This chapter challenges the idea that there is a natural human condition of selfishness, as personified by the figure that has dominated economic theory for so long – ‘rational economic man’. It shows how the calculations and trade-offs that this sort of thinking promotes jar with our socially produced instincts and are entirely inappropriate morally. It presents evidence that refutes any such easy correspondence between this abstract Homo economicus and our actual motivations and behaviours.

It then looks back at our history to show that it has been moral narratives about who we are and want to be that have driven past transformational change. It uses the examples of the post-war welfare state and the revolution in local government in many of Britain’s major provincial cities during the period 1870–1900 (termed ‘gas and water socialism’ by its detractors) to illustrate this. In each case change was effected because the power elite was, firstly, persuaded of the moral case for action and, secondly, formulated the practical means to resource the major changes envisaged. It draws contemporary parallels with voices highlighting the dangers of escalating inequality and calling for a radical reset of corporate capitalism while questioning our favouring of growth over well-being.