i take your point. but from this context, it's not so much that those who said they followed hayekian laissez faire did not do so thoroughly or negated their own principles, it was rather that in order to pursue their vision of a free market, the state had to be wielded to crush what were considered to be 'rigidities' that mitigated against the smooth workings of that free market, as a kind of clearing of prior bases of worker organisation and collective identity. but more specifically, it is a salient point when it comes to the combination of a deregulative approach to employers, trade and money and, otoh, an authoritarianism viz workers -- and this has been the pattern in chile, australia, britain... i'm less interested in whether or not hayekians are not good hayekians, or whether there was a fidelity to the text, or even whether hayek was 'responsible', than in the argument which shows that it's not entirely accurate to talk about the recent history of those places as _liberalisation_. from our perspective, it was hardly that.
Angela _________