[lbo-talk] A Crisis of Neo-liberalism or a Crisis of Captialism?" by Christopher Carrico

[James Heartfield]

The characterisation of contemporary capitalism as ‘neo-liberalism’ seems particularly unfortunate to me. On the long trend state spending rose (absolutely and as a share of output) all through the twentieth century. A small state might be important for free market ideology, but capitalist economies have all tended to rely on larger and larger state sectors. The free marketeers’ polemics are ideological, and do not correspond to reality. Neither do the leftists critiques of ‘neo-liberalism’ correspond to reality. For them the expansion of the capitalist state is a good thing (as the market is a bad thing).