But there are far more serious issues here than merely trying to protect some treasured object, some particular ritual or a preferred corner of social life from the monetary calculus and the short-term contract. For at the heart of liberal and neoliberal theory lies the necessity of constructing coherent markets for land, labour, and money, and

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If ‘there is no such thing as society but only individuals’ as Thatcher initially put it, then the chaos of individual interests can easily end up prevailing over order. The anarchy of the market, of competition, and of unbridled individualism (individual hopes, desires, anxieties, and fears; choices of lifestyle and of sexual habits and

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Furthermore, if US interest rates rise (as at some point they must) then what happened to Mexico after the Volcker interest rate increase in 1979 starts to loom as a real problem. The US will soon be paying out far more to service its debt to the rest of the world than it brings in.14 This extraction of wealth from the US will not be welcome

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But ruling classes rarely, if ever, voluntarily surrender any of their power and I see no reason to believe they will do so this time. Paradoxically, a strong and powerful social democratic and working-class movement is in a better position to redeem capitalism than is capitalist class power itself. While this may sound a counter-revolutionary

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There was, however, one other concomitant shift that also impelled the movement towards neoliberalization during the 1970s. The OPEC oil price hike that came with the oil embargo of 1973 placed vast amounts of financial power at the disposal of the oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Abu Dhabi. We now know from British

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Like the neoliberals that preceded them, the ‘neocons’ had long been nurturing their particular views on the social order, in universities (Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago being particularly influential) and well-funded think-tanks, and through influential publications (such as Commentary).20 US neoconservatives favour corporate power,

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Innumerable ways exist to skim off values from within the financial system. Since brokers get a commission for each transaction, they can maximize their incomes by frequent trading on their accounts (a practice known as ‘churning’) no matter whether the trades add value to the account or not. High turnover on the stock exchange may simply reflect

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Paradoxically, a strong and powerful social democratic and working-class movement is in a better position to redeem capitalism than is capitalist class power itself. While this may sound a counter-revolutionary conclusion to those on the far left, it is not without a strong element of self-interest either, because it is ordinary people who suffer,

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Furthermore, the actual developmental path taken seems to fit with the aim of preventing the formation of any coherent capitalist class power bloc within China itself. Heavy reliance upon foreign direct investment (a completely different economic development strategy to that taken by Japan and South Korea) has kept the power of capitalist class

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