to this.
To qualify as folly, a policy must meet three further criteria (p. 5):
1. ‘It must have been perceived as counter-productive in its own time, not merely by hindsight’.
2. ‘A feasible alternative course of action must have been available.’
3. ‘The policy in question should be that of a group, not an individual ruler, and should persist beyond any one political lifetime.’
With that in place, Tuchman’s chapter 1 rumbles through a bewildering catalogue of political stupidity from King Rehoboam of Israel’s decision to increase the burden on his father’s workforce to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
Some highlights:
The peculiarity of the whole affair [Louis XIV's persecution of the Huguenots] was its needlessness, and this underlines two great characteristics of folly: it often does not spring from a great design, and its consequences are frequently a surprise. The folly lies in persisting thereafter. (p. 23)
A principle that emerges … is that folly is a child of power. We all know, from unending repetitions of Lord’s Acton’s dictum, that power corrupts. We are less aware that it breeds folly; that the power to command frequently causes failure to think; that the responsibility of power often fades as its exercise augments. (p. 32)
Misgovernment … qualifies as folly when it is a perverse persistence in a policy demonstrably unworkable or counter-productive. It seems almost superfluous to say that the present study stems from the ubiquity of this problem in our time.
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Books, Minister's Blog, The March of Folly